> These are not governments that someone is now choosing to call socialist to give socialism a bad name.
No, they were governments someone choose to call socialist to give authoritarian state capitalism a good name.
Somewhat more generously Leninism (which they represent, or represent later derivatives of), was an attempt to adapt Marxist Communism (in which “socialism” is the name of a stage of development, and not necessarily in the same sense as “socialism” is used by people who identify it as an ideology of its own) to the conditions that existed in Russia at the time, particularly, the absence of capitalist development and broad proletarian class consciousness. This shortcut was then controversial within the Marxist community, much less the broader socialist community.
Even if one is generous enough to accept Leninism as a valid form of socialism, there is no possible justification for seeing it as representative of socialism in general, more than, say, the broad displacement of the system Marx described as capitalism with a new system shaped largely by socialist critiques of capitalism (sometimes called “mixed economy” or “welfare state”) as the dominant system of the developed West is.
Now, if someone is actually substantively advocating Lenin-/Stalin-/Mao-ism, then, sure, the experience of actual states practicing those systems tend to be relevant. If they are advocating something else, then those experiences are about as relevant as looking to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to assess systems other than Juche that nonetheless are described as “democratic republics”.