You're essentially making the argument that because lots of young people are poorly educated and think socialism means "any time the government does something to help people", that this means everyone needs to use base their use of the word on that misunderstanding rather than using the word properly. That's such an idiotic position to take that I had to double check that you were the one making it. Maybe we should just start saying people lacking interest are "disinterested" "irregardless" of whether or not that's right now?

You're also wrong on the Soviet Union. The Soviets built socialism and were working on communism under the guidance of the Communist Party. We were right to call them communists but wrong if we called their system of government "communist". The people expressed a goal of full communism, hence they were communists. They were also socialists in the sense that they believed in full state control of the means of production prior to the implementation of total communism. However, not every socialist party seeks to go on to implement communism. That doesn't change the definition of socialism.