You want to raise beyond certain level in engineering or management? You gotta sign up to the party. But signing the paper may be your only activity in the party.

Soviet/Chinese style communist parties were vanguard parties. Party membership was a privilege you had to earn, and it generally meant that you were a reputable person and potentially a member of the elite. In some sense, it had the same kind of signaling function as having a college degree or passing a leetcode interview.

American Democratic/Republican parties are kind of like semiofficial branches of the government. They have little control over their membership (or their candidates), and membership in itself means very little.

European political parties (at least in the countries I'm familiar with) are private organizations. Party membership tends to be lower than in the Soviet/American systems and signals some nontrivial commitment to the party.

It was also the wealthiest eastern bloc country, and the one with most "economic freedom" relatively speaking. And despite the infamous totalitarian surveillance system, there was a lot more open, civic defiance like conscientious objection to military service, than there was in Russia.

I do think there's a lot more longing for the empire than for the planned economy in Russia today - but that's not so different from the nationalist movements in Hungary, Poland and Ukraine. They just have other ideas of past greatness.