Just because the Russians failed abysmally to implement a socialist system hardly means that everyone else would do the same. The USSR took a fascist military dictatorship and tried to dress it up like socialism. In 1918, they went directly from centuries of aristocracy and monarchy to an attempt at democracy that was actually controlled by military interests. They had no notion of securing freedoms and a supreme law that no one, not even the nation's leaders, could break. They didn't have a tradition of freedom and liberty to base their new system on. They had a tradition of tyranny and oppression, and that's what their new idea was modeled after.
Conversely, in the United States, we already presume that a supreme law, protected freedoms, and open elections are fundamental. A socialist system in this country would look nothing like the Soviet one. It would be rooted in the principals of the American republic.
To suggest that every socialist system would look like the USSR would be like suggesting that every democratic system would look like South Korea or India. Here's a hint, they don't have a lot of the civil rights we have. They'll railroad an accused suspect, torture a confession out of them, and seldom give someone a truly fair trial. They also limit freedoms of speech and the press.
I would say that it is this woman who does not know what she is talking about, or rather that is overextending her experiences and does not realize that a military dictatorship is a terrible system no matter how you dress it up. Whether it calls itself socialism like the USSR or China, or calls itself democratic like Congo, it's still a fascist, military regime. American socialists do not call for a military takeover of the country. A socialist United States would look nothing like the USSR. To think otherwise is to completely fail to understand why the USSR operated the way it did.