"Leftism is defined by a goal of communism or socialism"—but that is just communism. No other ideology seeks communism as a goal, and socialism is just a stepping stone to communism, or at least that is what they taught me in my Soviet high school.
Outside of communist thought (wherein socialism is a stage on the route to communism—and the only concrete stage to which there is a roadmap in most communist thought, though different schools of communism have different maps), socialism is a thing sought in its own right by socialists who are not communists.
Obviously, its unsurprising that a Soviet high school would only teach the dogma of the particular brand of communism then currently held to be orthodox in the USSR, but that's a rather limited view.
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Outside of communist thought (wherein socialism is a stage on the route to communism—and the only concrete stage to which there is a roadmap in most communist thought, though different schools of communism have different maps), socialism is a thing sought in its own right by socialists who are not communists.
Obviously, its unsurprising that a Soviet high school would only teach the dogma of the particular brand of communism then currently held to be orthodox in the USSR, but that's a rather limited view.