this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2025
40 points (100.0% liked)
HistoryPhotos
1350 readers
302 users here now
HistoryPhotos is for photographs (or, if it can be found, film) of the past, recent or distant! Give us a little snapshot of history!
Rules
- Be respectful and inclusive.
- No harassment, hate speech, or trolling.
- Foster a continuous learning environment.
- No genocide or atrocity denialism.
- Photos MUST be at LEAST 10 years old, and ideally over 20. We appreciate that we are living through events which will become history, but this is ultimately not a comm for news or current affairs, but events which have occurred some time in the past.
Related Communities:
- !militaryporn@lemmy.world
- !forgottenweapons@lemmy.world
- !historymusic@quokk.au
- !historygallery@quokk.au
- !historymemes@piefed.social
- !historyruins@piefed.social
- !historyart@piefed.social
- !historyartifacts@piefed.social
founded 9 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I guess the Q is-- how widely was it understood around the world that the situation was really more like a dictatorship than any real attempt at communism? I see the Great Purge also started up right around this time, too...
People understand what they want to understand, then as now. There were plenty of dissidents and stories of Soviet repression; likewise, there were plenty of puff pieces pushed in the West by the Soviet apparatus and denials that it was all the tales of 'reactionaries' and 'wreckers'.
Surely over time though, the West should have largely come to understand that the situation with both Stalin and Mao wasn't really a communist issue, but more of an autocratic one, or variation thereof. I mean, sure, I can see why right-wingers in the McCarthy era (etc) very much wanted to maintain that fictional narrative for their own purposes, but...
Hmm, well, I guess the US as an imperialist power also found it highly useful to run with that as well so as to more easily meddle with other nations within its hemisphere. That's one national motivation, anyway. :S
The term 'tankie' came about in the 1950s as it was increasingly seen by Western leftists as an authoritarianism issue in the Soviet Union and PRC, not just capitalist propaganda. Unfortunately, seeing as the Sovs and PRC were massive and funded Communist movements abroad with the expectation of orthodoxy, this led to many Western leftists being attacked from both sides - the Soviet-funded 'Communists' accusing them of being saboteurs and useful idiots for capitalism, and the ruling Western capitalists accusing them of being Soviet-style authoritarians playing PR games.
Interesting. Thanks for your time. A lot of that had not really been on my radar, and for some reason I thought the 'tankie' term came out of Tienanmen Sq, not the Hungarian Revolution. :o
Bootlickers gonna bootlick.
There were a lot more peoples and global interests involved than merely the 'bootlickers.'