History Main / DirtyCommunists

Dirty Communists are, essentially, Cold War villainous portrayals of the Soviet Union's people. After WorldWarTwo, there was a very large effort to make them stock villains the same way the Nazis have served pretty much ever since. Special attention is brought to emphasizing all those wacky tropes found in GloriousMotherRussia.

Dirty Communists are, essentially, Cold War villainous portrayals of the Soviet Union's people or servants. After WorldWarTwo, there was a very large effort to make them stock villains the same way the Nazis have served pretty much ever since. Special attention is brought to emphasizing all those wacky tropes found in GloriousMotherRussia for example.

Dirty Communists, while not quite as ubiquitous as ThoseWackyNazis, still get in from time to time, and have seen a recent semi-return. In Russia, communism is even more controversial; there are some who completely agree with its portrayal as an evil ideology, some who have strong MyCountryRightOrWrong feelings, and some [[NotQuiteDead still kicking supporters of communism.]]

Dirty Communists, while not quite as ubiquitous as ThoseWackyNazis, still get in from time to time, and have seen a recent semi-return. In Russia, communism is even more controversial; there are some who completely agree with its portrayal as an evil ideology, some who have strong MyCountryRightOrWrong feelings, and some [NotQuiteDead still kicking supporters of communism.]]

-->B. Get control of all means of publicity [[StepThreeProfit and thereby:]] 1. Get people's minds off their government. Get them interested in [[WelcomeToTVTropes sex, books and plays and other trivialities]]...
-->[[PstandardPsychicPstance By psychopolitics create chaos]]. [[AnarchyIsChaos Leave a nation leaderless]]. '''[[GottaKillThemAll Kill our enemies]]. [[MotiveRant And bring to Earth, through Communism, the greatest peace Man has ever known.]]"'''

Dirty Communists, while not quite as ubiquitous as ThoseWackyNazis, still get in from time to time, and have seen a recent semi-return, thanks to ModernWarfare2's usage of Russian Ultranationalists ([[OlderThanTheyThink though it's been a plot in many thriller books, and noticeably by the first GhostRecon). In Russia, communism is even more controversial; there are some who completely agree with its portrayal as an evil ideology, some who have strong MyCountryRightOrWrong feelings, and [[NotQuiteDead still kicking supporters of communism.]] Nevertheless, it remains a significant legacy that many authors still like to use.

With the end of the ColdWar, this has become a mostly DiscreditedTrope, though it oddly has a lot more universal success with Post-Soviet villains than it has ever had with actual communist ones. Related to RedScare.

Dirty Communists have never quite caught on in fiction the way that ThoseWackyNazis have. This may be due to the fact that the left-leaning politics of many in both entertainment and the media deliberately try to downplay and even cover-up Soviet atrocities. In Russia, communism is even more controversial; there are some who completely agree with its portrayal as an evil ideology, some who have strong MyCountryRightOrWrong feelings, and [[NotQuiteDead still kicking supporters of communism.]] Nevertheless, it remains a significant legacy that many authors still like to use.

* UsefulNotes/PeaceThroughSuperiorFirepower

With the end of the Cold War, this has become a mostly DiscreditedTrope, though it oddly has a lot more universal success with Post-Soviet villains than it has ever had with actual communist ones.

** They seem to be getting a more "misguided, greedy, and sorta corrupt" slate similar to Eagleland Type2, albeit in a diametrically opposed fashion. And whether they really count as Communists anymore is debatable (though they are definitely still totalitarian).
*** Authoritariain dude, China is authoritarian.
**** State capitalist dude, Authoritarian State Capitalists

* TheGreatPoliticsMessUp after the Cold War.

* MnogoNukes

* PeaceThroughSuperiorFirepower

[[RedHerring http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/commiecomic.jpg]]
[[caption-width:280:[[AndThatsTerrible And That's Terrible]].]]

-->''"pa sa all the mess is due to gran. actually all the mess is due to the Russians, who are rotters."''
-->--''Nigel'' ''{{Molesworth}}''

* TheGreatPoliticsMessUp

* RedsWithRockets

* RomanovsAndRevolutions

Dirty Communists are, essentially, Cold War villainous portrayals of the Soviet Union's people or servants. After WorldWarTwo, there was a very large effort to make them stock villains the same way the Nazis have served pretty much ever since. Special attention is brought to emphasizing all those wacky tropes found in InSovietRussiaTropeMocksYou for example.

Dirty Communists have never quite caught on in fiction the way that ThoseWackyNazis have. This may be due to the fact that the left-leaning politics of many in both entertainment and the media deliberately to downplay and even cover-up Soviet atrocities. In Russia, communism is even more controversial; there are some who completely agree with its portrayal as an evil ideology, some who have strong MyCountryRightOrWrong feelings, and [[NotQuiteDead still kicking supporters of communism.]] Nevertheless, it remains a significant legacy that many authors still like to use.

* [[Main/{{BerlinWall}} Berlin Wall]]

* [[Main/{{TheGreatPoliticsMessUp}} The Great Politics Mess Up]]
* [[Main/{{HotLine}} Hot Line]]
* [[Main/{{IronCurtain}} Iron Curtain]]

* [[Main/{{ANuclearError}} A Nuclear Error]]

* [[Main/{{ReportingNames}} Reporting Names]]

* ''DangerGirl'' mocks this trope by creating the outrageous 'Hammer' organization that combines Nazism and Communism (!!)
* Averted in the ''[[GIJoe G.I. Joe]]'' comic series by Marvel. The Joes' Russian counterparts, Oktober Guard, were actually reluctant allies of the Joes who set aside their differences to fight against the Cobras. The only time the Soviet Union is ever referred as an "evil empire" is done sarcastically by one of the characters. Quite a feat, considering the comic was published during the jingoistic Reagan era.

** Red Scare made an appearance in the live-action series as well, but in a completely different form. There, he was a 25-year-old Soviet combat android designed for one purpose: to kill Jimmy Carter. A group of diehard Russian commandos (or something) unearth it as part of a poorly-explained plan to destroy the U.S. Postal System, but the robot goes haywire (at the exact same time as Jimmy Carter arrives in town for a book signing).
* Comicbook/{{X-Men}} villain Omega Red was made as a Soviet Captain America before turning into a ''TerroristWithoutACause''.

* {{WKRP in Cincinnati}}'s Les Nessman was paranoid about DirtyCommunists, to the point that the emergency script he wrote for the station was an anti-Communist screed. When a tornado struck Cincinnati, Mr. Carlson ordered him to read the script on the air but to replace "Communist" with "tornado", which resulted in a long harangue about "Godless tornadoes" followed by the national anthem. His paranoia was explained in the final season when it was revealed that his father, who had abandoned their family when he was an infant, was himself a Communist, and that his mother had consequently instilled in Les a hatred of Communists.

* The {{StarDrive}} setting has a nation called the Nariac Domain, which consists of spacefaring cyber-communists.
* {{Winterweir}} has the Free Republic of Amania, which is essentially a collection of DirtyCommunists and French Revolutionaries.

* FreedomFighters is pretty much the video Game version of "RedDawn", where the main antagonists are Communists invading America and you play as a leader of the resistance who is tryingto push them out of the country. The major difference is, its all taking place in New York and not Middle America.

* The state of the world in the {{Fallout}} series is due to a war with communist China.

* FreedomForce plays this straight with [[AnIcePerson Nuclear Winter]] and somewhat averts this with (somewhat) with Red October who teams up with the FreedomForce in the sequel.

* Boris and Natasha of the ''RockyAndBullwinkle show'' are typical example of Cold War spies.

Dirty Communists are, essentially, Cold War villainous portrayals of the Soviet Union's people or servants. After WorldWarTwo, there was a very large propaganda effort to make them stock villains the same way the Nazis have served pretty much ever since.


Dirty Communists are different from portrayals of the Soviet Union as an enemy because of a greater emphasis on their villainy than normal, making them stock villains. Special attention is brought to emphasizing all those wacky tropes found in InSovietRussiaTropeMocksYou for example.

Dirty Communists are different from portrayals of the Soviet Union as an enemy because an especial effort is made pretty much to dehumanize them or reduce them to bad guys through elaborate measures. Special attention is brought to emphasizing all those wacky tropes found in InSovietRussiaTropeMocksYou for example.

Dirty Communists have never quite caught on in fiction the way that ThoseWackyNazis have. This may be due to the fact that the left-leaning politics of many in both entertainment and the media deliberately to downplay and even cover-up Soviet atrocities, or the fact that communism as an ideology is more morally ambiguous than Nazism, making its adherents less unsympathetic. In Russia, communism is even more controversial; there are some who completely agree with its portrayal as an evil ideology, some who have strong MyCountryRightOrWrong feelings, and [[NotQuiteDead still kicking supporters of communism.]] Nevertheless, it remains a significant legacy that many authors still like to use.

With the end of the Cold War, this has become a mostly DiscreditedTrope, though it oddly has a lot more universal success with Post-Soviet villains than it has ever had with actual communist ones. Not so odd if losing the Cold War proves that Communism is Evil, which makes those who continue to promote it designated villains.

Given China's prominence in Fallout's universe it may be a case of EnemyofmyEnemy.

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-->B. Get control of all means of publicity [[StepThreeProfit and thereby:]] 1. Get people's minds off their government. Get them interested in [[WelcomeToTVTropes sex, books and plays and other trivialities]]...

Dirty Communists are, essentially, Cold War villainous portrayals of the Soviet Union's people or servants. After WorldWarTwo, there was a very large propaganda effort to make them stock villains the same way the Nazis have served pretty much ever since.

Dirty Communists have never quite caught on in fiction the way that ThoseWackyNazis have. This may be due to the fact that the left-leaning politics of many in both entertainment and the media deliberately to downplay and even cover-up Soviet atrocities, or the fact that communism as an ideology is more morally ambiguous than Nazism, making its adherents less unsympathetic. In Russia, communism is even more controversial; there are some who completely agree with its portrayal as an evil ideology, some who have strong MyCountryRightOrWrong feelings, and [[NotQuiteDead still kicking supporters of communism.]] Nevertheless, it remains a significant legacy that many authors still like to use.

With the end of the Cold War, this has become a mostly DiscreditedTrope, though it oddly has a lot more universal success with Post-Soviet villains than it has ever had with actual communist ones. Not so odd if losing the Cold War proves that Communism is Evil, which makes those who continue to promote it designated villains.

* During the fifties, CaptainAmerica of the very popular WorldWarTwo comics was set against communists. The title folded quickly. Years later Marvel wanted to bring him back from near the end of the war. Who was the fifties version? An [[DorkAge 'Evil' Cap and 'Evil' Bucky]] who had changed their names and faces to seem like the genuine article, made into a KnightTemplar and driven madly paranoid by a version of the Super Soldier Serum. Later Cap battled Evil Cap and Evil Bucky. Evil Bucky eventually became non-evil and sidekicked for a while before being killed; Evil Cap became a supervillain for a while, died, and recently, after the death of real Cap, came back not so evil though still slightly bent, seeing as he's running the Marvel Universe equivalent of the Tea Party Movement and ramping up the "righteous revolution" elements for all they're worth.
* ''IronMan'' was actually created to fight these guys. Many long lasting characters like the Black Widow and some less long lasting like the Crimson Dynamo are a result of his constant battles against the 'Red Menace.' In fact, the moral difference between TheCape Captain America and Tony, who can drift into WellIntentionedExtremist territory, can be explained by one of them being created to fight Nazis, and one to fight Communists.

* ''TheTick'' parodied this trope with a villain-for-hire actually called the Red Scare, who would take jobs dressing up in supervillain attire themed around communist Russian symbology, pretend to menace some major public place, and then get defeated by his customers in a staged fight. The whole affair went hilariously awry when the Red Scare's customer was late to arrive, and the Tick, mistaking him for a real supervillain, attempted seriously to thwart him.

** An episode of ''TheColbertReport'' featured a "special update" on the Cold War. The opening montage featured Lenin, Stalin, Kruschev, Drago, and [[ArsonMurderAndJayWalking Yakov Smirnoff]].

* Ian Fleming's ''JamesBond'' novels are especially guilty of this. SMERSH (which [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMERSH did exist in real life, albeit briefly and with a more limited purview]]) is an organization that sponsors countless crazy schemes to destroy the West and the communists tend to be both sexually "perverted" (Klebb is a PsychoLesbian) as well as disfigured. Oddly, the movies would largely avert this in place of the smaller SPECTRE. Furthermore the evil "General G" of the novels becomes the much more genial General Gogol in the Roger Moore movies. Gogol is very much the face of the USSR in Bond films of this age, in ''{{Moonraker}}'' for instance, it is he, not the Soviet premier whom the US leadership talk to over the hotline in a crisis and in ''{{Octopussy}}'' it is Gogol who personally oversees the pursuit and shooting of a warmongering traitor who wanted to invade the West. Although he is a villain in ''ForYourEyesOnly'', he is far nicer than the others in the movie and Bond doesn't even attempt to hurt him. In the Brosnan era he actually becomes an elder statesman figure (albeit off-screen, due to Walter Gottell's death) for the now friendly RussianFederation.
** ''Colonel Sun'' is an example of how politics can get REALLY ugly in the James Bond-verse. Kingsley Amis, under the pseudonym Robert Markham, wrote a very Fleming-like interpretation of the Chinese DirtyCommunists threat with the titular sexual sadist. What's really appalling about the book is that the book contains countless humanized Soviet villains as it goes out of its way to say how different they are from the Chinese!
** Gen. Orlov from ''Octopussy'' is a full-fledged villain, but General Gogol investigates him in unwitting parallel to Bond's mission. The result of that was Gogol attempted to arrest Orlov before the East German border guards shot the renegade general dead and it's fairly obvious that if Gogol had learned Orlov's whole scheme, he would have raced to warn NATO.

* In ''The Zone'', a 1980's action series by James Rouch (set in an AlternateHistory WorldWarThree Europe) the Warsaw Pact officers are universally portrayed as brutal sadists, who casually murder civilians and even their own soldiers if it suits their purpose or whim. However ''[[AfterTheEnd The Survivialist]]'' series by Jerry Ahern (written about the same time, and set in a post-WorldWarThree [[DayOfTheJackboot Soviet-occupied United States]]) makes sure to offset its evil communist villains with decent chaps such as General Varakov and KGB agent Natalia Tiemerovna.
* In the 1970's action-adventure series ''TheExecutioner'', Red China is mentioned as being involved in the drug trade, which given what the CIA was up to in Cambodia and Vietnam is ironic (a similar mention is made in the JamesBond film ''{{Thunderball}})''. When the series was sold to Gold Eagle in the 1980's the KGB became the main villains, often portrayed as TheChessmaster behind international terrorism.

** The Cardassians later take over this role (appropriately updated for the late-80s-early-90s) through their sparse appearances in [[StarTrekTheNextGeneration ''The Next Generation'']] and especially in [[StarTrekDeepSpaceNine ''Deep Space Nine'']]: vaguely described early on as an impoverished people with "deep spiritual values" that embraced a military dictatorship as a solution. Later, a decaying authoritarian super-power forced to relinquish its hold on the peoples it once held subject.
*** This becomes quite blatant if you listen to some of the lunch conversations between Bashir and Garak, as Garak often takes a StrawCommunist position when they debate some matter of politics or philosophy. Also, there is the title what the Cardassian's greatest creative work: ''The Neverending Sacrifice''.

* ''{{Alias}}'' had K-Directorate, which seemed to be a Post-Soviet Free Agency (read: Terrorist). Likewise, it had Sydney's mom turn out to be a Russian Spy with two unreconstructed communist sisters.

* ''MetalGearSolid'' had several examples of this. The most {{egregious}} one is Colonel Volgin whom is a DepravedBisexual that possesses lightning powers and a desire to start nuclear war with the West. Of course, the game he appears in is one long love letter to 1960s spy movies, so he's not too out of place. Revolver Ocelot might also qualify despite being ultimately disloyal to the Soviet system. Olga and Sergei Gurlukovich despite being unreconstructed communists, are played fairly honorably and thus do not fall under the DirtyCommunists trope.

*** It's either them, or the [[KnightTemplar Brotherhood of Steel]], who are the remnant U.S. Military. Prime recognizes them and their armor, but has probably never seen a Mark 2 and would assume it to be the enemy's.

* At about the same time that ''Rambo II'' and ''RedDawn'' were in their heyday, there was an arcade video game named ''Rush 'N Attack''. It was exactly what it sounds like.

'''Old-Timey Homestar''': Aww, phooey! What ''do'' they have on your planet?\\
'''Red''': Not much. Long lines. Expensive bread.

*** There is some evidence that his depravity was actually Khruschev's fabrication -- the baldie was too deeply in Stalin's inner circle and tried to distance from it by some energetic mud-slinging. Especially in the light of the fact that he was made NKVD head to ''stop'' purges which were getting out of hand. Though the fact that he was a ruthless and entirely conscious-less bastard is indisputable, he was just too efficient for all these accusations.

*** Socialism, in fact, had such "bad PR" among Western governments that Britain's [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement "appeasement"]] strategy partly hinged on their hope that the Nazis would head East first, and take care of the USSR for them. In the early 1930s, Winston Churchill even argued in Parliament that the government's foreign policy should be summed up as, "Kill the Bolshie, kiss the Hun." (This is why, when Stalin [[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/3223834/Stalin-planned-to-send-a-million-troops-to-stop-Hitler-if-Britain-and-France-agreed-pact.html proposed an alliance with the West against the Nazis]], he was rebuffed, and had to make [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov-Ribbentrop_Pact a more famous pact with Germany]] just to hedge against being invaded.) People are often [[ValuesDissonance startled]] to hear Cole Porter casually praise Mussolini in "You're the Top", or see other evidence of widespread pro-Fascism in the West -- all of which was thanks to this trope.