History Main / DirtyCommunists

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'': In "Red Snow", the vampires in the [[TheGulag Siberian gulag]] hate the Soviet Union and everything that it stands for. They believe that Communism has brought nothing but pain, suffering and death to the Russian people and seek to destroy the USSR for the sake of humans and vampires alike.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'', Amon and his Equalist uprising can be compared to real life Communist movements. They believe that the only way to protect non-benders is to de-power benders, whom they blame for forming oppressive societal hierarchies.

This trope is for when the negative aspects of the Soviet Union are caricatured or used for comedic purposes (as pictured), or when Communists are shown carrying out their policies ForTheEvulz rather than out of expediency or misguided idealism. With the end of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, this has become a mostly DeadHorseTrope, 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. It remains a significant legacy trope that many authors still use. Is sometimes still used in works set after the ColdWar that involve the communist guerilla/terrorist groups that remain active into the present day, the majority of which are based in rural Asian and South American regions.

* ''VideoGame/{{Homefront}}'' is a game where you see the menace of the North Korean government take over Japan, Korea, and the Philippines before invading the United States' plague ridden ruins. It was written by John Milius of ''Film/RedDawn1984'' fame, and he truly outdoes himself here, even seeing fit to include the page quote.

* ''VideoGame/MetalGear'' had several examples of this. The most JustForFun/{{egregious}} one is Colonel Volgin who 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. Otherwise the game surprisingly subverts this, portraying most of the Soviet soldiers as {{Punch Clock Villain}}s at absolute rock bottom worst who get a fairly noble portrayal as soldiers who are serving their country and, especially toward the end of the game, depicted as [[VillainousValor surprisingly]] [[NoOneGetsLeftBehind heroic]]. Olga and Sergei Gurlukovich despite being unreconstructed communists, are played fairly honorably and thus do not fall under the DirtyCommunists trope.

See RedChina for a similar trope dealing with that ''other'' Communist power. Contrast ChummyCommies. Also contrast HeroicRussianEmigre, which is sympathetic portrayal of anti-Soviet Russians who had to emigrate to the West.

* ZigZagged in ''VideoGame/DiscoElysium''. The game takes place in a CultureChopSuey of France, Germany, [[WriteWhatYouKnow and Estonia]] known as Revachol, 50 years after a failed communist revolution acting as a FantasyConflictCounterpart to UsefulNotes/RedOctober and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. Accounts suggest the communists killed millions of people before they themselves were almost completely slaughtered by the Coalition. By the present day, communism has been discredited and is treated mostly as a historical curiosity, outside of some rebellious youth culture. Nonetheless, among many of the inhabitants of Revachol the failed revolution is often spoken of wistfully as a lost opportunity rather than with anger or bitterness.

* ZigZagged in ''VideoGame/DiscoElysium''. The game takes place in a CultureChopSuey of France and Germany known as Revachol, 50 years after a failed communist revolution acting as a FantasyConflictCounterpart to UsefulNotes/RedOctober and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. Accounts suggest the communists killed millions of people before they themselves were almost completely slaughtered by the Coalition. By the present day, communism has been discredited and is treated mostly as a historical curiosity, outside of some rebellious youth culture. Nonetheless, among many of the inhabitants of Revachol the failed revolution is often spoken of wistfully as a lost opportunity rather than with anger or bitterness.

** During the fifties, ComicBook/CaptainAmerica of the very popular UsefulNotes/WorldWarII comics was set against communists, who had inherited the Nazis' mantle as global villains in the public mind in the days of UsefulNotes/JosephMcCarthy. Years later Marvel wanted to bring him back from near the end of the war. So, who was the fifties version? Through a RetCon by Creator/SteveEnglehart, 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, ramping up the "righteous revolution" elements for all they're worth.

* In ''Red Planet'', a setting for the TabletopGame/{{FATE}} system, the Soviet Union's operatives are depraved and selfish servants of an oligarchic dictatorship, which is contrasted with the ChummyCommies of the Union of Materialist Republics on Mars.

** Times change. ''Film/RedDawn'' (2012) had to show the originally-cast Chinese commies as North Koreans, because China is a major market for action movies. Ironically, casting the Chinese as the commie villains didn't work due to real-life constraints brought on directly by the fact that the Chinese ''aren't'' communist!

* Subverted in the AlternateHistory timeline ''Literature/{{Reds}}''. The Dirty Communists turn out to be very much the heroes of the work, in spite of their moral complexity.

** In old-school Marvel, pretty much ''everyone'' took a turn fighting Commies, from ComicBook/AntMan to ComicBook/{{Thor}}. Quickly show of hands - who remembers that the Chameleon, the very first ComicBook/SpiderMan supervillain, was originally a KGB agent?

* ''TabletopGame/GURPSThaumatologyAgeOfGold'' is set in a version of the {{Pulp}}-era 1930s where FunctionalMagic is a serious force, and so Communist Russia, under the rule of UsefulNotes/JosefStalin, is as serious a power as it was historically, and a plausible opponent for Western heroes. Of course, good communists don't believe in magic, but in this setting, that just means that Communist Russian magic tends to take the form of exotic {{Magitek}}, accompanied by some appropriate SovietSuperscience doubletalk.

[[folder:Film]]

Dirty Communists are, essentially, Cold War-era villainous portrayals of the [[UsefulNotes/HistoryOfTheUSSR Soviet Union's]] people. After UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, there was a very large effort to make them stock villains the same way ThoseWackyNazis were and still are. Special attention is brought to emphasizing all those wacky tropes found in GloriousMotherRussia.

* Season 3 of ''Series/StrangerThings'' ratcheted up the 80's Red Scare: making the Soviets secondary antagonists who have secretly built a base underneath Hawkins, having a Soviet scientist defect for Coke and hot dogs, and introducing a little girl character who stands up for capitalism. Cary Elwes plays the corrupt mayor dirtbag collaborating with the Soviets whose election posters are ripped practically 1:1 from Trump. Anyways, it ended with the heroes destroying the Soviet gate to the Upside Down. However, {{the stinger}} showed the Soviet continuing their experiments in the USSR and mentioning "the American", which everyone immediately knows referred to Hopper, who was ambiguously killed in the blast. Presumably magic is involved him getting spirited away by the Soviets. This being the '80s, there are a few lines calling them "commies"

* Season 3 of ''Series/StrangerThings'' ratcheted up the 80's Red Scare: making the Soviets secondary antagonists, having a Soviet scientist defect for Coke and hot dogs, and introducing a little girl character who stands up for capitalism. Cary Elwes plays the corrupt mayor dirtbag collaborating with the Soviets whose election posters are ripped practically 1:1 from Trump. Anyways, it ended with the heroes destroying the Soviet gate to the Upside Down. However, {{the stinger}} showed the Soviet continuing their experiments in the USSR and mentioning "the American", which everyone immediately knows referred to Hopper, who was ambiguously killed in the blast. Presumably magic is involved him getting spirited away by the Soviets.