Explanation: In 1956, socialist revolutionaries performed an uprising across Hungary, demanding workers’ control of production and a return to genuine democratic elections. The Soviet Union, unwilling to let go of a vassal state, and certainly not a dangerous one trying to show that actual democracy and socialism were compatible, invaded, rolling tanks into the major cities of Hungary and suppressing and executing dissidents as they saw fit.

From this ugly incident we get the word ‘tankie’, coined by Western Communists who were previously largely content, even during the Stalinist years, to accept the argument that much of the bad press was capitalist propaganda. Apparently, seeing an independent socialist state created by workers’ agitation crushed by Soviet tanks was enough to finally shake that saintly sheen off the Soviet project.