Monies the time afore that I've told this anecdote, but here we go again. Hearken to a leaked, told tale of the mysterious and barbaric Soviet Union (wherein it is always winter, but never Christmas)!
Robert Byron went to Russia in the early 30s to look at some Byzantine frescoes and muse about Stalinism in his spare moments. Though dangerously forthright about the abuses and absurdities of the Soviet system, he found the curators of churches around Novgorod to be welcoming and helpful. The only church to which he was not admitted was closed to the public for the removal of the iconostasis: owing to falling attendances it was no longer in use, and so its relics were being transported to museums. Robert had a bit of a clamjamfry with the workmen and mentioned this in communications with Britain.
When he got home, he was bemused to discover that according to himself, the Soviets were still busily desecrating churches in the Novgorod district. The situation on the raping-nuns-on-fire front remained uncertain.
The right-wing press of the capitalist countries, supported in many cases by the governments, could say
any damn thing about the Soviets and communism generally and frequently did. You think "They'll nationalise the women!" is something I made up? Think again.
What do you
think people thought about the USSR in the 1930s? Sure, there were those on the left who had willfully blinded themselves - and just as many on the right.
Further,
there were no death camps in the late 30s USSR. If they wanted you dead, they didn't faff around with a camp. The camps were for slave-labour, and 90% of their inmates survived. Harsh systems of forced labour were
of course - of course, mind you - unknown in the capitalist empires, just like famine.