I don’t know about “most progressive” lol. But I imagine WWII made a lot of politicians and people go back to conservatism to promote more births and “women’s work” since people were dying at a fast rate, and the majority of soldiers sent to fight were men. Then after that, people didn’t really shift back to Lenin-era policies and attitudes. The historical nihilism after Stalin’s death also made many citizens apathetic about civics and ideology, and I’m assuming the result of that is that people worried about the next day instead of broader society.

Also, Soviet citizens were still practicing orthodox Christianity even though it wasn’t encouraged or allowed in many places. You can see this with stats of people who “didn’t believe” during the USSR period vs the explosion of believers following its downfall - though its also possible that the horrid conditions of post-soviet Russia made people desperate enough to resort to religion as a guide to life once more.

Socialist states also tend to be slow about progressivism because they had just overthrown a reactionary state, or they simply ignore/forget about their own progressive history. Then when the enemy flanks them with similar progressive policies, the socialist states become flustered and start marking everything as capitalist decadence. Cuba was like this, but it’s an ML state so it recognized the tides are turning and that the new generation of revolutionaries will not just be rugged bearded men. It now has possibly the most progressive constitution of all countries, but the west will never give them credit for evolving past its bigoted history.

In other words, it’s just shit slinging at the expense of marginalized people. Countries just associate traits that transcend (most) ideology with the enemy. China associates feminine men with capitalist brainwashing while the US associates feminine men with communist brainwashing. In modern times, politicians ought to be smart and realize that a lot of their citizens are loyal and nationalist regardless of their identity and that it would be wise to accept them to defend the state.

Think about whatever country you live in. Think about everyone you know IRL (not online, that’s a bad sample). How knowledgeable and engaged are they about the socio-economic and political conditions they live in? I’m guessing the answer is probably “not very”.

While I think the average Soviet citizen was more politically engaged than the average American is now, most people back then weren’t like, expert socialism understanders. Most people, in most places and times, more or less just go with the flow and live their lives and don’t give much thought to the broader society in which they live.

So then as others in this post have said, once communism was murdered in those places, you needed to have counterrevolutionary forces promoted. Most people aren’t going to push back, really.

Counterrevolution does this with your country.

Two words: American imperialism

Same story for Afghanistan, Iran, Indonesia, Chile and many many more examples in the developing world.

The deliberate suppression of progressive elements combined with the reactionary elements being the other “nationalist” option in not just the common usage but in the sense of promoting resistance and independence from the influence and meddling of the west.

Also in terms of the reactionary elements providing a target and reason for the obvious decline and suffering of people, the red menace is already beaten so you can either assert that everything is basically fine and according to plan(asking people to be delusional) or you can provide false targets and causes.