There is no exercise which occupies the average tanky's mind more than explaining why a literal oligarchy run by a guy who sees himself as the fascist messiah envisioned by the guy who invented christian fascism, is actually totally socialist and critical support and shut up liberal america bad!
It's because these spaces have just been infested by Russian trolls and it's super blatant. Lemmy.ml, at times, feels like it's legitimately an intro course for shitty Russian trolls before they get moved on to Facebook and reddit.
I dont think most tankies would say Russia is today socialist. 30% of employees in Russia work for the state in 2016 compared to 70-90% in 1985. And the biggest predisessor parties of Putin´s party United Russia were hard supported by the CIA and the US(because the parties were right wing and for capitalism and free markets etc. .) to win the russian 1991 and 1996 election before they started to rig election results.
They won't say it's socialist, but they still defend anything Russia does because it's anti-western, which is more important for the current generation of tankies.
I dont support it i think it was crazy by Putin. But i still praise many things about the former Soviet Union and Maoist china and yugoslavia and cuba etc. . For example that everybody was garanteed a minimum income through the federal job guarantees and the low income inequality etc. .