Wow! Lots of piling on that seems (to me at least) to miss my main point.(posted 8750 days ago)I think there should be a debate about the Cold War--about whether American policy was destructive (I think in many cases yes, in more cases no) and was driven by an inordinate fear of Communism (I think in general yes).
But you can't have this debate if you pretend that Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong didn't exist--if you pretend that there never was a Great Purge or a Great Leap Forward, and that the really-existing-socialist regimes of Eastern Europe were benevolent stewards responsive to the will of the people.
They weren't. You can't tell the history of the Cold War without talking about the regimes on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
That's objectionable--and that's what I object to.