there has long been a tendency online that can only be described as 'vulgar hardline' – an attraction to superficially similar, hardline/'anti-revisionist' states that appear to be cut from the same cloth, but in reality were often opposed to one another.
the main contemporary example would be the attitude that many self-proclaimed 'maoists' and 'anti-revisionist' MLs (they're virtually the same, one just primarily praises mao while the other stalin) have towards cuba and the dprk: they hate khrushchev, usually consider the ussr and co. post-1953/56 revisionist, but support historically pro-soviet cuba and the fence-sitting dprk. however during the cold war when socialist countries were plentiful and things were happening in real time; alliances more clearly defined and happenings more clearly understood by various followers in the west; maoists were highly critical of cuba, to put it lightly. to many, it was nothing more than a soviet sugar plantation helmed by a fascist puppet. the dprk was also disliked, but how intensely depended on how much of a red guard you were.
of course there are still those niche gonzaloites with more awareness of the maoist tradition, who continue this negative attitude towards castro and the kims, but for the majority of 'anti-revisionist' communists they're recieved very well.
this vulgar hardline position becomes even more confusing when we further examine actual relationships between the key 'BASED' hardline countries (china, albania, dprk, east germany) and their 'CRINGE' opposites (ussr post-stalin, yugoslavia, the broad cmea.) getting the obvious out of the way, east germany was naturally 100% ride and die soviet until gorbachev and considered fellow revisionists by maoists/hoxhaists of the time, but nontheless you do see plenty of corn critial characters who think the ossies went hard.
now on to the rest…
the dprk in the 60s was both pro-soviet and pro-chinese, depending on the present situation. here's a pro-soviet example from 1960:
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/journal-soviet-ambassador-dprk-am-puzanov-16-june-1960and here's a pro-chinese example from 1966:
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/information-korean-workers-partythough a lot of what the wpk said wasn't overt, the stance against 'modern revisionism' they and others took at the time was a way to throw shade at the cpsu while not distancing themselves outright.
come the 70s however they were predominately pro-soviet since the chinese hated them – maoists considered kim a revisionist fatcat – and also rekindled a new positive relationship with yugoslavia. here are some excerpts taken from todor zhivkov following his talks with kim il-sung in 1973:
>We – [Kim] said – do not agree with China’s policy. It is incomprehensible to us. It is incomprehensible to us why they speak about Soviet socialist imperialism, that there is socialist imperialism in the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union there is no socialist imperialism and there is no socialist imperialism at all. We do not share China’s idea about the two super states. We do not agree with their theories, which they spread in the past as well, about the blooming of all flowers, the contradictions in socialist society, the peasant communities, the Cultural Revolution, etc.>During the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese set up along our border, which is 1,300 km long, loud speakers and they broadcast propaganda against our country day and night. The population along the border could not sleep. My son visited a village along the border at the time. When he came back he said, “Dad, I could not sleep a single night.”>When the Chinese launched a military provocation along the Soviet border along the Amur and Ussuri Rivers, they launched a military provocation in our country too (he mentioned the name of the river and the village, but I could not remember them). The story that Kim Il Sung told was the following: In this village we had soldiers and armed villagers (along the border our people bear arms), about 50 people; and the Chinese penetrated into our country with 100 armed soldiers and officers. I was out in the country at the time (on Saturdays and Sundays I usually go out in the country and I read,) and they told me about this infiltration by the Chinese soldiers. I gave instructions to our people to let them in and not to shoot at them straight away. But, if they tried to advance further into our territory and carry out actions – our people were to block their way and capture at least five of them alive. The Chinese solders, however, penetrated into our territory and after that withdrew, without undertaking any action. There were similar, less significant, incidents in other places along the border, too.despite this antagonism the dprk and china both supported the khmer rouge as most know, but guess who else had amicable relations with the them? yugoslavia!! omagad…
i don't think this has even bought up before on /leftypol/ despite the milking potential but i digress. the yugos clearly related to the treatment of cambodian freedum fighters by the soviet camp. here's what the khmer rouge had to say:
>“Like our Democratic Cambodia, Yugoslavia is a non-aligned country which has adhered to the position of preserving independence. Friendship between our two countries is therefore based on the same principle. We have always esteemed and respected Comrade President Tito and the friendly Yugoslav people. Comrade President Tito and the Yugoslav people have always supported and helped us. We have sympathy for them and wish to express our thanks to Comrade President Tito and the friendly Yugoslav people.”now hoxha on the other hand hated pol pot, he considered a barbarous fascist, and albania was a firm supporter of pro-soviet vietnam. of course beyond the seemingly strange support for a soviet ally (similarly china supported romania for geopolitical reasons despite romanian socialism being materially the same as in the ussr) this seems pretty innocuous, but i feel it's worth mentioning albanian-cambodian relations because there seems to be a decent amount of pro-hoxha types who also support pol pot (see: leninisloveleninislife aka nomorelibs) and naturally despise tito.
anyway that concludes my post. this isn't intended to start any sectarian shitflinging, i mostly just wanted to get this stuff out there because it's COOL and INTERESTING fax. you can still support the dprk in current year and hate khrushchev i don't care, but hopefully this deters some of the ideology shopping people partake in where instead of ideologies it's states to support based on how wikipedia and pop history arbitrarily likens them.
pic unrelated btw.