via https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/13chr5f/mentions_of_the_word_fascism_and_its_derivatives/
Percentage of pages mentioning “fascism” and its derivative words, from January 1938 until December 1942. Darkest blue is front page, the lightest blue is 6+ pages. Letters at the bottom are months.
Source, based on data from the Pravda Digital Archive.
For someone that was canny enough of a backstabbing tyrant to murder his way into leadership it’s always struck as me as strange that Stalin was taken by surprise when Hitler betrayed their treaty.
Everyone but him knew it was coming. There’s no way he couldn’t have known, even if he thought it would happen later he shouldn’t have been surprised. Hating socialism in general and Bolshevism in particular was like half of their thing.