[prox]

I like to add a bit of historical context and that is that communism as an ideology,field of study and it’s ideas were quite spread out over Europe and beyond (Way before the Russian revolution and after)

Karl Marx ideas were very revolutionary for its time (a good primer can be found in the book The Value of Everything) and set a lot of ideas in motion. And there was also debate in that regard on how to institute communism. So communism could never reach the “evil” moniker like Nazism, even though it was apparent the Soviet Union was quite a brute. So the ideology was kind of separated cognitively from its implementation by the Soviet Union.

In the Cold War period, the SU was definitely seen as something that had to be defeated. There was a lot of fear of nuclear escalation between the superpowers. The Soviet Union was seen as different at best, and something to be defeated in all cases. And yes, also evil. Just watch some action movies from that time to get a general idea.