You seem to take it that stuff like attitudes towards freedom and tolerance and so force are criteria that correlate with left right opinions, Steve. I don't see it working like that. If a left wing regime is tyrannical and repressive and intolerant, that doesn't mean it's less left than one which is the reverse. If a right wing regime is tyrannical and repressive and intolerant, that doesn't mean its more right wing than one which is the reverse. That kind of thing just means that that is the kind of regime it is, and gives good reason to struggle against it.

Many people, especially on the right, assumed that if Russia turned against aspiring to be a socialist regime, that would mean it would be safe from being an oppressive regime and an intolerant society.It didn't work out that way. It was a fallacy to think it would.

Poor old Gorbachev had a vision of it giving up the oppression and remaining every bit as committed to Socialism, and so did Dubcek before him. The tragedy was that on both cases, in different ways, the experiment wasn't allowed to run its course.

I don't accept the idea that all the different ways we have of seeing the world fit on a left right spectrum. I prefer the model in which left/ right and libertarian/authoritarian are plotted on different axes on the same chart. Except I think there are a good few more axes in play. There's religion, for one, and there's ethics for another, and various others. Multidimensional. But we all fit on there somewhere, and we all have some funny neighbours on some who are far away on others, and the other way round. Not appreciating that is a big reason why revolutionaries and similar end up tearing each other to pieces so often.