What I mean is that, lacking any other info, communist does not automatically equal authoritarian. There is a tragic amount of overlap between those two Ven diagram circles but it is not an intrinsic thing is all I’m pointing out. Of course I know nothing about the specifics of this situation in particular, and I’m not so arrogant as to talk as though I do. I’m just making a general point.

I think this scenario highlights the difference between communists and tankies. Tankies are a subset of communists (or at least claim to be) but not all communists are tankies.