Like, for example, Stalin's resignation attempts. When i bring this up in conversation, they usually make it out to be like some evil ploy. They act as if everyone who voted 'yes' during his resignation attempts had be taken out back and shot, even before the session had ended, maybe. And of course every time a positive account of Soviet life/leadership was given to a foreign journalist, an NKVD sniper was perched on a nearby rooftop ready to shoot in case the person said anything wrong.

I've never read Capitalist Realism, but maybe this has something to do with it? Why do these people assume everything was evil and fake in the USSR?