My theory about the absence of pressure from the West to "decommunize" the former Soviet Union goes beyond taking into account the fact that we were by no means in a position to occupy the countries and they were still possessed of nuclear weapons. Accordingly, the leverage which existed over the former Soviet Union at the time was far more limited than that which was a available to an occupying force in Germany.
Nevertheless, my theory says that there was a consensus in the West that the underlying moral philosophy of belligerent Germany, fascism, was a pernicious doctrine which led to the war and any hope to enjoy future free of German wars was futile unless that doctrine was extirpated from the hearts and minds of German people. History shows that we were wonderfully successful in this undertaking.
But with respect to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, there was no such consensus in the West that Marxism was such a pernicious philosophy. Certainly, most people agreed that Stalinism was a murderous, paranoid example of tyranny but many on the left in the West believed that the problem was not socialism but that the wrong socialist, Stalin, was in charge. The wrong socialist seemed always to be in charge from Lenin up to Gorbachev but there was no consensus that the idea of statism, of socialism, of Marxism should be extirpated from the consciousness of the Russian people. At most, and we conservatives were certainly to be counted in this group, simply assumed the rational people would draw rational conclusions from history and conclude that communism did not and could not work.
That reluctance follows ineluctably from the predilection of Western leftists to explore their Marxist utopias. They could blame Joseph Stalin but they could not blame Karl Marx. I don't think that attitude had much to with, "playing the good sport…"
