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Notes -
There were vast groups of elites in favor of the Soviets. The Rosenbergs were the tip of the iceberg. Many people defended them for decades until the Venona telegrams came out and then they all went silent and tried to pretend they weren't Rosenberg tankies all along.
Domestic threats to them vastly outweigh international threats now. China is ostensibly on their side as they have shifted to a sort of international corporatism (aka control of corporations) as a governing philosophy. When you say "death of the USSR" what you are ignoring is the more important thing: death of people. The same thing happened in the south with regards to Jim Crowe. The Jim Crowers rarely switched anything, from political party to being racists, etc. Instead, they died out. Same happened with the USSR hawks who were wary of the left. They have aged out of the intelligence agencies, and were bad stewards at replacing themselves. They relied on credentials (for legal or other reasons) instead of attempting to measure in any meaningful way the alignment of their new hires' interest with the American public, and as such it now has significantly deviated from that.
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