The biggest struggle Marxist-Leninists have right now is often getting people to understand imperialism as a material process and stage in capitalism, rather than a whim of this or that state. That’s often why many of us react rather sharply when someone uses a clearly less developed understanding of imperialism and mechanically applies it to Russia. Most people are on board with socialism. Most people at the moment are not on board with truly understanding that existing socialist states are heavily propagandized against, and this applies doubly to non-socialist states that align themselves against the imperialist powers out of a sense of self-preservation, which includes Russia and Iran.