The word originally referred to communists that supported the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in their suppression of “[…] the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and later the Prague Spring of 1968 […]”[1] . As I do not really have much information about the former, I will focus on the latter instead:
Alexander Dubček succeeded Antonín Novotný as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in October 1967. His government had planned new political reforms, a so-called “Socialism with a human face”: social/cultural/political democratization, decentralization and liberalization. After political negotiations did not resolve the disagreements other states of the Warsaw Pact had with these plans, the member states resorted to a military intervention:
On 21. August 1968, soldiers from members of the Warshaw Pact invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia, without any prior request from the Czechoslovakian government (this is where the term stems from, as the Warsaw Pact rolled in with tanks). Dubček and other officials were arrested. Few days later, they signed the Moscow Protocol that repealed most of the enacted reforms.[2]
The antisocialist elements in Czechoslovakia actually covered up the demand for so-called neutrality and Czechoslovakia’s withdrawal from the socialist community with talking about the right of nations to self-determination.
However, the implementation of such “self-determination,” in other words, Czechoslovakia’s detachment from the socialist community, would have come into conflict with its own vital interests and would have been detrimental to the other socialist states.
Such “self-determination,” as a result of which NATO troops would have been able to come up to the Soviet border, while the community of European socialist countries would have been split, in effect encroaches upon the vital interests of the peoples of these countries and conflicts, as the very root of it, with the right of these people to socialist self-determination.
Discharging their internationalist duty toward the fraternal peoples of Czechoslovakia and defending their own socialist gains, the U.S.S.R. and the other socialist states had to act decisively and they did act against the antisocialist forces in Czechoslovakia.
– Leonid Brezhnev, 1968[3]
This justification for a military intervention in a ‘brother-state’, now also known as the Brezhnev Doctrine, was supported by some members of the Communist Party of Great Britain – which were then called ‘Tankies’. That’s the historical origin at least.
Today, the word is mostly used as a negative descriptor for people who support, apologize or defend militaristic or authoritarian means of enforcing a communist or socialist system.
The word originally referred to communists that supported the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in their suppression of “[…] the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and later the Prague Spring of 1968 […]”[1] . As I do not really have much information about the former, I will focus on the latter instead:
Alexander Dubček succeeded Antonín Novotný as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in October 1967. His government had planned new political reforms, a so-called “Socialism with a human face”: social/cultural/political democratization, decentralization and liberalization. After political negotiations did not resolve the disagreements other states of the Warsaw Pact had with these plans, the member states resorted to a military intervention: On 21. August 1968, soldiers from members of the Warshaw Pact invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia, without any prior request from the Czechoslovakian government (this is where the term stems from, as the Warsaw Pact rolled in with tanks). Dubček and other officials were arrested. Few days later, they signed the Moscow Protocol that repealed most of the enacted reforms.[2]
– Leonid Brezhnev, 1968[3]
This justification for a military intervention in a ‘brother-state’, now also known as the Brezhnev Doctrine, was supported by some members of the Communist Party of Great Britain – which were then called ‘Tankies’. That’s the historical origin at least.
Today, the word is mostly used as a negative descriptor for people who support, apologize or defend militaristic or authoritarian means of enforcing a communist or socialist system.
References
[1] Wikipedia contributors (2021, February 23). Tankie. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tankie&oldid=1008394377
[2] Karner, Stefan (2008). Der “Prager Frühling”. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 20. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Bonn. https://www.bpb.de/geschichte/deutsche-geschichte/68er-bewegung/52007/prager-fruehling?p=all
[3] Brezhnev Doctrine (2019, July 22). In Wikisource. https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Brezhnev_Doctrine&oldid=9467309