If you address tankies directly I recommend going for broad-strokes arguments and questions and refuse to let yourself be dragged into areas that can’t be wikipedia’d quickly

The tankies are the propagandized people. Not me who doesn’t want to learn and research new things about history that might change my opinion. Instead the vague bad things I’ve heard all my life from being submerged in anti communist propaganda that I can just reference to bring up a narrative in the minds of average americans are the best argument. (The difference in effort put into just saying “Molotov Ribbentrop pact nazis and soviets allies” vs having to actually explain the historical context of the lands, the soviet gestures towards the western allies, the immediate effect of saving lives, etc really proves how the tankies are the closed minded ones)

They will either deny it, at which point they disagree with Stalin which means that he did, in fact, do things which were not right, which is inconsistent with what they believe in, tankies who take it up to 11 by declaring themselves (and of course Stalin etc) infallible

Uhh yeah stalin did do things that were not right. He stopped at Berlin. Seriously though, it’s obvious stalin made mistakes. No inconsistent positions here.