Try MUCH further back--Walter Duranty's reports for the New York Times from the Soviet Union during the very height of the forced collectivization of farms between 1928 and 1934 that ended up killing over 14 million people from famine, mass shootings, labor camps and forced exile.
You’re right. They’ve been peddling outright propaganda for pretty much as long as the USSR existed and continued on after it fell. No wonder they’re losing it now, their erstwhile controllers have veered to the right and they fear exposure. So, they dredge up the old Red Scare tactics of the 50’s that they mocked so unmercifully then, thinking that they’re going to rally the rubes to their side. Ludicrous.