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Tankie has nothing to do with "Stalinism" even (which is not a thing). When the USSR sent tanks to Hungary which the term originally referred to, Stalin had already been dead for years.

Tankie originated specifically western Europe as a pejorative for the left that supported the Soviet Union putting down a counter-revolutionary uprising in Hungary in 1956.

not every communist is a strict Stalinist unwilling to compromise.

There is a vanishingly small, insignificant number of those. What people call "Stalinists" are just Marxist Leninists, most of whom don't demonize Stalin as this great evil, but as a an imperfect but still exceptionally good leader that presided over one of if not the greatest mass improvements in the quality of human life in history. There is nothing there that one should be "willing to compromise" on aside from that vanishingly insignificant number who deify him. When you say something along the lines of "those weird uncompromising 'Stalinists' are bad and gross, but I know there are still lots of good commies who aren't like that!" you're still just perpetuating the kind of simplistic, naive, children's story book (Animal Farm) level of red scare cliches.

As for maintaining the term as a "critique" of the historical context it has since been divorced from, I find that highly suspect as well. I doubt you will find any Marxist Leninist who would argue that critique is not incredibly important, but coining and using a pejorative term as a thought-terminating cliche is hardly a valid form of critique. That doesn't mean no one ever should use derisive terms for their ideological enemies, only that it's a significant error to confuse that for critique. And this doesn't even begin to go into the general consensus now of Marxist Leninists that those who sided with the Soviet Union for crushing a fascist-led uprising in Hungary in 1956 were, while not above critique, correct in their support, with the British communists who coined the term tankie ultimately the ones proven to have had the flawed analysis, siding with imperialists.