Toronto-area woman Sophie Wright discovered late last month that her boyfriend, Vlad Bolshevik, has been a devout communist for the entirety of their four-month relationship. Their relationship ended abruptly shortly after the Christmas holidays, when Vlad proposed they enter the “next stage of communism – I mean, comradeship – no wait, I mean our companionship”.

Vlad’s political alignment took Sophie entirely by surprise. Up until the holidays, Sophie missed all of the red flags… Including the actual red flags he kept around his apartment.

“It’s all starting to come together now,” admits Sophie, “my Vlad, my comrade – that was our pet name for each other – was always talking about his friends Karl and Friedrich. The weird part was, he’d say he was hanging out with the boys, but I’d find him drinking Stolichnaya alone and reading old books”

Sophie and Vlad shared everything with each other – including their dreams. Sophie reminisced on how supportive Vlad was when she decided to leave her stable job to pursue a new career selling homemade trinkets on her Etsy store, saying “Vlad would always praise me for attempting to ‘seize the means of production’. It was nice to get some validation for my craft.”

The characteristics Sophie once thought constituted the perfect boyfriend were, in retrospect, also clear signs of his ideologies. “I’m an atheist, you see,” explained Sophie, “and so I found it charming how fervently he would rant about the ‘toxic capitalism’ of Christmas.”

The couple’s relationship wasn’t perfect, however. Strains in their relationship began to form, and their fights would often end with Vlad insincerely saying “tsarry” and changing the subject.

When asked for a comment, Vlad simply said “breakups happen all the time. The end of one relationship is a tragedy. The end of millions is a statistic.”