I was wondering if the term "Comrade," as a term for a specific person of the general populous, was, in fact used in day-to-day speech in Soviet-era Russia. I can see it being either a piece of propaganda from the west or a miss-translation of another term. It is used today as a quick way to identify that a character is either from or in the USSR, but it doesn't seem to me that it is congruent. I never hear any older Russian characters use the term "comrade," or even the few older Russian's I have met myself.
The word "comrade" is not Russian so you won't hear Russian characters or people using it, it's an English/French translation/approximation of the word "tovarisch"
In Ukrainian there are 2 versions of the word comrade. Tovarysh and Tovaryshch. From recollection, the former is the Ukrainian word for acquaintance, and used in a polite or slightly friendly way, while the latter was associated with the Soviet Union. I'm not quite sure where the Soviet version would've been used, but I imagine it was in the workplace, or in any political context.
Now they have separated even more. The Ukrainian version is used in a nationalistic sense, while the Soviet version (derived from Russian) became an implied slur. It became politicised, with negative connotations.