I'm speaking of this kind of coat which in Russian is called a "french" (after the British WW1 field marshal Sir John French.)
It appears it was popular with Western WW1 officers as well as Eastern WW1 revolutionaries from Sun Yat Sen to Joseph Stalin. In the Stalin era it would be worn both by state security and by the army elites and after the Destalinization it fell out of use.
Socialist leaders not aligned to the USSR, such as Mao and Josip Broz Tito would persist in wearing it, as would, surprisingly, the pro-Soviet Ho Chi Minh. And some anti-communist leaders in Asia would wear as well. Today the one dude who's still using it is Kim Jong Un.
Now the question: What is this kind of a vintage military coat thing called? Did it actually fall out of fashion in the Western armies or is it just the public that now associates it more with Bondian villains than with lion-hearted patriots?
You are describing several distinct styles of jacket. We'll start with the East Asian revolutionaries:
The jacket so beloved by revolutionary leaders in Asia is the Zhongshan suit, know known as the Mao suit. It was introduced by Sun Yat-sen during the Chinese Revolution, blending both traditional Chinese and Western styles. It was based on Japanese cadet uniforms. It is a Zhongshan suit that Blofeld is wearing in your picture, which is of Charles Gray's interpretation of that character in You Only Live Twice.
The classic Bond villain suit is not the Zhongshan suit, but the Nehru jacket, named for Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, leader of the Indian independence movement and the republic's first prime minister. The Nehru jacket was first marketed in India as a "close-neck coat" in the 1940s, combining some Western influence with traditional Indian designs. Dr No wears a Nehru jacket in the film of the same name, as does Bond. Both Pleasance and Savalas's Blofelds wear them, as does Hugo Drax in Moonraker and Kamal Khan in Octopussy.
The "French" coat is a style based on turn of the century military tunics, which came into fashion in Japan thus spread to China to form the Zhongshan suit. I believe the style the Japanese used was loosely based on French military uniforms, but don't quote me on that.
