Three decades have passed since their hero, Ronald Reagan, went to Berlin to exhort Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!”, the Soviet Union collapsed and America claimed victory in the cold war.

For Republicans in Washington, however, these appear to be mere historical footnotes. On Thursday they dusted off the “red scare” playbook to portray Joe Biden’s choice to run one of the agencies that oversees the banking industry as a dangerous communist.

Saule Omarova, 55, was nominated in September to be America’s next comptroller of the currency. If confirmed, she would be the first woman and person of colour in the role in its 158-year-history.

Omarova was born in Kazakhstan when it was part of the Soviet Union and moved to the US in 1991. For John Kennedy of Louisiana, a member of the Senate banking committee, this was like a red rag to a bull.

Questioning whether Omarova was still a member of communist youth organisations, Kennedy said: “I don’t mean any disrespect: I don’t know whether to call you professor or comrade.”

The remark prompted gasps in the hearing room on Capitol Hill.

Omarova replied, slowly and firmly: “Senator, I’m not a communist. I do not subscribe to that ideology. I could not choose where I was born.

“I do not remember joining any Facebook group that subscribes to that ideology. I would never knowingly join any such group. There is no record of me actually participating in any Marxist or communist discussions of any kind.”

Omarova then told how her family suffered under the communist regime.

“I grew up without knowing half of my family. My grandmother herself escaped death twice under the Stalin regime. This is what’s seared in my mind. That’s who I am. I remember that history. I came to this country. I’m proud to be an American and this is why I’m here today, Senator.”

Omarova has worked mainly as a lawyer and most recently as a law professor at Cornell University. She has testified often as an expert witness on financial regulation and even worked briefly in the administration of George W Bush.

But in a letter to Omarova after she was nominated, Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania requested a copy of a graduation paper she wrote about Karl Marx when she was an undergraduate at Moscow State University – “in the original Russian” .

At Thursday’s hearing, Toomey noted that Omarova has written several academic papers that propose sweeping changes to the banking system.

“Taken in totality, her ideas do amount to a socialist manifesto for American financial services,” he said.

The attacks, echoed by rightwing media, earned rebuke from the Democratic chairman of the committee, Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

He said: “Senate Republicans have a formula. Start with a passing and inaccurate reference to her academic work, distort the substance beyond recognition, mix in words – Marx, Lenin, communism. End with insinuations about Professor Omarova loyalties to her chosen country.

“That’s how Republicans turn a qualified woman into a Marxist boogeyman … Now we know what happens when Trumpism meets McCarthyism.”

This was a reference to the 1950s “red scare”, when the Republican senator Joseph McCarthy, of Wisconsin, insisted hundreds of communists had infiltrated the US government, pursuing a witch-hunt that reached into the army and Hollywood.

On Thursday, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts added: “This is a vicious smear campaign, coordinated by Republicans who are doing the bidding of the large banks.

“Sexism, racism, pages straight out of Joe McCarthy’s 1950s red scare tactics … welcome to Washington in 2021.”