comrade stood for comradeship

I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. (...) One had been in a community where hope was more normal than apathy or cynicism, where the word 'comrade' stood for comradeship and not, as in most countries, for humbug. One ahd breathed the air of equality.

 - Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell (1938)