They could have rebranded Soviet communism as a tough no nonsense real man’s ideology and brought big chunks of the American right.

This has literally happened though. The extremist right loves V. Putin. Tucker, trump, etc. sing his praises regularly.

Russia has a lot more difficulty subverting the left in the US, though they do fund the more radical elements (which have very little power compared to the centrist dems and extremist right). The Mueller report goes into a lot of Russia's efforts in this arena.