M3 Grant/Lee, the tank that came before the M4 Sherman. They couldn't engineer a solution for the heavy main gun to get on the turret and they needed a tank for North Africa as quick as possible, so they just slapped it on the hull and called it a day as they moved on to the M4 Sherman.
For those wondering, the riot police still attacked them in the end. But the Velvet Revolution eventually succeeded in overthrowing the government through sustained civil resistance and strikes.
You may be misinterpreting the meme - it's meant to be intentionally silly, anti-anti-intellectual if anything. "YEARS yet no REAL WORLD USE found for counting any higher than your FINGERS" is definitely poking fun at people who think that higher academic notions are useless.
Also, if it’s a parallel to Earth, I guess we’re supposed to assume that the Christian underclass eventually takes over and are just as bad as the formerly pagan Romans they added into their fold.