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{{Short description|Communist ideology}}
{{about|the political philosophy and state ideology developed by Joseph Stalin|countries governed by Marxist–Leninist parties|Communist state|the means of governing and related policies implemented by Stalin|Stalinism|Lenin's ideology in the form that existed in Lenin's own lifetime|Leninism}}
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[[File:Klucis, Выше знамя Маркса, Энгельса, Ленина и Сталина!.jpg|thumb|300px|Soviet poster with the slogan "Raise the banner of [[Marx]], [[Engels]], [[Lenin]] and [[Stalin]]!", 1936. In the 1950s Stalin's official significance to Soviet Marxism-Leninism was reduced with [[de-Stalinization]].]] 
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'''Marxism–Leninism''' ({{Langx|ru|марксизм-ленинизм|marksizm-leninizm}}) is a [[communist]] ideology that became the largest faction of the [[History of communism|communist movement]] in the world in the years following the [[October Revolution]]. It was the predominant ideology of most communist governments throughout the 20th century.<ref name="Lansford">{{cite book |last=Lansford |first=Thomas |date=2007 |title=Communism |location=New York |publisher=Cavendish Square Publishing |pages=9–24, 36–44 |isbn=978-0-7614-2628-8 |quote=By 1985, one-third of the world's population lived under a Marxist–Leninist system of government in one form or another.}}</ref> It was developed in the [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics]] by [[Joseph Stalin]] and drew on elements of [[Bolshevism]], [[Leninism]], and [[Marxism]].<ref name="Lansford 2007, p. 17">{{cite book |last=Lansford |first=Thomas |title=Communism |date=2007 |publisher=Cavendish Square Publishing |isbn=978-0-7614-2628-8 |location=New York |pages=17}}</ref><ref name="Норма">{{cite book |last1=Zotov |first1=V. D. |title=Istoriya politicheskikh ucheniy. Uchebnik |last2=Zotova |first2=L. D. |publisher=Норма |year=2010 |isbn=978-5-91768-071-2 |language=ru |script-title=ru:История политических учений. Учебник |trans-title=History of political doctrines. Textbook}}</ref><ref name="Kosing 2016">{{cite book |last=Kosing |first=Alfred |title="Stalinismus". Untersuchung von Ursprung, Wesen und Wirkungen |publisher=Verlag am Park |year=2016 |isbn=978-3-945187-64-7 |location=Berlin |language=de |trans-title="Stalinism". Investigation of origin, essence and effects |author-link=:de:Alfred Kosing}}</ref> It was the state ideology of the [[Soviet Union]],{{sfn|Evans|1993|pp=1–2}} [[Soviet satellite states]] in the [[Eastern Bloc]], and various countries in the [[Non-Aligned Movement]] and [[Third World]] during the [[Cold War]],<ref>{{cite book |last=Hanson |first=S. E. |title=[[International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences]] |chapter=Marxism/Leninism |year=2001 |edition=1st |isbn=978-0-08-043076-8 |pages=9298–9302 |publisher=Elsevier |doi=10.1016/B0-08-043076-7/01174-8}}</ref> as well as the [[Communist International]] after [[Bolshevization]].{{sfn|Bottomore|1991|p=54}}

Today, Marxism–Leninism is the ''[[de jure]]'' ideology of the ruling parties of [[Chinese Communist Party|China]], [[Communist Party of Cuba|Cuba]], [[Lao People's Revolutionary Party|Laos]], and [[Communist Party of Vietnam|Vietnam]],{{sfn|Cooke|1998|pp=221–222}} as well as many [[other communist parties]]. The [[Juche|state ideology]] of [[North Korea]] is derived from Marxism–Leninism,<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Lee |first1=Grace |year=2003 |title= The Political Philosophy of Juche |journal=Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs |volume=3 |issue=1 |pages=105–111 |url=http://www.stanford.edu/group/sjeaa/journal3/korea1.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120121003750/http://www.stanford.edu/group/sjeaa/journal3/korea1.pdf |archive-date=21 January 2012}}</ref> although its evolution is disputed.<ref>{{harvnb|Wilczynski|2008|p=21|ps=: "Contrary to Western usage, these countries describe themselves as 'Socialist' (not 'Communist'). The second stage (Marx's 'higher phase'), or 'Communism' is to be marked by an age of plenty, distribution according to needs (not work), the absence of money and the market mechanism, the disappearance of the last vestiges of capitalism and the ultimate 'whithering away' of the State."}}; {{harvnb|Steele|1999|p=45|ps=: "Among Western journalists the term 'Communist' came to refer exclusively to regimes and movements associated with the Communist International and its offspring: regimes which insisted that they were not communist but socialist, and movements which were barely communist in any sense at all."}}; {{harvnb|Rosser|Barkley Rosser|2003|p=14|ps=: "Ironically, the ideological father of communism, Karl Marx, claimed that communism entailed the withering away of the state. The dictatorship of the proletariat was to be a strictly temporary phenomenon. Well aware of this, the Soviet Communists never claimed to have achieved communism, always labeling their own system socialist rather than communist and viewing their system as in transition to communism."}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Williams |first=Raymond |title=Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society, revised edition |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=1983 |isbn=978-0-19-520469-8 |page=[https://archive.org/details/keywordsvocabula00willrich/page/289 289] |chapter=Socialism |quote=The decisive distinction between socialist and communist, as in one sense these terms are now ordinarily used, came with the renaming, in 1918, of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) as the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). From that time on, a distinction of socialist from communist, often with supporting definitions such as social democrat or democratic socialist, became widely current, although it is significant that all communist parties, in line with earlier usage, continued to describe themselves as socialist and dedicated to socialism. |chapter-url-access=registration |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/keywordsvocabula00willrich/page/289}}</ref>

Marxism–Leninism was developed from [[Bolshevism]] by [[Joseph Stalin]] in the 1920s based on his understanding and synthesis of [[classical Marxism]] and [[Leninism]].<ref name="Lansford 2007, p. 17"/><ref name="Норма"/><ref name="Kosing 2016"/> Marxism–Leninism holds that a [[Two-stage theory|two-stage]] [[communist revolution]] is needed to replace [[capitalism]]. A [[vanguard party]], organized through [[democratic centralism]], would seize power on behalf of the [[proletariat]] and establish a [[One-party state|one-party]] [[communist state]]. The state would control the [[means of production]], suppress [[Opposition (politics)|opposition]], [[counter-revolution]], and the [[bourgeoisie]], and promote [[Soviet collectivism]], to pave the way for an eventual [[communist society]] that would be [[Classless society|classless]] and [[Stateless society|stateless]].<ref>{{harvnb|Cooke|1998|pp=221–222}}; {{harvnb|Morgan|2015|pp=657, 659|ps=: "Lenin argued that power could be secured on behalf of the proletariat through the so-called vanguard leadership of a disciplined and revolutionary communist party, organized according to what was effectively the military principle of democratic centralism. ... The basics of Marxism-Leninism were in place by the time of Lenin's death in 1924. ... The revolution was to be accomplished in two stages. First, a 'dictatorship of the proletariat,' managed by the élite 'vanguard' communist party, would suppress counterrevolution, and ensure that natural economic resources and the means of production and distribution were in common ownership. Finally, communism would be achieved in a classless society in which Party and State would have 'withered away'."}}; {{harvnb|Busky|2002|pp=163–165}}; {{harvnb|Albert|Hahnel|1981|pp=24–26}}; {{harvnb|Andrain|1994|p=140|ps=: "The communist party-states collapsed because they no longer fulfilled the essence of a Leninist model: a strong commitment to Marxist-Leninist ideology, rule by the vanguard communist party, and the operation of a centrally planned state socialist economy. Before the mid-1980s, the communist party controlled the military, police, mass media, and state enterprises. Government coercive agencies employed physical sanctions against political dissidents who denounced Marxism-Leninism."}}; {{harvnb|Evans|1993|p=24|ps=: "Lenin defended the dictatorial organization of the workers' state. Several years before the revolution, he had bluntly characterized dictatorship as 'unlimited power based on force, and not on law', leaving no doubt that those terms were intended to apply to the dictatorship of the proletariat. ... To socialists who accused the Bolshevik state of violating the principles of democracy by forcibly suppressing opposition, he replied: you are taking a formal, abstract view of democracy. ... The proletarian dictatorship was described by Lenin as a single-party state."}}</ref>

After the death of [[Vladimir Lenin]] in 1924, Marxism–Leninism became a distinct movement in the Soviet Union when Stalin and his supporters gained control of the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union|party]]. It rejected the common notion among Western Marxists of [[world revolution]] as a prerequisite for building socialism, in favour of the concept of [[socialism in one country]]. According to its supporters, the gradual transition from capitalism to socialism was signified by the introduction of the [[First five-year plan (Soviet Union)|first five-year plan]] and the [[1936 Soviet Constitution]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Smith |first=S. A. |date=2014 |title=The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism |location=Oxford |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |pages=126 |isbn=978-0-19-166752-7 |quote=The 1936 Constitution described the Soviet Union for the first time as a 'socialist society', rhetorically fulfilling the aim of building socialism in one country, as Stalin had promised.}}</ref> By the late 1920s, Stalin established ideological orthodoxy in the [[Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)]], the Soviet Union, and the Communist International to establish universal Marxist–Leninist [[praxis (process)|praxis]].<ref name="Bullock & Trombley 506">{{cite book |editor1-last=Bullock |editor1-first=Allan |editor1-link=Alan Bullock |editor2-last=Trombley |editor2-first=Stephen |date=1999 |title=The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought |edition=3rd |pages=506 |publisher=[[HarperCollins]] |isbn=978-0-00-686383-0}}</ref><ref name="Lisichkin 1989, p. 59">{{cite magazine |last=Lisichkin |first=G. |date=1989 |script-title=ru:Мифы и реальность |title=Mify i real'nost' |language=ru |trans-title=Myths and reality |magazine=[[Novy Mir]] |volume=3 |page=59}}</ref> The formulation of the Soviet version of [[Dialectical materialism|dialectical]] and [[historical materialism]] in the 1930s by Stalin and his associates, such as in Stalin's text ''[[Dialectical and Historical Materialism]]'', became the official Soviet interpretation of [[Marxism]],{{sfn|Evans|1993|pp=52–53}} and was taken as example by Marxist–Leninists in other countries; according to the ''[[Great Russian Encyclopedia]]'', this text became the foundation of the philosophy of Marxism–Leninism.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://bigenc.ru/philosophy/text/2187362 |script-title=ru:Марксизм |title=Marksizm |language=ru |trans-title=Marxism |website=Big Russian encyclopedia – electronic version |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200323164114/https://bigenc.ru/philosophy/text/2187362 |archive-date=23 March 2020}}</ref> In 1938, Stalin's official textbook ''[[History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks)]]'' popularised ''Marxism–Leninism''.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |title=Marxism |encyclopedia=[[Soviet Encyclopedic Dictionary]] |pages=00}}</ref>

The [[Proletarian internationalism|internationalism]] of Marxism–Leninism was expressed in supporting revolutions in other countries, initially through the Communist International and then through the concepts of the [[national democratic state]]s and [[state of socialist orientation|states of socialist orientation]] after [[de-Stalinisation]]. The establishment of other communist states after World War II resulted in [[Sovietisation]], and these states tended to follow the Soviet Marxist–Leninist model of [[Five-year plans for the national economy of the Soviet Union|five-year plans]] and rapid [[Industrialization in the Soviet Union|industrialisation]], political centralisation, and repression. During the [[Cold War]], Marxist–Leninist countries like the Soviet Union and its allies were one of the major forces in [[international relations]].<ref name="Columbia 2007">{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://www.bartleby.com/65/co/communism.html |title=Communism |encyclopedia=[[The Columbia Encyclopedia]] |edition=6th |year=2007 |access-date=29 November 2020 |archive-date=10 February 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090210050324/http://bartleby.com/65/co/communism.html |url-status=live}}</ref> With the death of Stalin and the ensuing de-Stalinisation, Marxism–Leninism underwent several revisions and adaptations such as [[Guevarism]], [[Titoism]], [[Ho Chi Minh Thought]], [[Hoxhaism]], and [[Maoism]], with the latter two constituting [[Anti-revisionism (Marxism–Leninism)|anti-revisionist]] Marxism–Leninism. These adaptations caused several splits between [[communist state]]s, resulting in the [[Tito–Stalin split]], the [[Sino-Soviet split]], and the [[Sino-Albanian split]]. As the Cold War waned and concluded with the demise of much of the socialist world, many of the surviving communist states [[Reform and opening up|reformed their economies]] and embraced [[Market socialism#Socialism with Chinese characteristics|market socialism]]. Complementing this economic shift, the [[Chinese Communist Party|Communist Party of China]] developed Maoism (also known as Mao Zedong Thought) into [[Deng Xiaoping Theory]]. Today this comprises part of the [[Socialism with Chinese characteristics|governing ideology]] of China, with the latest developments including [[Xi Jinping Thought]]. Meanwhile, the [[Shining Path|Communist Party of Peru]] developed Maoism into [[Marxism–Leninism–Maoism]], a higher stage of anti-revisionist Maoism that rejects Dengism. The latest developments to Marxism–Leninism–Maoism include [[Gonzalo Thought|Gonzaloism]], [[Maoism–Third Worldism|Maoism-Third Worldism]], [[National Democracy (Philippines)|National Democracy]], and [[Marxism–Leninism–Maoism–Prachanda Path|Prachanda Path]]. Ongoing Marxist–Leninist(–Maoist) [[Communist revolution#Ongoing|insurgencies]] include those being waged in the [[Communist armed conflicts in the Philippines|Philippines]], [[Naxalite–Maoist insurgency|India]], and in [[Civil conflict in Turkey|Turkey]]. The [[Nepalese Civil War|Nepalese civil war]], fought by Marxist–Leninist–Maoists, ended in their victory in 2006.

Criticism of Marxism–Leninism largely overlaps with [[criticism of communist party rule]] and mainly focuses on the actions and policies of Marxist–Leninist leaders, most notably Stalin and [[Mao Zedong]]. Communist states have been marked by a high degree of centralised control by the state and the ruling [[communist party]], [[political repression]], [[state atheism]], [[collectivisation]] and use of [[labour camp]]s. Historians such as Silvio Pons and [[Robert Service (historian)|Robert Service]] stated that the repression and [[totalitarianism]] came from Marxist–Leninist ideology.{{r|service totalitarian}}{{r|service labor camps}}{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=307}}{{r|pons ethnic cleansing}} Historians such as [[Michael Geyer]] and [[Sheila Fitzpatrick]] have offered other explanations and criticise the focus on the upper levels of society and use of concepts such as totalitarianism which have obscured the reality of the system.{{r|Geyer&Fitzpatrick}} While the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally communist state led to communism's widespread association with Marxism–Leninism and the [[Soviet model]],{{r|Columbia 2007}}<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last1=Ball |first1=Terence |last2=Dagger |first2=Richard |orig-date=1999 |date=2019 |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/communism |title=Communism |edition=revised |encyclopedia=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]] |access-date=10 June 2020 |archive-date=16 June 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150616023735/https://www.britannica.com/topic/communism |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Busky 2000, pp. 6–8">{{cite book |last=Busky |first=Donald F. |date=2000 |title=Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey |publisher=[[Praeger Paperback|Praeger]] |pages=6–8 |isbn=978-0-275-96886-1 |quote=In a modern sense of the word, communism refers to the ideology of Marxism-Leninism. ... [T]he adjective ''democratic'' is added by democratic socialists to attempt to distinguish themselves from Communists who also call themselves socialists. All but communists, or more accurately, Marxist-Leninists, believe that modern-day communism is highly undemocratic and totalitarian in practice, and democratic socialists wish to emphasise by their name that they disagree strongly with the Marxist-Leninist brand of socialism.}}</ref> several academics say that Marxism–Leninism in practice was a form of state capitalism.<ref>{{harvnb|Chomsky|1986}}; {{harvnb|Howard|King|2001|pp=110–126}}; {{harvnb|Fitzgibbons|2002}}; {{harvnb|Wolff|2015}}; {{harvnb|Sandle|1999|pp=265–266}}; {{harvnb|Andrain|1994|loc=Bureaucratic-Authoritarian Systems|pp=24–42}}</ref><ref name="Morgan 1991, p. 6612">{{cite encyclopedia |title=Marxism-Leninism: The Ideology of Twentieth-Century Communism |encyclopedia=[[International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences]] |publisher=[[Elsevier]] |location=Oxford |date=2001 |editor-last=Wright |editor-first=James D. |editor-link=James D. Wright |edition=2nd |pages=661 |isbn=978-0-08-097087-5 |last=Morgan |first=W. John}}</ref> The socio-economic nature of communist states, especially that of the Soviet Union during the [[Stalin era]] (1924–1953), has been much debated, varyingly being labelled a form of [[bureaucratic collectivism]], [[state capitalism]], [[state socialism]], or a totally unique [[mode of production]].{{sfn|Sandle|1999|pp=265–266}} The Eastern Bloc, including communist states in Central and Eastern Europe as well as the [[Third World socialist]] regimes, have been variously described as "bureaucratic-authoritarian systems",{{sfn|Andrain|1994|loc=Bureaucratic-Authoritarian Systems|pp=24–42}} and China's socio-economic structure has been referred to as "nationalistic state capitalism".<ref name="Morgan 1991, p. 661">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Morgan |first=W. John |date=2001 |title=Marxism-Leninism: The Ideology of Twentieth-Century Communism |editor-last=Wright |editor-first=James D. |editor-link=James D. Wright |encyclopedia=[[International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences]] |edition=2nd |location=Oxford |publisher=[[Elsevier]] |pages=661 |isbn=978-0-08-097087-5}}</ref>

== Overview ==
=== Communist states ===
{{see|Communist state|List of communist states}}
In the establishment of the [[Soviet Union]] in the former [[Russian Empire]], [[Bolshevism]] was the ideological basis. As the only legal [[vanguard party]], it decided almost all policies, which the [[communist party]] represented as correct.<ref>{{cite book |title=Gorbachev and His Reforms, 1985–1990 |date=1990 |first=Richard |last=Sakwa |author-link=Richard Sakwa |pages=206 |isbn=978-0-13-362427-4 |publisher=[[Prentice-Hall]]}}</ref> Because [[Leninism]] was the revolutionary means to achieving socialism in the praxis of government, the relationship between ideology and decision-making inclined to pragmatism and most policy decisions were taken in light of the continual and permanent development of Marxism–Leninism, with ideological adaptation to material conditions.<ref>{{cite book |title=Gorbachev and His Reforms, 1985–1990 |date=1990 |first=Richard |last=Sakwa |author-link=Richard Sakwa |pages=212 |isbn=978-0-13-362427-4 |publisher=[[Prentice-Hall]]}}</ref> The [[Bolshevik Party]] lost in the [[1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election]], obtaining 23.3% of the vote, to the [[Socialist Revolutionary Party]], which obtained 37.6%.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Dando |first=William A. |date=June 1966 |title=A Map of the Election to the Russian Constituent Assembly of 1917 |journal=Slavic Review |volume=25 |issue=2 |pages=314–319 |doi=10.2307/2492782 |issn=0037-6779 |jstor=2492782 |s2cid=156132823 |quote=Out of a total vote of approximately 42 million and a total of 703 elected deputies, the primarily agrarian Social Revolutionary Party, plus nationalistic ''[[Narodniks|narodnik]]'', or populist, parties, amassed the largest popular vote (well in excess of 50 percent) and elected the greatest number of deputies (approximately 60 percent) of all the parties involved. The Bolsheviks, who had usurped power in the name of the soviets three weeks prior to the election, amassed only 24 percent of the popular vote and elected only 24 percent of the deputies. The party of Lenin had not received the mandate of the people to govern them.}}</ref> On 6 January 1918, the Draft Decree on the Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly was issued by the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets, a committee dominated by [[Vladimir Lenin]], who had previously supported multi-party free elections. After the Bolshevik defeat, Lenin started referring to the assembly as a "deceptive form of bourgeois-democratic parliamentarism".<ref>{{cite journal |last=Dando |first=William A. |date=June 1966 |title=A Map of the Election to the Russian Constituent Assembly of 1917 |journal=Slavic Review |volume=25 |issue=2 |pages=314–319 |doi=10.2307/2492782 |issn=0037-6779 |jstor=2492782 |s2cid=156132823 |quote=The political significance of the election to the Russian Constituent Assembly is difficult to as by a large segment of the Russian people ascertain since the Assembly was partly by a large segment of the Russian people as not being really necessary to fulfill their desires in this era of revolutionary development. ... On January 5, 1918, the deputies to the Constituent Assembly met in Petrograd; on January 6 the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets, dominated by Lenin, issued the Draft Decree on the Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. The Constituent Assembly, the dream of Russian political reformers for many years, was swept aside as a 'deceptive form of bourgeois-democratic parliamentarism.'}}</ref> This was criticised as being the development of vanguardism as a form of hierarchical party–elite that controlled society.<ref>{{cite book |last=White |first=Elizabeth |year=2010 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tFMuCgAAQBAJ |title=The Socialist Alternative to Bolshevik Russia: The Socialist Revolutionary Party, 1921–39 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-90573-5 |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=21 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220321152046/https://books.google.com/books?id=tFMuCgAAQBAJ |url-status=live |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Franks |first=Benjamin |date=May 2012 |title=Between Anarchism and Marxism: The Beginnings and Ends of the Schism |journal=[[Journal of Political Ideologies]] |volume=17 |issue=2 |pages=202–227 |doi=10.1080/13569317.2012.676867 |s2cid=145419232 |issn=1356-9317}}</ref>

Within five years of the [[death of Lenin]], [[Joseph Stalin]] completed his rise to power and was the [[leader of the Soviet Union]] who theorised and applied the socialist theories of Lenin and [[Karl Marx]] as political expediencies used to realise his plans for the Soviet Union and for [[world socialism]].<ref name="stalin_follow_marx_lenin">{{cite journal |last=Butenko |first=Alexander |date=1996 |script-title=ru:Социализм сегодня: опыт и новая теория |title=Sotsializm segodnya: opyt i novaya teoriya |language=ru |trans-title=Socialism Today: Experience and New Theory |journal=Журнал Альтернативы |volume=1 |pages=2–22}}</ref> ''Concerning Questions of Leninism'' (1926) represented Marxism–Leninism as a separate communist ideology and featured a global hierarchy of communist parties and revolutionary vanguard parties in each country of the world.<ref>{{cite book |last=Lüthi |first=Lorenz M. |date=2008 |title=The Sino–Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World |pages=4 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0-691-13590-8}}</ref>{{r|Lisichkin 1989, p. 59}} With that, Stalin's application of Marxism–Leninism to the situation of the Soviet Union became [[Stalinism]], the official [[Ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|state ideology]] until his death in 1953.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Butenko |first=Alexander |date=1996 |script-title=ru:Социализм сегодня: опыт и новая теория |title=Sotsializm segodnya: opyt i novaya teoriya |language=ru |trans-title=Socialism Today: Experience and New Theory |journal=Журнал Альтернативы |volume=1 |pages=3–4}}</ref> In Marxist political discourse, Stalinism, denoting and connoting the theory and praxis of Stalin, has two usages, namely praise of Stalin by Marxist–Leninists who believe Stalin successfully developed Lenin's legacy, and criticism of Stalin by Marxist–Leninists and other Marxists who repudiate Stalin's political purges, social-class repressions and bureaucratic terrorism.{{r|Bullock & Trombley 506}}

[[File:Trotsky con la guardia roja.jpg|thumb|[[Leon Trotsky]] exhorting [[Red Army]] soldiers in the [[Polish–Soviet War]]]]
As the [[Left Opposition]] to Stalin within the Soviet party and government, [[Leon Trotsky]] and [[Trotskyists]] argued that Marxist–Leninist ideology contradicted Marxism and Leninism in theory, therefore Stalin's ideology was not useful for the implementation of socialism in Russia. Moreover, Trotskyists within the party identified their anti-Stalinist communist ideology as Bolshevik–Leninism and supported the [[permanent revolution]] to differentiate themselves from Stalin's justification and implementation of [[socialism in one country]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |author-link=Leon Trotsky |orig-date=1937 |date=1990 |script-title=ru:Сталинская школа фальсификаций |title=Stalinskaya shkola fal'sifikatsiy |language=ru |trans-title=Stalin's school of falsifications |pages=7–8}}</ref>

[[File:1967-12 1967年 毛泽东与安娜·斯特朗.jpg|thumb|left|[[Mao Zedong]] with [[Anna Louise Strong]], the American journalist who reported and explained the [[Chinese Communist Revolution]] to the West]]
After the [[Sino-Soviet split]] of the 1960s, the [[Chinese Communist Party]] and the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] claimed to be the sole heir and successor to Stalin concerning the correct interpretation of Marxism–Leninism and ideological leader of [[world communism]].<ref name="World History 2000. p. 769">{{cite book |editor1-last=Lenman |editor1-first=Bruce P. |editor2-last=Anderson |editor2-first=T. |date=2000 |title=Chambers Dictionary of World History |pages=769 |publisher=Chambers |isbn=978-0-550-10094-8}}</ref> In that vein, [[Mao Zedong Thought]], [[Mao Zedong]]'s updating and adaptation of Marxism–Leninism to Chinese conditions in which revolutionary praxis is primary and ideological orthodoxy is secondary, represents urban Marxism–Leninism adapted to pre-industrial China. The claim that Mao had adapted Marxism–Leninism to Chinese conditions evolved into the idea that he had updated it in a fundamental way applying to the world as a whole. Consequently, Mao Zedong Thought became the official [[Ideology of the Chinese Communist Party|state ideology]] of the [[People's Republic of China]] as well as the ideological basis of communist parties around the world which sympathised with China.<ref name="Modern Thought 1999 p. 501">{{cite book |editor1-last=Bullock |editor1-first=Allan |editor1-link=Alan Bullock |editor2-last=Trombley |editor2-first=Stephen |date=1999 |title=The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought |edition=3rd |pages=501 |publisher=[[HarperCollins]] |isbn=978-0-00-686383-0}}</ref> In the late 1970s, the Peruvian communist party [[Shining Path]] developed and synthesised Mao Zedong Thought into [[Marxism–Leninism–Maoism]], a contemporary variety of Marxism–Leninism that is a supposed higher level of Marxism–Leninism that can be applied universally.{{r|Modern Thought 1999 p. 501}}

[[File:HODŽA druhá míza.jpg|thumb|[[Enver Hoxha]], who led the [[Sino-Albanian split]] in the 1970s and whose [[anti-revisionist]] followers led to the development of [[Hoxhaism]]]]
Following the [[Sino-Albanian split]] of the 1970s, a small portion of Marxist–Leninists began to downplay or repudiate the role of Mao in the Marxist–Leninist international movement in favour of the [[Albanian Labour Party]] and stricter adherence to Stalin. The Sino-Albanian split was caused by [[People's Socialist Republic of Albania|Albania]]'s rejection of China's {{lang|de|[[Realpolitik]]}} of Sino–American rapprochement, specifically the [[1972 Nixon visit to China|1972 Mao–Nixon meeting]] which the [[anti-revisionist]] Albanian Labour Party perceived as an ideological betrayal of Mao's own [[Three Worlds Theory]] that excluded such political rapprochement with the West. To the Albanian Marxist–Leninists, the Chinese dealings with the United States indicated Mao's lessened, practical commitments to ideological orthodoxy and [[proletarian internationalism]]. In response to Mao's apparently unorthodox deviations, [[Enver Hoxha]], head of the Albanian Labour Party, theorised anti-revisionist Marxism–Leninism, referred to as [[Hoxhaism]], which retained orthodox Marxism–Leninism when compared to the ideology of the post-Stalin Soviet Union.{{r|Bland}}

In [[North Korea]], Marxism–Leninism was superseded by ''[[Juche]]'' in the 1970s. This was made official in 1992 and 2009, when constitutional references to Marxism–Leninism were dropped and replaced with ''Juche''.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Dae-Kyu |first=Yoon |year=2003 |url=http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1934&context=ilj |title=The Constitution of North Korea: Its Changes and Implications |journal=Fordham International Law Journal |volume=27 |issue=4 |pages=1289–1305 |access-date=10 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210224144030/https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1934&context=ilj |archive-date=24 February 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref> In 2009, the constitution was quietly amended so that not only did it remove all Marxist–Leninist references present in the first draft but also dropped all references to [[communism]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Park |first=Seong-Woo |date=23 September 2009 |url=https://www.rfa.org/korean/in_focus/first_millitary-09232009120017.html |script-title=ko:북 개정 헌법 '선군사상' 첫 명기 |title=Bug gaejeong heonbeob 'seongunsasang' cheos myeong-gi |trans-title=First stipulation of the 'Seongun Thought' of the North Korean Constitution |agency=Radio Free Asia |language=ko |access-date=10 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210517045408/https://www.rfa.org/korean/in_focus/first_millitary-09232009120017.html |archive-date=17 May 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref> ''Juche'' has been described by Michael Seth as a version of [[Korean ultranationalism]],<ref>{{cite book |last=Seth |first=Michael J. |year=2019 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GPm9DwAAQBAJ&q=%22juche%22+%22ultranationalism%22&pg=PA159 |title=A Concise History of Modern Korea: From the Late Nineteenth Century to the Present |publisher=[[Rowman & Littlefield]] |page=159 |isbn=978-1-5381-2905-0 |access-date=11 September 2020 |archive-date=6 February 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210206043439/https://books.google.com/books?id=GPm9DwAAQBAJ&q=%22juche%22+%22ultranationalism%22&pg=PA159 |url-status=live |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> which eventually developed after losing its original Marxist–Leninist elements.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Fisher |first1=Max |date=6 January 2016 |url=https://www.vox.com/2016/1/6/10724334/north-korea-history |title=The single most important fact for understanding North Korea |website=Vox |access-date=11 September 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210306090942/https://www.vox.com/2016/1/6/10724334/north-korea-history |archive-date=6 March 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref> According to ''North Korea: A Country Study'' by Robert L. Worden, Marxism–Leninism was abandoned immediately after the start of [[de-Stalinisation|de-Stalinization]] in the Soviet Union and has been totally replaced by ''Juche'' since at least 1974.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Worden |editor-first=Robert L. |year=2008 |url=http://cdn.loc.gov/master/frd/frdcstdy/no/northkoreacountr00word/northkoreacountr00word.pdf |title=North Korea: A Country Study |edition=5th |location=Washington, D. C. |publisher=[[Library of Congress]] |page=206 |isbn=978-0-8444-1188-0 |access-date=11 September 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210725073828/https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/master/frd/frdcstdy/no/northkoreacountr00word/northkoreacountr00word.pdf |archive-date=25 July 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref> Daniel Schwekendiek wrote that what made North Korean Marxism–Leninism distinct from that of China and the Soviet Union was that it incorporated national feelings and macro-historical elements in the socialist ideology, opting for its "own style of socialism".<ref name="Schwekendiek">{{cite book |last=Schwekendiek |first=Daniel |date=2011 |title=A Socioeconomic History of North Korea |location=Jefferson |publisher=[[McFarland & Company]] |pages=31 |isbn=978-0-7864-6344-2}}</ref> The major Korean elements are the emphasis on traditional [[Confucianism]] and the memory of the traumatic experience of [[Korea under Japanese rule]] as well as a focus on autobiographical features of [[Kim Il Sung]] as a guerrilla hero.{{r|Schwekendiek}}
[[File:Students at military parade in South Yemen.jpg|thumb|Military parade with communist symbolics in [[South Yemen]]]]
The [[South Yemen|People's Democratic Republic of Yemen]], abbreviated as PDRY (aka South Yemen) and existed between [[Withdrawal from Aden|1967]] and [[Yemeni unification|1990]], was the only openly communist (Marxist-Leninist) state in the [[Arab world]]. South Yemen pursued a corresponding policy and became an important ally for the Soviet Union and [[Eastern Bloc|Eastern bloc]], because of its access to the [[Gulf of Aden]].<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Gart |first=Murray |date=9 January 1989 |title=South Yemen New Thinking in a Marxist Land |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,956703,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130825010838/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,956703,00.html |archive-date=25 August 2013 |access-date=23 June 2017 |magazine=Time}}</ref><ref name=":2">{{Cite web |title=32. South Yemen (1967-1990) |url=https://uca.edu/politicalscience/dadm-project/middle-eastnorth-africapersian-gulf-region/south-yemen-1967-1990/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181231150835/http://uca.edu/politicalscience/dadm-project/middle-eastnorth-africapersian-gulf-region/south-yemen-1967-1990/ |archive-date=31 December 2018 |access-date=2022-05-21 |website=uca.edu |language=en-US}}</ref> The USSR provided it with comprehensive assistance – loans, specialists and weapons. Relations between this communist state and many other Arab countries remained poor, since many communist figures from all over the region were hiding in South Yemen, after unsuccessful tryings to organize [[Coup d'état|coup d'etats]] in their home countries.<ref name="Lackner 2017">{{Cite journal |last=Lackner |first=Helen |date=4 July 2017 |title=The People's Democratic Republic of Yemen: Unique Socialist Experiment in the Arab World at a Time of World Revolutionary Fervour |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369801X.2017.1336465 |url-status=live |journal=Interventions |volume=19 |issue=5 |pages=677–691 |doi=10.1080/1369801X.2017.1336465 |s2cid=159661566 |url-access=subscription |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221003131901/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369801X.2017.1336465 |archive-date=3 October 2022 |access-date=3 October 2022}}</ref>
[[File:Photo of Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam.jpg|thumb|A photograph of [[Mengistu Haile Mariam]], who was [[Ethiopia|Ethiopia's]] [[Military dictatorship|military dictator]] from 1977 until his [[Fall of the Derg regime|military overthrow]] in 1991.|left]]
There were also communist states in [[Africa]], such as [[Ethiopia]]. In 1974, the military [[1974 Ethiopian coup d'état|overthrew]] Emperor [[Haile Selassie]] and installed a [[military junta]] known as the [[Derg]]. The Derg quickly aligned itself with the Soviet Union on the basis of communism, implementing Marxist-Leninist ideals that were radical for their country. The brutal imposition of their radical ideas led to a [[Ethiopian Civil War|debilitating civil war]]. In 1977, after a series of political purges and executions, [[Mengistu Haile Mariam]] became the leader of the Derg. He continued this course and brought Ethiopia [[Ethiopia–Russia relations|closer to the USSR]],<ref name="Remnek_154">{{harvp|Remnek|1992|p=154}}</ref> which became Ethiopia's main trading partner, supplying it with everything from weapons and equipment to military advisers and specialists. Mengistu ultimately built a highly [[Militarism|militarized]] state with the largest [[Ethiopian Army|army]] in [[sub-Saharan Africa]].<ref>{{Cite book |title=Soviet policy in Africa: from the old to the new thinking |date=1992 |publisher=Berkeley-Stanford Program in Soviet Studies, Center for Slavic and East European Studies, University of California at Berkeley, International and Area Studies |isbn=978-0-9622629-3-7 |location=Berkeley}}</ref> The Soviet Union pushed Mengistu to create a "People's Democratic" system, as was the case in the [[Eastern Bloc]] countries,<ref>{{Cite book |title=Troubled friendships: Moscow's Third World ventures |date=1993 |publisher=British Academic Pr. [u.a.] |isbn=978-1-85043-649-2 |editor-last=Light |editor-first=Margot |location=London |editor-last2=Royal Institute of International Affairs}}</ref> but Mengistu did so very reluctantly:<ref name="Patman_116">{{harvp|Patman|1993|p=116}}</ref> Ethiopia became the "[[People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia]]" only in 1987. And although the Derg was formally dissolved, roughly the same people remained in power as before.

In the other four existing [[Socialist state (communism)|socialist]] and [[people's democratic state]]s, namely China, [[Cuba]], [[Laos]], and [[Vietnam]], the ruling parties hold Marxism–Leninism as their official ideology, although they give it different interpretations in terms of practical policy. Marxism–Leninism is also the ideology of anti-revisionist, Hoxhaist, Maoist, and [[neo-Stalinist]] communist parties worldwide. The anti-revisionists criticise some rule of the communist states by claiming that they were [[state capitalist]] countries ruled by ''[[Revisionism (Marxism)|revisionists]]''.<ref>{{cite magazine|last=Bland |first=Bill |date=1995 |orig-date=1980 |url=https://revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/BlandRestoration.pdf |title=The Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union |magazine=Revolutionary Democracy Journal |access-date=16 February 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210810124332/http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/BlandRestoration.pdf |archive-date=10 August 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Mao |last=Zedong |author-link=Mao Zedong |translator-first=Moss |translator-last=Roberts |date=1977 |url=http://www.marx2mao.com/Mao/CSE58.html |title=A Critique of Soviet Economics |location=New York City, New York |publisher=Monthly Review Press |access-date=16 February 2020 |archive-date=3 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303192812/http://www.marx2mao.com/Mao/CSE58.html |url-status=live}}</ref> Although the periods and countries vary among different ideologies and parties, they generally accept that the Soviet Union was socialist during Stalin's time, Maoists believe that China became state capitalist after Mao's death, and Hoxhaists believe that China was always state capitalist, and uphold the Albania as the only socialist state after the Soviet Union under Stalin.<ref name="Bland">{{cite book |last=Bland |first=Bill |date=1997 |url=http://ml-review.ca/aml/China/historymaotable.html |title=Class Struggles in China |edition=revised |location=London |access-date=16 February 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211017084651/http://ml-review.ca/aml/China/historymaotable.html |archive-date=17 October 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Definition, theory, and terminology ===
[[File:Karl Marx 001 (cropped 3-4).jpg|thumb|[[Karl Marx]] in 1875]]
[[Communist ideologies]] and ideas have acquired a new meaning since the [[Russian Revolution]],<ref name="Wright 2015, p. 3355">{{cite encyclopedia |editor-last=Wright |editor-first=James D. |editor-link=James D. Wright |encyclopedia=[[International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences]] |publisher=[[Elsevier]] |year=2015 |isbn=978-0-08-097087-5 |location=Oxford |edition=2nd |page=3355 |doi=}}{{full citation needed|date=July 2024}}</ref> as they became equivalent to the ideas of Marxism–Leninism,{{r|Busky 2000, pp. 6–8}} namely the interpretation of [[Marxism]] by [[Vladimir Lenin]] and his successors.{{sfn|Cooke|1998|pp=221–222}}{{r|Wright 2015, p. 3355}} Endorsing the final objective, namely the creation of a community-owning [[means of production]] and providing each of its participants with consumption "[[From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs|according to their needs]]", Marxism–Leninism puts forward the recognition of the [[class struggle]] as a dominating principle of a [[social change]] and development.{{r|Wright 2015, p. 3355}} In addition, workers (the [[proletariat]]) were to carry out the mission of reconstruction of the society.{{r|Wright 2015, p. 3355}} Conducting a [[socialist revolution]] led by what its proponents termed the "[[vanguard of the proletariat]]", defined as the [[communist party]] organised hierarchically through [[democratic centralism]], was hailed to be a historical necessity by Marxist–Leninists.{{sfn|Albert|Hahnel|1981|pp=24–26}}{{r|Wright 2015, p. 3355}} Moreover, the introduction of the [[proletarian dictatorship]] was advocated and classes deemed hostile were to be repressed.{{r|Wright 2015, p. 3355}} In the 1920s, it was first defined and formulated by [[Joseph Stalin]] based on his understanding of [[orthodox Marxism]] and [[Leninism]].{{r|Lansford 2007, p. 17}}

In 1934, [[Karl Radek]] suggested the formulation ''Marxism–Leninism–Stalinism'' in an article in ''[[Pravda]]'' to stress the importance of Stalin's leadership to the Marxist–Leninist ideology. Radek's suggestion failed to catch on, as Stalin as well as CPSU's ideologists preferred to continue the usage of ''Marxism–Leninism''.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ilyin |first=Mikhail |title=International Encyclopedia of Political Science |publisher=Sage Publications |year=2011 |isbn=978-1-4129-5963-6 |editor-last=Badie |editor-first=Bertrand |pages=2481–2485 |chapter=Stalinism |display-editors=et al.}}</ref> ''Marxism–Leninism–Maoism'' became the name for the ideology of the [[Chinese Communist Party]] and of other [[Communist parties]], which broke off from national Communist parties, after the [[Sino–Soviet split]], especially when the split was finalised by 1963. The [[Italian Communist Party]] was mainly influenced by [[Antonio Gramsci]], who gave a more democratic implication than Lenin's for why workers remained passive.<ref name="Morgan">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Morgan |first=W. John |year=2001 |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/referencework/9780080430768/international-encyclopedia-of-the-social-and-behavioral-sciences |title=Marxism–Leninism: The Ideology of Twentieth-Century Communism |editor1-last=Baltes |editor1-first=Paul B. |editor1-link=Neil Smelser |editor2-last=Smelser |editor2-first=Neil J. |editor2-link=Paul Baltes |encyclopedia=[[International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences]] |volume=20 |edition=1st |publisher=[[Elsevier]] |page=2332 |isbn=978-0-08-043076-8 |access-date=25 August 2021 |via=Science Direct |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211031003018/https://www.sciencedirect.com/referencework/9780080430768/international-encyclopedia-of-the-social-and-behavioral-sciences |archive-date=31 October 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref> A key difference between [[Maoism]] and other forms of Marxism–Leninism is that [[peasant]]s should be the bulwark of the revolutionary energy, which is led by the working class.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Meisner |first=Maurice |date=January–March 1971 |title=Leninism and Maoism: Some Populist Perspectives on Marxism-Leninism in China |journal=The China Quarterly |volume=45 |issue=45 |pages=2–36 |doi=10.1017/S0305741000010407 |jstor=651881 |s2cid=154407265}}</ref> Three common Maoist values are revolutionary [[populism]], pragmatism, and [[dialectic]]s.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Wormack |first=Brantly |year=2001 |title=Maoism |editor1-last=Baltes |editor1-first=Paul B. |editor1-link=Paul Baltes |editor2-last=Smelser |editor2-first=Neil J. |editor2-link=Neil Smelser |encyclopedia=[[International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences]] |volume=20 |pages=9191–9193 |edition=1st |publisher=[[Elsevier]] |doi=10.1016/B0-08-043076-7/01173-6 |isbn=978-0-08-043076-8}}</ref>

According to Rachel Walker, "Marxism–Leninism" is an empty term that depends on the approach and basis of ruling Communist parties, and is dynamic and open to redefinition, being both fixed and not fixed in meaning.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Walker |first=Rachel |date=April 1989 |title=Marxism–Leninism as Discourse: The Politics of the Empty Signifier and the Double Bind |journal=British Journal of Political Science |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |volume=19 |issue=2 |pages=161–189 |doi=10.1017/S0007123400005421 |jstor=193712 |s2cid=145755330}}</ref> As a term, "Marxism–Leninism" is misleading because Marx and Lenin never sanctioned or supported the creation of an ''-ism'' after them, and is reveling because, being popularized after Lenin's death by Stalin, it contained three clear doctrinal and institutionalized principles that became a model for later Soviet-type regimes; its global influence, having at its height covered at least one-third of the world's population, has made Marxist–Leninist a convenient label for the [[Communist bloc]] as a dynamic ideological order.<ref name="Morgan"/>{{sfn|Morgan|2015|p={{page needed|date=April 2022}}}}

=== Historiography ===
Historiography of [[communist state]]s is polarised. According to [[John Earl Haynes]] and [[Harvey Klehr]], historiography is characterised by a split between traditionalists and revisionists.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Haynes |first1=John Earl |author1-link=John Earl Haynes |last2=Klehr |first2=Harvey |author2-link=Harvey Klehr |date=2003 |chapter=Revising History |title=In Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage |location=San Francisco |publisher=Encounter |pages=11–57 |isbn=1-893554-72-4}}</ref> "Traditionalists", who characterise themselves as objective reporters of an alleged [[totalitarian]] nature of [[communism]] and communist states, are criticised by their opponents as being [[anti-communist]], even ''[[Fascist (epithet)|fascist]]'', in their eagerness on continuing to focus on the issues of the [[Cold War]]. Alternative characterisations for traditionalists include "anti-communist", "conservative", "Draperite" (after [[Theodore Draper]]), "orthodox", and "right-wing"; Norman Markowitz, a prominent "revisionist", referred to them as "reactionaries", "right-wing romantics", "romantics", and "triumphalist" who belong to the "[[HUAC]] school of [[CPUSA]] scholarship".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Haynes |first1=John Earl |author1-link=John Earl Haynes |last2=Klehr |first2=Harvey |author2-link=Harvey Klehr |date=2003 |chapter=Revising History |title=In Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage |location=San Francisco |publisher=Encounter |pages=43 |isbn=1-893554-72-4}}</ref> According to Haynes and Klehr, "revisionists" are more numerous and dominate academic institutions and learned journals. A suggested alternative formulation is "new historians of American communism", but that has not caught on because these historians describe themselves as unbiased and scholarly and contrast their work to the work of anti-communist traditionalists whom they would term biased and unscholarly.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Haynes |first1=John Earl |author-link1=John Earl Haynes |last2=Klehr |first2=Harvey |author-link2=Harvey Klehr |date=2003 |chapter=Revising History |title=In Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage |location=San Francisco |publisher=Encounter |pages=43–44 |isbn=1-893554-72-4}}</ref> Academic [[Sovietology]] after [[World War II]] and during the Cold War was dominated by the "totalitarian model" of the Soviet Union,<ref>{{cite book |first1=Sarah |last1=Davies |author1-link=Sarah Davies (historian) |first2=James |last2=Harris |title=Stalin: A New History |chapter=Joseph Stalin: Power and Ideas |date=8 September 2005 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-1-139-44663-1 |page=3 |quote=Academic Sovietology, a child of the early Cold War, was dominated by the 'totalitarian model' of Soviet politics. Until the 1960s it was almost impossible to advance any other interpretation, in the USA at least.}}</ref> stressing the absolute nature of Stalin's power.<ref>{{cite book |first1=Sarah |last1=Davies |author1-link=Sarah Davies (historian) |first2=James |last2=Harris |title=Stalin: A New History |chapter=Joseph Stalin: Power and Ideas |date=8 September 2005 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-1-139-44663-1 |pages=3–4 |quote=In 1953, Carl Friedrich characterised totalitarian systems in terms of five points: an official ideology, control of weapons and of media, use of terror, and a single mass party, 'usually under a single leader'. There was of course an assumption that the leader was critical to the workings of totalitarianism: at the apex of a monolithic, centralised, and hierarchical system, it was he who issued the orders which were fulfilled unquestioningly by his subordinates.}}</ref> The "revisionist school" beginning in the 1960s focused on relatively autonomous institutions which might influence policy at the higher level.<ref name="DaviesHarris2005">{{cite book |first1=Sarah |last1=Davies |author1-link=Sarah Davies (historian) |first2=James |last2=Harris |title=Stalin: A New History |chapter=Joseph Stalin: Power and Ideas |date=8 September 2005 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-1-139-44663-1 |pages=4–5 |quote=Tucker's work stressed the absolute nature of Stalin's power, an assumption which was increasingly challenged by later revisionist historians. In his ''Origins of the Great Purges'', Arch Getty argued that the Soviet political system was chaotic, that institutions often escaped the control of the centre, and that Stalin's leadership consisted to a considerable extent in responding, on an ad hoc basis, to political crises as they arose. Getty's work was influenced by political science of the 1960s onwards, which, in a critique of the totalitarian model, began to consider the possibility that relatively autonomous bureaucratic institutions might have had some influence on policy-making at the highest level.}}</ref> Matt Lenoe described the "revisionist school" as representing those who "insisted that the old image of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian state bent on world domination was oversimplified or just plain wrong. They tended to be interested in social history and to argue that the Communist Party leadership had had to adjust to social forces."<ref name="Lenoe2002">{{cite journal |last1=Lenoe |first1=Matt |title=Did Stalin Kill Kirov and Does It Matter? |journal=The Journal of Modern History |volume=74 |issue=2 |year=2002 |pages=352–380 |issn=0022-2801 |doi=10.1086/343411 |s2cid=142829949}}</ref> These "revisionist school" historians challenged the "totalitarian model", as outlined by political scientist [[Carl Joachim Friedrich]], which stated that the Soviet Union and other communist states were totalitarian systems, with the personality cult, and almost unlimited powers of the "great leader", such as Stalin.{{r|DaviesHarris2005}}<ref name="Fitzpatrick">{{cite journal |first1=Sheila |last1=Fitzpatrick |author-link1=Sheila Fitzpatrick |title=Revisionism in Soviet History |journal=History and Theory |volume=46 |issue=4 |year=2007 |pages=77–91 |issn=1468-2303 |doi=10.1111/j.1468-2303.2007.00429.x |quote=... the Western scholars who in the 1990s and 2000s were most active in scouring the new archives for data on Soviet repression were revisionists (always 'archive rats') such as Arch Getty and Lynne Viola.}}</ref> It was considered to be outdated by the 1980s and for the post-Stalinist era.<ref name="Zimmerman 1980">{{cite journal |last=Zimmerman |first=William |date=September 1980 |title=Review: How the Soviet Union is Governed |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |journal=[[Slavic Review]] |volume=39 |issue=3 |pages=482–486 |doi=10.2307/2497167 |jstor=2497167 |quote=In the intervening quarter-century, the Soviet Union has changed substantially. Our knowledge of the Soviet Union has changed as well. We all know that the traditional paradigm no longer satisfies, despite several efforts, primarily in the early 1960s (the directed society, totalitarianism without terror, the mobilization system) to articulate an acceptable variant. We have come to realize that models which were, in effect, offshoots of totalitarian models do not provide good approximations of post-Stalinist reality. |postscript=. Quote at p. 482}}</ref>

[[File:Stéphane Courtois (cropped).jpg|thumb|[[Stéphane Courtois]], one of the authors of ''[[The Black Book of Communism]]'']]
Some academics, such as [[Stéphane Courtois]] (''[[The Black Book of Communism]]''), [[Steven Rosefielde]] (''[[Red Holocaust (2009 book)|Red Holocaust]]''), and [[Rudolph Rummel]] (''[[Death by Government]]''), wrote of mass, excess deaths under Marxist–Leninist regimes. These authors defined the political repression by communists as a "[[Communist democide]]", "Communist genocide", "Red Holocaust", or followed the "victims of Communism" narrative. Some of them compared Communism to [[Nazism]] and described deaths under Marxist–Leninist regimes (civil wars, deportations, famines, repressions, and wars) as being a direct consequence of Marxism–Leninism. Some of these works, in particular ''The Black Book of Communism'' and its 93 or 100 millions figure, are cited by [[Political groups of the European Parliament|political groups]] and [[Members of the European Parliament]].{{r|Ghodsee 2014}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Neumayer |first=Laure |author-link=Laure Neumayer |year=2018 |title=The Criminalisation of Communism in the European Political Space after the Cold War |location=London |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-351-14174-1}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Neumayer |first=Laure |author-link=Laure Neumayer |date=November 2018 |title=Advocating for the Cause of the 'Victims of Communism' in the European Political Space: Memory Entrepreneurs in Interstitial Fields |journal=[[Nationalities Papers]] |volume=45 |number=6 |pages=992–1012 |doi=10.1080/00905992.2017.1364230 |s2cid=158275798 |doi-access=free}}</ref> Without denying the tragedy of the events, other scholars criticise the interpretation that sees communism as the main culprit as presenting a biased or exaggerated anti-communist narrative. Several academics propose a more nuanced analysis of Marxist–Leninist rule, stating that anti-communist narratives have exaggerated the extent of political repression and censorship in communist states and drawn comparisons with what they see as atrocities that were perpetrated by [[capitalist countries]], particularly during the Cold War. These academics include [[Mark Aarons]],<ref>{{cite book |last=Aarons |first=Mark |author-link=Mark Aarons |date=2007 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dg0hWswKgTIC&pg=PA69 |chapter=Justice Betrayed: Post-1945 Responses to Genocide |editor1-last=Blumenthal |editor1-first=David A. |editor2-last=McCormack |editor2-first=Timothy L. H. |url=http://www.brill.com/legacy-nuremberg-civilising-influence-or-institutionalised-vengeance |title=The Legacy of Nuremberg: Civilising Influence or Institutionalised Vengeance? (International Humanitarian Law) |publisher=[[Martinus Nijhoff Publishers]] |pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=dg0hWswKgTIC&pg=PA71 71], [https://books.google.com/books?id=dg0hWswKgTIC&pg=PA81 80–81] |isbn=978-90-04-15691-3 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170525090909/https://brill.com/legacy-nuremberg-civilising-influence-or-institutionalised-vengeance |archive-date=25 May 2017 |url-status=dead |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> [[Noam Chomsky]],<ref>{{cite web|last=Chomsky |first=Noam |author-link=Noam Chomsky |title=Counting the Bodies |work=Spectrezine |access-date=18 September 2016 |url=http://spectrezine.org/global/chomsky.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160921084037/http://www.spectrezine.org/global/chomsky.htm |archive-date=21 September 2016}}</ref> [[Jodi Dean]],<ref>{{cite book |last=Dean |first=Jodi |author-link=Jodi Dean |date=2012 |title=The Communist Horizon |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kBghOq42S3YC&pg=PA6 |publisher=Verso |pages=6–7 |isbn=978-1-84467-954-6 |access-date=3 December 2020 |archive-date=17 October 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211017084656/https://books.google.com/books?id=kBghOq42S3YC&pg=PA6 |url-status=live |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> [[Kristen Ghodsee]],<ref name="Ghodsee 2014">{{cite journal |last=Ghodsee |first=Kristen |author-link=Kristen Ghodsee |date=Fall 2014 |url=https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/kristenghodsee/files/history_of_the_present_galleys.pdf |title=A Tale of 'Two Totalitarianisms': The Crisis of Capitalism and the Historical Memory of Communism |journal=History of the Present: A Journal of Critical History |volume=4 |number=2 |pages=115–142 |doi=10.5406/historypresent.4.2.0115 |jstor=10.5406/historypresent.4.2.0115 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211031180121/https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/kristenghodsee/files/history_of_the_present_galleys.pdf |archive-date=31 October 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Ghodsee & Sehon 2018">{{cite magazine|last1=Ghodsee |first1=Kristen R. |author-link1=Kristen Ghodsee |last2=Sehon |first2=Scott |author-link2=Scott Sehon |editor-last=Dresser |editor-first=Sam |date=22 March 2018 |url=https://aeon.co/essays/the-merits-of-taking-an-anti-anti-communism-stance |title=The merits of taking an anti-anti-communism stance |magazine=[[Aeon (digital magazine)|Aeon]] |access-date=11 February 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211008113511/https://aeon.co/essays/the-merits-of-taking-an-anti-anti-communism-stance |archive-date=8 October 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref> [[Seumas Milne]],{{r|Milne 2002}}{{r|Milne 2006}} and [[Michael Parenti]].{{sfn|Parenti|1997}} Ghodsee, [[Nathan J. Robinson]],<ref>{{cite news |last=Robinson |first=Nathan J. |author-link=Nathan J. Robinson |date=25 October 2017 |url=https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2017/10/how-to-be-a-socialist-without-being-an-apologist-for-the-atrocities-of-communist-regimes |title=How To Be A Socialist Without Being An Apologist For The Atrocities Of Communist Regimes |work=[[Current Affairs (magazine)|Current Affairs]] |access-date=13 August 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211020044217/https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/10/how-to-be-a-socialist-without-being-an-apologist-for-the-atrocities-of-communist-regimes |archive-date=20 October 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref> and [[Scott Sehon]] wrote about the merits of taking an [[anti anti-communist]] position that does not deny the atrocities but make a distinction between [[anti-authoritarian]] communist and other socialist currents, both of which have been victims of repression.{{r|Ghodsee & Sehon 2018}}<ref>{{cite news |last=Klein |first=Ezra |author-link=Ezra Klein |date=7 January 2020 |url=https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/1/7/21055676/nathan-robinson-ezra-klein-socialism-bernie-sanders |title=Nathan Robinson's case for socialism |website=[[Vox (website)|Vox]] |access-date=13 August 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210813101444/https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/1/7/21055676/nathan-robinson-ezra-klein-socialism-bernie-sanders |archive-date=13 August 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref>

== History ==
=== Bolsheviks, February Revolution, and Great War (1903–1917) ===
{{Further|February Revolution|World War I|Bolsheviks|Leninism}}
[[File:LeninEnSuizaMarzo1916--barbaroussovietr00mcbr.png|thumb|left|[[Vladimir Lenin]], who led the Bolshevik faction within the [[Russian Social Democratic Labour Party]]]]
Although Marxism–Leninism was created after [[Vladimir Lenin]]'s death by [[Joseph Stalin]] in the Soviet Union, continuing to be the official state ideology after de-Stalinisation and of other communist states, the basis for elements of Marxism–Leninism predate this. The philosophy of Marxism–Leninism originated as the pro-active, political praxis of the [[Bolshevik]] faction of the [[Russian Social Democratic Labour Party]] in realising political change in Tsarist Russia.{{sfn|Bottomore|1991|p=53–54}} Lenin's leadership transformed the Bolsheviks into the party's political vanguard which was composed of professional revolutionaries who practised [[democratic centralism]] to elect leaders and officers as well as to determine policy through free discussion, then decisively realised through united action.<ref name=freedomunity>{{cite web|last=Lenin |first=Vladimir |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |year=1906 |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/rucong/viii.htm |title=Report on the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. |access-date=9 August 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080919195901/http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/rucong/viii.htm |archive-date=19 September 2008 |url-status=live}}</ref> The [[vanguardism]] of proactive, pragmatic commitment to achieving revolution was the Bolsheviks' advantage in out-manoeuvring the liberal and conservative political parties who advocated [[social democracy]] without a practical plan of action for the Russian society they wished to govern. [[Leninism]] allowed the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Bolshevik party]] to assume command of the [[October Revolution]] in 1917.{{sfn|Bottomore|1991|p=54}}

[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-H28740, St. Petersburg, Eröffnung der Parlamente.jpg|thumb|[[Tsar Nicholas II]] addressing the two chambers of the [[State Duma (Russian Empire)|Duma]] at the Winter Palace after the failed [[1905 Russian Revolution]] which exiled Lenin from [[Imperial Russia]] to Switzerland ]]
Twelve years before the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks had failed to assume control of the February Revolution of 1905 (22 January 1905 – 16 June 1907) because the centres of revolutionary action were too far apart for proper political coordination.{{sfn|Bottomore|1991|p=259}} To generate revolutionary momentum from the Tsarist army killings on [[Bloody Sunday (1905)|Bloody Sunday]] (22 January 1905), the Bolsheviks encouraged workers to use political violence in order to compel the bourgeois social classes (the nobility, the gentry and the bourgeoisie) to join the [[proletarian revolution]] to overthrow the [[absolute monarchy]] of the [[Tsar of Russia]].{{sfn|Ulam|1998|p=204}} Most importantly, the experience of this revolution caused Lenin to conceive of the means of sponsoring socialist revolution through agitation, propaganda and a well-organised, disciplined and small political party.{{sfn|Ulam|1998|p=207}}

Despite secret-police persecution by the [[Okhrana]] (Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order), émigré Bolsheviks returned to Russia to agitate, organise and lead, but then they returned to exile when peoples' revolutionary fervour failed in 1907.{{sfn|Ulam|1998|p=207}} The failure of the February Revolution exiled Bolsheviks, [[Mensheviks]], [[Socialist Revolutionary Party|Socialist Revolutionaries]] and anarchists such as the [[Black Guards]] from Russia.{{sfn|Ulam|1998|p=269}} Membership in both the Bolshevik and Menshevik ranks diminished from 1907 to 1908 while the number of people taking part in strikes in 1907 was 26% of the figure during the year of the Revolution of 1905, dropping to 6% in 1908 and 2% in 1910.{{sfn|Ulam|1998|p=270}} The 1908–1917 period was one of disillusionment in the Bolshevik party over Lenin's leadership, with members opposing him for scandals involving his expropriations and methods of raising money for the party.{{sfn|Ulam|1998|p=270}} This political defeat was aggravated by [[Nicholas II of Russia|Tsar Nicholas II]]'s political reformations of Imperial Russian government. In practise, the formalities of political participation (the electoral plurality of a [[multi-party system]] with the [[State Duma (Russian Empire)|State Duma]] and the [[Russian Constitution of 1906]]) were the Tsar's piecemeal and cosmetic concessions to [[social progress]] because public office remained available only to the [[Aristocracy (class)|aristocracy]], the [[gentry]] and the [[bourgeoisie]]. These reforms resolved neither the [[illiteracy]], the [[poverty]], nor [[malnutrition]] of the peasant, underclass majority of Imperial Russia.{{sfn|Ulam|1998|p=269}}

In Swiss exile, Lenin developed Marx's philosophy and extrapolated [[decolonisation]] by [[War of liberation|colonial revolt]] as a reinforcement of [[proletarian revolution]] in Europe.{{sfn|Bottomore|1991|p=98}} In 1912, Lenin resolved a factional challenge to his ideological leadership of the RSDLP by the Forward Group in the party, usurping the all-party congress to transform the RSDLP into the Bolshevik party.{{sfn|Ulam|1998|pp=282–284}} In the early 1910s, Lenin remained highly unpopular and was so unpopular amongst international socialist movement that by 1914 it considered censoring him.{{sfn|Ulam|1998|p=270}} Unlike the European socialists who chose bellicose nationalism to anti-war internationalism, whose philosophical and political break was consequence of the [[internationalist–defencist schism]] among socialists, the Bolsheviks opposed the [[Great War]] (1914–1918).<ref name="university1995">{{cite book |last=Anderson |first=Kevin |author-link=Kevin B. Anderson |date=199 |title=Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism: A Critical Study |location=Chicago |publisher=[[University of Illinois Press]] |pages=3 |isbn=978-90-04-47161-0}}</ref> That nationalist betrayal of socialism was denounced by a small group of socialist leaders who opposed the Great War, including [[Rosa Luxemburg]], [[Karl Liebknecht]] and Lenin, who said that the European socialists had failed the working classes for preferring patriotic war to [[proletarian internationalism]].{{r|university1995}} To debunk [[patriotism]] and national [[chauvinism]], Lenin explained in the essay ''[[Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism]]'' (1917) that capitalist economic expansion leads to [[New Imperialism|colonial imperialism]] which is then regulated with nationalist wars such as the Great War among the empires of Europe.<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Evans |editor1-first=Graham |editor2-last=Newnham |editor2-first=Jeffrey |date=1998 |title=Penguin Dictionary of International Relations |publisher=Penguin Random House |pages=317 |isbn=978-0-14-051397-4}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Cavanagh Hodge |editor-first=Carl |date=2008 |title=Encyclopedia of the Age of Imperialism, 1800–1914 |volume=2 |location=Westport |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |pages=415 |isbn=978-0-313-33404-7}}</ref> To relieve strategic pressures from the [[Western Front (World War I)|Western Front]] (4 August 1914 – 11 November 1918), [[Imperial Germany]] impelled the withdrawal of [[Imperial Russia]] from the war's [[Eastern Front (World War I)|Eastern Front]] (17 August 1914 – 3 March 1918) by sending Lenin and his Bolshevik cohort in a diplomatically sealed train, anticipating them partaking in revolutionary activity.<ref>{{cite book |last=Beckett |first=Ian Frederick William |date=2009 |title=1917: Beyond the Western Front |location=Leiden |publisher=[[Brill Publishers|Koninklijke Brill NV.]] |pages=1 |isbn=978-90-474-2470-3}}</ref>

=== October Revolution and Russian Civil War (1917–1922) ===
{{Main|October Revolution|Russian Civil War}}
[[File:Alfred Grohs zur Revolution 1918 1919 in Berlin Große Frankfurter Straße Ecke Lebuser Straße Barrikade Kampf während der Novemberrevolution in Berlin 02 Bildseite Schaulustige.jpg|thumb|left|From 5 to 12 January 1919, the [[Spartacist uprising]] in the [[Weimar Republic]] featured [[urban warfare]] between the [[Communist Party of Germany]] (KPD) and anti-communist Freikorps units called in by the German government led by the [[Social Democratic Party of Germany]] (SPD).]]
In March 1917, the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II led to the [[Russian Provisional Government]] (March–July 1917), who then proclaimed the [[Russian Republic]] (September–November 1917). Later in the [[October Revolution]], the Bolshevik's seizure of power against the Provisional Government resulted in their establishment of the [[Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic]] (1917–1991), yet parts of Russia remained occupied by the counter-revolutionary [[White Movement]] of anti-communists who had united to form the [[White Army]] to fight the [[Russian Civil War]] (1917–1922) against the Bolshevik government. Moreover, despite the White–Red civil war, Russia remained a combatant in the Great War that the Bolsheviks had quit with the [[Treaty of Brest-Litovsk]] which then provoked the [[Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War|Allied Intervention to the Russian Civil War]] by the armies of seventeen countries, featuring Great Britain, France, Italy, the United States and Imperial Japan.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=31}}

[[File:Bela.Kun.Revolution.1919.jpg|thumb|[[Béla Kun]], leader of the [[Hungarian Soviet Republic]], speaks to supporters during the [[1919 Hungarian Revolution]].]]
Elsewhere, the successful October Revolution in Russia had facilitated the [[German Revolution of 1918–1919]] and [[revolutions and interventions in Hungary (1918–1920)]] which produced the [[First Hungarian Republic]] and the [[Hungarian Soviet Republic]]. In Berlin, the German government aided by [[Freikorps]] units fought and defeated the [[Spartacist uprising]] which began as a [[general strike]]. In Munich, the local Freikorps fought and defeated the [[Bavarian Soviet Republic]]. In Hungary, the disorganised workers who had proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic were fought and defeated by the royal armies of the [[Kingdom of Romania]] and the [[Kingdom of Yugoslavia]] as well as the army of the [[First Republic of Czechoslovakia]]. These communist forces were soon crushed by anti-communist forces and attempts to create an international communist revolution failed. However, a successful revolution occurred in Asia, when the [[Mongolian Revolution of 1921]] established the [[Mongolian People's Republic]] (1924–1992). The percentage of Bolshevik delegates in the [[All-Russian Congress of Soviets]] increased from 13%, at the [[First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies|first congress]] in July 1917,<ref>{{cite book |first=Vladimir |last=Lenin |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |url=http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/FCS17.html |chapter=First All Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies |orig-date=3–24 June (6 June – 7 July), 1917 |title=V. I. Lenin, Collected Works |edition=4th English |publisher=Progress Publishers |location=Moscow |date=1974 |volume=25 |pages=15–42 |editor1-first=Stephan |editor1-last=Apresyan |editor2-first=Jim |editor2-last=Riordan |editor2-link=James Riordan (writer-sportsman) |access-date=2 April 2021 |archive-date=22 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200722052832/http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/FCS17.html |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://www.encspb.ru/object/2804022766?lc=en |title=First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies |encyclopedia=Saint Petersburg Encyclopaedia |editor-first=A. M. |editor-last=Kulegin |access-date=2 April 2021 |archive-date=6 February 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210206053134/http://www.encspb.ru/object/2804022766?lc=en |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1917-2/formation-of-the-soviets/formation-of-the-soviets-texts/first-all-russian-congress-of-soviets/ |chapter=First All-Russian Congress of Soviets: Composition of the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets |orig-date=26 June 1917 |editor-first=Frank |editor-last=Golder |editor-link=Frank A. Golder |title=Documents of Russian History, 1914–1917 |location=New York |publisher=The Century Co. |date=1927 |pages=360–361 |access-date=2 April 2021 |archive-date=17 May 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210517004653/http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1917-2/formation-of-the-soviets/formation-of-the-soviets-texts/first-all-russian-congress-of-soviets/ |url-status=live}}</ref> to 66%, at the [[All-Russian Congress of Soviets#Fifth Congress|fifth congress]] in 1918.<ref>{{cite book |first=Jonathan D. |last=Smele |title=Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916–1926 |location=Lanham, MD |publisher=[[Rowman & Littlefield]] |date=2015 |pages=xxx, 39, 315, 670–671, 751}}</ref>

As promised to the Russian peoples in October 1917, the Bolsheviks quit Russia's participation in the Great War on 3 March 1918. That same year, the Bolsheviks consolidated government power by expelling the Mensheviks, the Socialist Revolutionaries and the [[Left Socialist-Revolutionaries]] from the [[Soviet (council)|soviets]].{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=37}} The Bolshevik government then established the [[Cheka]] (All-Russian Extraordinary Commission) secret police to eliminate anti–Bolshevik opposition in the country. Initially, there was strong opposition to the Bolshevik régime because they had not resolved the food shortages and material poverty of the Russian peoples as promised in October 1917. From that social discontent, the Cheka reported 118 uprisings, including the [[Kronstadt rebellion]] (7–17 March 1921) against the economic austerity of the War Communism imposed by the Bolsheviks.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=37}} The principal obstacles to Russian economic development and modernisation were great [[Poverty|material poverty]] and the lack of modern technology which were conditions that orthodox Marxism considered unfavourable to communist revolution. Agricultural Russia was sufficiently developed for establishing capitalism, but it was insufficiently developed for establishing socialism.{{sfn|Bottomore|1991|p=259}}{{sfn|Ulam|1998|pp=249}} For Bolshevik Russia, the 1921–1924 period featured the simultaneous occurrence of economic recovery, famine (1921–1922) and a financial crisis (1924). By 1924, considerable economic progress had been achieved and by 1926 the Bolshevik government had achieved economic production levels equal to Russia's production levels in 1913.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=39}}

Initial Bolshevik economic policies from 1917 to 1918 were cautious, with limited [[nationalisation]]s of the [[means of production]] which had been private property of the Russian aristocracy during the Tsarist monarchy.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=38}} Lenin was immediately committed to avoid antagonising the [[peasant]]ry by making efforts to coax them away from the Socialist Revolutionaries, allowing a peasant takeover of [[Nobility|nobles]]' estates while no immediate nationalisations were enacted on peasants' property.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=38}} The [[Decree on Land]] (8 November 1917) fulfilled Lenin's promised redistribution of Russia's arable land to the peasants, who reclaimed their farmlands from the aristocrats, ensuring the peasants' loyalty to the Bolshevik party. To overcome the civil war's economic interruptions, the policy of [[War Communism]] (1918–1921), a [[regulated market]], state-controlled means of distribution and nationalisation of large-scale farms, was adopted to requisite and distribute grain in order to feed industrial workers in the cities whilst the Red Army was fighting the White Army's attempted restoration of the [[Romanov]] dynasty as [[Absolute monarchy|absolute monarchs]] of Russia.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=38}} Moreover, the politically unpopular forced grain-requisitions discouraged peasants from farming resulted in reduced harvests and food shortages that provoked labour strikes and food riots. In the event, the Russian peoples created an economy of [[barter]] and [[black market]] to counter the Bolshevik government's voiding of the [[monetary economy]].{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=38}}

In 1921, the [[New Economic Policy]] restored some private enterprise to animate the Russian economy.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=38}} As part of Lenin's pragmatic compromise with external financial interests in 1918, Bolshevik [[state capitalism]] temporarily returned 91% of industry to private ownership or trusts{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=38}} until the Soviet Russians learned the [[technology]] and the techniques required to operate and administrate industries.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Cook |editor-first=Chris |date=1998 |title=Dictionary of Historical Terms |edition=2nd |page=306 |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |isbn=978-0-333-67347-8}}</ref> Importantly, Lenin declared that the development of socialism would not be able to be pursued in the manner originally thought by Marxists.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=38}} A key aspect that affected the Bolshevik regime was the backward economic conditions in Russia that were considered unfavourable to orthodox Marxist theory of communist revolution.{{sfn|Bottomore|1991|p=259}} At the time, orthodox Marxists claimed that Russia was ripe for the development of capitalism, not yet for socialism.{{sfn|Ulam|1998|pp=249}} Lenin advocated the need of the development of a large corps of technical intelligentsia to assist the industrial development of Russia and advance the Marxist economic stages of development as it had too few technical experts at the time. In that vein, Lenin explained it as follows: "Our poverty is so great that we cannot, at one stroke, restore full-scale factory, state, socialist production."{{sfn|Bottomore|1991|p=259}} He added that the development of socialism would proceed according to the actual material and socio-economic conditions in Russia and not as abstractly described by Marx for industrialised Europe in the 19th century. To overcome the lack of educated Russians who could operate and administrate industry, Lenin advocated the development of a [[Intelligentsia|technical intelligentsia]] who would propel the industrial development of Russia to self-sufficiency.{{sfn|Bottomore|1991|p=259}}

=== Stalin's rise to power (1922–1928) ===
{{Main|Joseph Stalin's rise to power}}
[[File:Vladimir Lenin on the front page of Projector (Spotlight) issue 15 dated 15 Sep 1923.jpg|thumb|left|At his death on 21 January 1924, Lenin's [[Lenin's Testament|political testament]] ordered the removal of Stalin as [[General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|General Secretary]] because of his abusive personality.]]
As he neared death after suffering strokes, [[Lenin's Testament]] of December 1922 named Trotsky and Stalin as the most able men in the Central Committee, but he harshly criticised them. Lenin said that Stalin should be removed from being the [[General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|General Secretary]] of the party and that he be replaced with "some other person who is superior to Stalin only in one respect, namely, in being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite, and more attentive to comrades."{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=41}} Upon [[Death of Vladimir Lenin|his death]] on 21 January 1924, Lenin's political testament was read aloud to the Central Committee,{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=41}} who chose to ignore Lenin's ordered removal of Stalin as General Secretary because enough members believed Stalin had been politically rehabilitated in 1923.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=41–42}}

Consequent to personally spiteful disputes about the praxis of [[Leninism]], the October Revolution veterans [[Lev Kamenev]] and [[Grigory Zinoviev]] said that the true threat to the ideological integrity of the party was Trotsky, who was a personally charismatic political leader as well as the commanding officer of the [[Red Army]] in the [[Russian Civil War]] and revolutionary partner of Lenin.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=41–42}} To thwart Trotsky's likely election to head the party, Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev formed a [[Triumvirate|troika]] that featured Stalin as General Secretary, the ''de facto'' [[Power (social and political)|centre of power]] in the party and the country.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=42}} The direction of the party was decided in confrontations of politics and personality between Stalin's troika and Trotsky over which Marxist policy to pursue, either Trotsky's policy of [[permanent revolution]] or Stalin's policy of [[socialism in one country]].{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=42}} Trotsky's permanent revolution advocated rapid industrialisation, elimination of private farming and having the Soviet Union promote the spread of communist revolution abroad.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=43}} Stalin's socialism in one country stressed moderation and development of positive relations between the Soviet Union and other countries to increase trade and foreign investment.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=42}} To politically isolate and oust Trotsky from the party, Stalin expediently advocated socialism in one country, a policy to which he was indifferent.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=42}} In 1925, the [[14th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)]] chose Stalin's policy, defeating Trotsky as a possible leader of the party and of the Soviet Union.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=42}}

In the 1925–1927 period, Stalin dissolved the troika and disowned the [[Centrist Marxism|centrist]] Kamenev and Zinoviev for an expedient alliance with the three most prominent leaders of the so-called [[Right Opposition]], namely [[Alexei Rykov]] ([[Premier of Russia]], 1924–1929; [[Premier of the Soviet Union]], 1924–1930),<ref name=Rykov>{{cite web|url=http://www.archontology.org/nations/rus/rus_govt1/rykov.php |title=Aleksey Ivanovich Rykov |publisher=Archontology |access-date=1 March 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180612142905/http://www.archontology.org/nations/rus/rus_govt1/rykov.php |archive-date=12 June 2018 |url-status=live |df=dmy-all}}</ref> [[Nikolai Bukharin]] ([[Executive Committee of the Communist International|General Secretary of the Comintern]], 1926–1929; Editor-in-Chief of ''[[Pravda]]'', 1918–1929), and [[Mikhail Tomsky]] (Chairman of the [[Trade unions in the Soviet Union|All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions]] in the 1920s).{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=42}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Wynn |first=Charters |title=From the Factory to the Kremlin: Mikhail Tomsky and the Russian Worker |publisher=[[University of Texas at Austin]], [[University of Pittsburgh]] |date=22 May 1996 |url=http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/1996-809-09-Wynn.pdf |access-date=29 May 2021 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210903181631/https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/1996-809-09-Wynn.pdf |archive-date=3 September 2021}}</ref> In 1927, the party endorsed Stalin's policy of socialism in one country as the Soviet Union's national policy and expelled the leftist Trotsky and the centrists Kamenev and Zinoviev from the [[Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Politburo]].{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=42}}<ref>{{cite book |title=The Stalin Era |last=Strong |first=Anna Louise |publisher=New York Mainstream Publishers |year=1957 |isbn=0-900988-54-1 |location=New York City}}</ref> In 1929, Stalin politically controlled the party and the Soviet Union by way of deception and administrative acumen.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=42}} In that time, Stalin's centralised, socialism in one country régime had negatively associated Lenin's revolutionary [[Bolshevism]] with Stalinism, i.e. government by command-policy to realise projects such as the rapid industrialisation of cities and the collectivisation of agriculture.{{sfn|Bottomore|1991|p=54}} Such Stalinism also subordinated the interests (political, national and ideological) of Asian and European communist parties to the geopolitical interests of the Soviet Union.{{sfn|Bottomore|1991|p=54}}

In the 1928–1932 period of the [[First five-year plan (Soviet Union)|first five-year plan]], Stalin effected the [[dekulakisation]] of the farmlands of the Soviet Union, a politically radical dispossession of the [[kulak]] class of peasant-landlords from the [[Tsarism|Tsarist]] social order of monarchy.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=42}} As [[Old Bolshevik]] revolutionaries, Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky recommended amelioration of the dekulakisation to lessen the negative social impact in the relations between the Soviet peoples and the party, but Stalin took umbrage and then accused them of uncommunist philosophical deviations from Lenin and Marx.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/books/SovietUnion/StalinEra_StrongAL.pdf |title=The Stalin Era |last=Strong |first=Anna Louise |website=Prison Censorship |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161110224747/https://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/books/SovietUnion/StalinEra_StrongAL.pdf |archive-date=10 November 2016 |access-date=10 November 2016}}</ref> That implicit accusation of [[Deviationism|ideological deviationism]] licensed Stalin to accuse Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky of plotting against the party and the appearance of impropriety then compelled the resignations of the Old Bolsheviks from government and from the Politburo.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=42}} Stalin then completed his political purging of the party by exiling Trotsky from the Soviet Union in 1929.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=42}} Afterwards, the political opposition to the practical régime of Stalinism was denounced as [[Trotskyism]] (Bolshevik–Leninism), described as a deviation from Marxism–Leninism, the state ideology of the Soviet Union.{{sfn|Bottomore|1991|p=54}}

Political developments in the Soviet Union included Stalin dismantling the remaining elements of democracy from the party by extending his control over its institutions and eliminating any possible rivals.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=49}} The party's ranks grew in numbers, with the party modifying its organisation to include more trade unions and factories.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=49}} The ranks and files of the party were populated with members from the trade unions and the factories, whom Stalin controlled because there were no other Old Bolsheviks to contradict Marxism–Leninism.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=49}} In the late 1930s, the Soviet Union adopted the [[1936 Soviet Constitution]] which ended weighted-voting preferences for workers, promulgated [[universal suffrage]] for every man and woman older than 18 years of age and organised the soviets (councils of workers) into two legislatures, namely the [[Soviet of the Union]] (representing electoral districts) and the [[Soviet of Nationalities]] (representing the ethnic groups of the country).{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=49}} By 1939, with the exception of Stalin himself, none of the original Bolsheviks of the October Revolution of 1917 remained in the party.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=49}} Unquestioning loyalty to Stalin was expected by the regime of all citizens.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=49}}

Stalin exercised extensive personal control over the party and unleashed an unprecedented level of violence to eliminate any potential threat to his regime.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=47}} While Stalin exercised major control over political initiatives, their implementation was in the control of localities, often with local leaders interpreting the policies in a way that served themselves best.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=47}} This abuse of power by local leaders exacerbated the violent purges and terror campaigns carried out by Stalin against members of the party deemed to be traitors.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=47}} With the [[Great Purge]] (1936–1938), Stalin rid himself of internal enemies in the party and rid the Soviet Union of any alleged socially dangerous and counterrevolutionary person who might have offered legitimate political opposition to Marxism–Leninism.{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=447}}

Stalin allowed the secret police [[NKVD]] (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) to rise above the law and the [[State Political Directorate|GPU]] (State Political Directorate) to use [[political violence]] to eliminate any person who might be a threat, whether real, potential, or imagined. As an administrator, Stalin governed the Soviet Union by controlling the formulation of national policy, but he delegated implementation to subordinate functionaries. Such freedom of action allowed local communist functionaries much discretion to interpret the intent of orders from Moscow, but this allowed their corruption. To Stalin, the correction of such abuses of authority and economic corruption were responsibility of the NKVD. In the 1937–1938 period, the NKVD arrested 1.5 million people, purged from every stratum of Soviet society and every rank and file of the party, of which 681,692 people were killed as [[Enemy of the state|enemies of the state]].{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=47}} To provide manpower (manual, intellectual and technical) to realise the construction of socialism in one country, the NKVD established the [[Gulag]] system of [[Forced labour|forced-labour]] camps for regular criminals and political dissidents, for culturally insubordinate artists and politically incorrect intellectuals and for homosexual people and religious [[Anti-communism|anti-communists]].{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=49}}

=== Socialism in one country (1928–1944) ===
{{Main|Socialism in one country}}
{{Stalinism sidebar}}
Beginning in 1928, Stalin's [[five-year plans for the national economy of the Soviet Union]] achieved the rapid industrialisation (coal, iron and steel, electricity and petroleum, among others) and the collectivisation of agriculture.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=49}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Hobsbawm |first=Eric |author-link=Eric Hobsbawm |date=1996 |title=The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991 |pages=380–381}}</ref> It achieved 23.6% of collectivisation within two years (1930) and 98.0% of collectivisation within thirteen years (1941).{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=60}} As the revolutionary vanguard, the communist party organised Russian society to realise rapid industrialisation programs as defence against Western interference with socialism in Bolshevik Russia. The five-year plans were prepared in the 1920s whilst the Bolshevik government fought the internal Russian Civil War (1917–1922) and repelled the external Allied intervention to the Russian Civil War (1918–1925). Vast industrialisation was initiated mostly based with a focus on [[heavy industry]].{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=59}} The [[Cultural revolution in the Soviet Union]] focused on restructuring culture and society.<ref name="c268">{{cite journal |last=David-Fox |first=Michael |title=What Is Cultural Revolution? |journal=[[The Russian Review]] |publisher=[Wiley, The Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian Review] |volume=58 |issue=2 |year=1999 |issn=0036-0341 |jstor=2679573 |pages=181–201 |doi=10.1111/0036-0341.651999065 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/2679573 |access-date=26 October 2024}}</ref>

[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R85625, Sowjetunion, Hüttenkombinat in Magnitogorsk.jpg|thumb|left|A 1929 metallurgical combine in [[Magnitogorsk]] demonstrates the Soviet Union's [[History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953)#Rapid industrialization|rapid industrialisation]] in the 1920s and 1930s.]]
During the 1930s, the rapid industrialisation of the country accelerated the Soviet people's sociological transition from poverty to relative plenty when politically illiterate peasants passed from Tsarist [[serfdom]] to self-determination and became politically aware urban citizens.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=62}} The Marxist–Leninist economic régime modernised Russia from the illiterate, peasant society characteristic of monarchy to the [[Literacy|literate]], socialist society of educated farmers and industrial workers. Industrialisation led to a massive [[urbanisation]] in the country.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=62}} [[Unemployment]] was virtually eliminated in the country during the 1930s.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=62}} However, this rapid industrialisation also resulted in the [[Soviet famine of 1930–1933]] that killed millions.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Courtois |first1=Stéphane |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H1jsgYCoRioC&pg=PA206 |title=Livre noir du Communisme: crimes, terreur, répression |language=fr |trans-title=Black Book of Communism: crimes, terror, repression |last2=Mark Kramer |date=15 October 1999 |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |isbn=978-0-674-07608-2 |page=206 |access-date=25 May 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200622213827/https://books.google.com/books?id=H1jsgYCoRioC&pg=PA206 |archive-date=22 June 2020 |url-status=live |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9780230273979 |title=The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933 |year=2010 |language=en |doi=10.1057/9780230273979 |last1=Wheatcroft |first1=Stephen G. |author1-link=Stephen G. Wheatcroft |last2=Davies |first2=R. W. |author2-link=R. W. Davies |isbn=978-0-230-27397-9 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180611151537/https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9780230273979 |archive-date=11 June 2018}}</ref>

Social developments in the Soviet Union included the relinquishment of the relaxed social control and allowance of experimentation under Lenin to Stalin's promotion of a rigid and authoritarian society based upon discipline, mixing traditional Russian values with Stalin's interpretation of Marxism.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=63}} Organised religion was repressed, especially minority religious groups.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=63}} Education was transformed. Under Lenin, the education system allowed relaxed discipline in schools that became based upon Marxist theory, but Stalin reversed this in 1934 with a conservative approach taken with the reintroduction of formal learning, the use of examinations and grades, the assertion of full authority of the teacher and the introduction of school uniforms.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=63}} Art and culture became strictly regulated under the principles of [[socialist realism]] and Russian traditions that Stalin admired were allowed to continue.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=63}}

Foreign policy in the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1941 resulted in substantial changes in the Soviet Union's approach to its foreign policy.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=73}} In 1933, the Marxist–Leninist geopolitical perspective was that the Soviet Union was surrounded by capitalist and anti-communist enemies. As a result, the election of [[Adolf Hitler]] and his [[Nazi Party]] government in Germany initially caused the Soviet Union to sever diplomatic relations that had been established in the 1920s. In 1938, Stalin accommodated the Nazis and the anti-communist West by not defending Czechoslovakia, allowing Hitler's threat of pre-emptive war for the [[Sudetenland]] to annex the land and "rescue the oppressed German peoples" living in Czecho.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=74}}

To challenge [[Nazi Germany]]'s bid for European empire and hegemony, Stalin promoted [[Anti-fascism|anti-fascist]] front organisations to encourage European socialists and democrats to join the Soviet communists to fight throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, creating agreements with France to challenge Germany.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=74}} After Germany and Britain signed the [[Munich Agreement]] (29 September 1938) which allowed the [[German occupation of Czechoslovakia]] (1938–1945), Stalin adopted pro-German policies for the Soviet Union's dealings with Nazi Germany.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=74}} In 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany agreed to the [[Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact|Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics]] (Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, 23 August 1939) and to jointly [[Invasion of Poland|invade and partition Poland]], by way of which Nazi Germany started the Second World War (1 September 1939).{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=74–75}}

In the 1941–1942 period of the [[Great Patriotic War]], the [[German invasion of the Soviet Union]] (Operation Barbarossa, 22 June 1941) was ineffectively opposed by the [[Red Army]], who were poorly led, ill-trained and under-equipped. As a result, they fought poorly and suffered great losses of soldiers (killed, wounded and captured). The weakness of the Red Army was partly consequence of the [[Great Purge]] (1936–1938) of senior officers and career soldiers whom Stalin considered politically unreliable.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=80}} Strategically, the [[Wehrmacht]]'s extensive and effective attack threatened the territorial integrity of the Soviet Union and the political integrity of Stalin's model of a communist state, when the Nazis were initially welcomed as liberators by the anti-communist and nationalist populations in the [[Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic]], the [[Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic]] and the [[Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic]].

The anti-Soviet nationalists' [[Collaborationism|collaboration]] with the Nazi's lasted until the {{lang|de|[[Schutzstaffel]]}} and the {{lang|de|[[Einsatzgruppen]]}} began their {{lang|de|[[Lebensraum]]}} killings of the Jewish populations, the local communists, the civil and community leaders—the [[Holocaust]] meant to realise the Nazi German colonisation of Bolshevik Russia. In response, Stalin ordered the Red Army to fight a [[total war]] against the Germanic invaders who would exterminate Slavic Russia. Hitler's attack against the Soviet Union (Nazi Germany's erstwhile ally) realigned Stalin's political priorities, from the repression of internal enemies to the existential defence against external attack. The pragmatic Stalin then entered the Soviet Union to the [[Allies of World War II|Grand Alliance]], a common front against the [[Axis powers]] (Nazi Germany, [[Kingdom of Italy under Fascism (1922–1943)|Fascist Italy]] and [[Imperial Japan]]).

[[File:Long-march.jpg|thumb|A [[Chinese Communist Party]] cadre-leader addresses survivors of the 1934–1935 [[Long March]].]]
In the continental European countries occupied by the [[Axis powers]], the native communist party usually led the armed resistance ([[guerrilla warfare]] and [[urban guerrilla warfare]]) against fascist military occupation. In Mediterranean Europe, the communist [[Yugoslav Partisans]] led by [[Josip Broz Tito]] effectively resisted the German Nazi and Italian Fascist occupation. In the 1943–1944 period, the Yugoslav Partisans liberated territories with Red Army assistance and established the communist political authority that became the [[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia]]. To end the Imperial Japanese occupation of China in continental Asia, Stalin ordered [[Mao Zedong]] and the [[Chinese Communist Party]] to temporarily cease the [[Chinese Civil War]] (1927–1949) against [[Chiang Kai-shek]] and the anti-communist [[Kuomintang]] as the [[Second United Front]] in the [[Second Sino-Japanese War]] (1937–1945).

In 1943, the Red Army began to repel the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, especially at the [[Battle of Stalingrad]] (23 August 1942 – 2 February 1943) and at the [[Battle of Kursk]] (5 July – 23 August 1943). The Red Army then repelled the Nazi and Fascist occupation armies from Eastern Europe until the Red Army decisively defeated Nazi Germany in the [[Battle of Berlin|Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation]] (16 April–2 May 1945).{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=81}} On concluding the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945), the Soviet Union was a military superpower with a say in determining the geopolitical order of the world.{{sfn|Lee|2000|p=81}} Apart from the failed [[Third Period]] policy in the early 1930s, Marxist–Leninists played an important role in [[anti-fascist]] [[resistance movement]]s, with the Soviet Union contributing to the Allied victory in World War II. In accordance with the three-power [[Yalta Agreement]] (4–11 February 1945), the Soviet Union purged native fascist [[Collaborationism|collaborators]] and these in [[Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy|collaboration with the Axis Powers]] from the Eastern European countries occupied by the Axis Powers and installed native Marxist–Leninist governments.

=== Cold War, de-Stalinisation and Maoism (1944–1953) ===
{{Further|Cold War|De-Stalinization|Maoism}}
[[File:Yalta Conference (Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin) (B&W).jpg|thumb|left|[[Winston Churchill]], [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] and Stalin established the [[Aftermath of World War II|post-war order of the world]] with geopolitical [[spheres of influence]] under their [[hegemony]] at the [[Yalta Conference]].]]
Upon Allied victory concluding the Second World War (1939–1945), the members of the [[Grand Alliance (World War II)|Grand Alliance]] resumed their pre-war [[geopolitical]] rivalries and ideological tensions which disunity broke their [[anti-fascist]] wartime alliance through the concept of [[totalitarianism]] into the anti-communist [[Western Bloc]] and the Marxist–Leninist [[Eastern Bloc]].<ref>{{cite book |first=Brook |last=Defty |year=2007 |title=Britain, America and Anti-Communist Propaganda 1945–1953 |others=Chapters 2–5 |publisher=The Information Research Department}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Siegel |first=Achim |year=1998 |title=The Totalitarian Paradigm after the End of Communism: Towards a Theoretical Reassessment |publisher=Rodopi |pages=200 |isbn=978-90-420-0552-5 |quote=Concepts of totalitarianism became most widespread at the height of the Cold War. Since the late 1940s, especially since the Korean War, they were condensed into a far-reaching, even hegemonic, ideology, by which the political elites of the Western world tried to explain and even to justify the Cold War constellation.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Guilhot |first=Nicolas |year=2005 |title=The Democracy Makers: Human Rights and International Order |publisher=[[Columbia University Press]] |pages=33 |isbn=978-0-231-13124-7 |quote=The opposition between the West and Soviet totalitarianism was often presented as an opposition both moral and epistemological between truth and falsehood. The democratic, social, and economic credentials of the Soviet Union were typically seen as 'lies' and as the product of a deliberate and multiform propaganda. ... In this context, the concept of totalitarianism was itself an asset. As it made possible the conversion of prewar anti-fascism into postwar anti-communism.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Caute |first=David |author-link=David Caute |year=2010 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ttmCWwuxX8cC&pg=PA95 |title=Politics and the Novel during the Cold War |publisher=[[Transaction Publishers]] |pages=95–99 |isbn=978-1-4128-3136-9 |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=14 April 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210414175538/https://books.google.com/books?id=ttmCWwuxX8cC&pg=PA95 |url-status=live |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Reisch |first=George A. |year=2005 |title=How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science: To the Icy Slopes of Logic |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |pages=153–154 |isbn=978-0-521-54689-8}}</ref> The renewed competition for geopolitical [[hegemony]] resulted in the bi-polar [[Cold War]] (1947–1991), a protracted state of tension (military and diplomatic) between the United States and the Soviet Union which often threatened a Soviet–American [[nuclear war]], but it usually featured [[proxy war]]s in the Third World.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Cook |editor-first=Chris |date=1998 |title=Dictionary of Historical Terms |edition=2nd |pages=69–70 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-0-333-67347-8}}</ref> With the end of the Grand Alliance and the start of the Cold War, anti-fascism became part of both the official ideology and language of communist states, especially in [[Socialist Unity Party of Germany|East Germany]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Richter |first=Michael |year=2006 |chapter=Die doppelte Diktatur: Erfahrungen mit Diktatur in der DDR und Auswirkungen auf das Verhältnis zur Diktatur heute. |trans-chapter=The double dictatorship: experiences with dictatorship in the GDR and effects on the relationship to the dictatorship today. |editor1-last=Besier |editor1-first=Gerhard |editor2-last=Stoklosa |editor2-first=Katarzyna |title=Lasten diktatorischer Vergangenheit – Herausforderungen demokratischer Gegenwart |language=de |trans-title=Burdens of the dictatorial past – challenges of the democratic present |publisher=LIT Verlag |pages=195–208 |isbn=978-3-8258-8789-6}}</ref> ''[[Fascist (epithet)|Fascist]]'' and ''anti-fascism'', with the latter used to mean a general [[anti-capitalist]] struggle against the [[Western world]] and [[NATO]], became epithets widely used by Marxist–Leninists to smear their opponents, including [[democratic socialists]], [[libertarian socialists]], [[social democrats]] and other [[anti-Stalinist left]]ists.<ref>{{cite book |last=Malycha |first=Andreas |date=2000 |title=Die SED: Geschichte ihrer Stalinisierung 1946–1953 |language=de |trans-title=The SED: The History of its Stalinization |publisher=Schöningh |isbn=978-3-506-75331-1}}</ref>

The events that precipitated the Cold War in Europe were the Soviet and Yugoslav, Bulgarian and Albanian military interventions to the [[Greek Civil War]] (1944–1949) on behalf of the [[Communist Party of Greece]];{{sfn|Kohn|2007|p=216}} and the [[Berlin Blockade]] (1948–1949) by the Soviet Union. The event that precipitated the Cold War in continental Asia was the resumption of the [[Chinese Civil War]] (1927–1949) fought between the anti-communist [[Kuomintang]] and the [[Chinese Communist Party]]. After military defeat exiled Generalissimo [[Chiang Kai-shek]] and his Kuomintang nationalist government to Formosa island ([[Taiwan]]), Mao Zedong established the [[People's Republic of China]] on 1 October 1949.{{sfn|Kohn|2007|p=121–122}}

[[File:Josip Broz Tito uniform portrait.jpg|thumb|[[Josip Broz Tito]]'s rejection in 1948 of Soviet hegemony upon the [[Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia]] provoked Stalin to expel the Yugoslav leader and Yugoslavia from the [[Eastern Bloc]].]]
In the late 1940s, the [[geopolitics]] of the Eastern Bloc countries under Soviet predominance featured an official-and-personal style of socialist diplomacy that failed Stalin and Tito when Tito refused to subordinating Yugoslavia to the Soviet Union. In 1948, circumstance and cultural personality aggravated the matter into the [[Tito–Stalin split|Yugoslav–Soviet split]] (1948–1955) that resulted from Tito's rejection of Stalin's demand to subordinate the [[Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia]] to the geopolitical agenda (economic and military) of the Soviet Union, i.e. Tito at Stalin's disposal. Stalin punished Tito's refusal by denouncing him as an ideological revisionist of Marxism–Leninism; by denouncing Yugoslavia's practice of [[Titoism]] as socialism deviated from the cause of [[world communism]]; and by expelling the [[Communist Party of Yugoslavia]] from the [[Communist Information Bureau]] (Cominform). The break from the Eastern Bloc allowed the development of a socialism with Yugoslav characteristics which allowed doing business with the capitalist West to develop the [[socialist economy]] and the establishment of Yugoslavia's diplomatic and commercial relations with countries of the Eastern Bloc and the Western Bloc. Yugoslavia's international relations matured into the [[Non-Aligned Movement]] (1961) of countries without political allegiance to any [[power bloc]].

At the death of Stalin in 1953, [[Nikita Khrushchev]] became leader of the Soviet Union and of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and then consolidated an anti-Stalinist government. In a secret meeting at the [[20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union]], Khrushchev denounced Stalin and [[Stalinism]] in the speech ''[[On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences]]'' (25 February 1956) in which he specified and condemned Stalin's dictatorial excesses and abuses of power such as the [[Great purge]] (1936–1938) and the [[cult of personality]]. Khrushchev introduced the [[de-Stalinisation]] of the party and of the Soviet Union. He realised this with the dismantling of the Gulag archipelago of forced-labour camps and freeing the prisoners as well as allowing Soviet civil society greater political freedom of expression, especially for public intellectuals of the [[intelligentsia]] such as the novelist [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]], whose literature obliquely criticised Stalin and the Stalinist [[police state]]. De-Stalinisation also ended Stalin's national-purpose policy of [[socialism in one country]] and was replaced with [[proletarian internationalism]], by way of which Khrushchev re-committed the Soviet Union to [[permanent revolution]] to realise [[world communism]]. In that geopolitical vein, Khrushchev presented de-Stalinisation as the restoration of Leninism as the state ideology of the Soviet Union.<ref>{{cite book |last=Powaski |first=Ronald E. |author-link=Ronald E. Powaski |date=1997 |title=The Cold War: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1917–1991 |location=Oxford |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=978-0-19-507851-0}}</ref>

{{Maoism sidebar}}
In the 1950s, the de-Stalinisation of the Soviet Union was ideological bad news for the People's Republic of China because Soviet and Russian interpretations and applications of Leninism and orthodox Marxism contradicted the Sinified Marxism–Leninism of Mao Zedong—his Chinese adaptations of Stalinist interpretation and praxis for establishing socialism in China. To realise that leap of Marxist faith in the development of Chinese socialism, the Chinese Communist Party developed [[Maoism]] as the official state ideology. As the specifically Chinese development of Marxism–Leninism, Maoism illuminated the cultural differences between the European-Russian and the Asian-Chinese interpretations and practical applications of Marxism–Leninism in each country. The political differences then provoked geopolitical, ideological and nationalist tensions, which derived from the different stages of development, between the urban society of the industrialised Soviet Union and the agricultural society of the pre-industrial China. The theory versus praxis arguments escalated to theoretic disputes about Marxist–Leninist revisionism and provoked the [[Sino-Soviet split]] (1956–1966) and the two countries broke their international relations (diplomatic, political, cultural and economic).{{r|World History 2000. p. 769}} China's [[Great Leap Forward]], an idealistic massive reform project, resulted in [[Great Chinese Famine|an estimated 15 to 55 million deaths]] between 1959 and 1961, mostly from starvation.<ref name="nyt">{{cite news |last=Mirsky |first=Jonathan |author-link=Jonathan Mirsky |date=9 December 2012 |title=Unnatural Disaster |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/books/review/tombstone-the-great-chinese-famine-1958-1962-by-yang-jisheng.html?nl=books&emc=edit_bk_20121207 |access-date=7 December 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121211072252/https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/books/review/tombstone-the-great-chinese-famine-1958-1962-by-yang-jisheng.html?nl=books&emc=edit_bk_20121207 |archive-date=11 December 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Holmes |first=Leslie |title=Communism: A Very Short Introduction |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |date=2009 |isbn=978-0-19-955154-5 |page=32 |quote=Most estimates of the number of Chinese dead are in the range of 15 to 30 million.}}</ref>

In Eastern Asia, the Cold War produced the [[Korean War]] (1950–1953), the first proxy war between the Eastern Bloc and the Western Bloc, resulted from dual origins, namely the nationalist Koreans' post-war resumption of their [[Korean Civil War]] and the imperial war for regional hegemony sponsored by the United States and the Soviet Union.{{sfn|Kohn|2007|p=291–292}} The international response to the North Korean invasion of South Korea was realised by the [[United Nations Security Council]], who voted for war despite the absent Soviet Union and authorised an international military expedition to intervene, expel the northern invaders from the south of Korea and restore the geopolitical ''status quo ante'' of the Soviet and American [[division of Korea]] at the 38th Parallel of global latitude. Consequent to Chinese military intervention in behalf of North Korea, the magnitude of the [[infantry]] warfare reached operational and geographic [[stalemate]] (July 1951 – July 1953). Afterwards, the shooting war was ended with the [[Korean Armistice Agreement]] (27 July 1953); and the superpower Cold War in Asia then resumed as the [[Korean Demilitarised Zone]].

[[File:John Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev 1961.jpg|thumb|The [[Sino–Soviet split]] facilitated Russian and Chinese rapprochement with the United States and expanded East–West geopolitics into a tri-polar [[Cold War]] that allowed Premier [[Nikita Khrushchev]] to meet with President [[John F. Kennedy]] in June 1961.]]
Consequent to the Sino-Soviet split, the pragmatic China established politics of [[détente]] with the United States in an effort to publicly challenge the Soviet Union for leadership of the international Marxist–Leninist movement. Mao Zedong's pragmatism permitted geopolitical rapprochement and eventually facilitated President [[Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China]] which subsequently ended the policy of the existence to [[Two Chinas]] when the United States sponsored the People's Republic of China to replace the Republic of China (Taiwan) as the representative of the Chinese people at the United Nations. In the due course of Sino-American rapprochement, China also assumed membership in the [[Security Council]] of the United Nations.{{r|World History 2000. p. 769}} In the post-Mao period of Sino-American détente, the [[Deng Xiaoping]] government (1982–1987) affected policies of [[Economic liberalism|economic liberalisation]] that allowed continual growth for the Chinese economy. The ideological justification is [[socialism with Chinese characteristics]], the Chinese adaptation of Marxism–Leninism.<ref>{{cite book |last=Priestland |first=David |author-link=David Priestland |date=2009 |title=The Red Flag: A History of Communism |pages=502–503 |publisher=[[Grove Press]] |isbn=978-0-8021-4512-3}}</ref>

===Third World conflicts (1954–1979)===
{{Further|Consolidation of the Cuban Revolution|Indochina Wars|Central American crisis|Decolonisation of Africa}}
[[File:CheyFidel.jpg|thumb|left|[[Che Guevara]] and [[Fidel Castro]] (leader of the Republic of Cuba from 1959 until 2008) led the [[Cuban Revolution]] to victory in 1959.]]
Communist revolution erupted in the Americas in this period, including revolutions in Bolivia, Cuba, El Salvador, Grenada, Nicaragua, Peru and Uruguay. The [[Cuban Revolution]] (1953–1959) led by [[Fidel Castro]] and [[Che Guevara]] deposed the military dictatorship (1952–1959) of [[Fulgencio Batista]] and established the [[Republic of Cuba]], a state formally recognised by the Soviet Union.{{sfn|Kohn|2007|p=148}} In response, the United States launched a coup against the Castro government in 1961. However, the CIA's unsuccessful [[Bay of Pigs invasion]] (17 April 1961) by anti-communist Cuban exiles impelled the Republic of Cuba to side with the Soviet Union in the geopolitics of the bipolar Cold War. The [[Cuban Missile Crisis]] (22–28 October 1962) occurred when the United States opposed Cuba being armed with nuclear missiles by the Soviet Union. After a stalemate confrontation, the United States and the Soviet Union jointly resolved the nuclear-missile crisis by respectively removing United States missiles from Turkey and Italy and Soviet missiles from Cuba.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Cook |editor-first=Chris |date=1998 |title=Dictionary of Historical Terms |edition=2nd |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |pages=88–89 |isbn=978-0-333-67347-8}}</ref>

Both Bolivia, Canada and Uruguay faced Marxist–Leninist revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. In Bolivia, [[Ñancahuazú Guerrilla|this included Che Guevara as a leader until being killed there by government forces.]] In 1970, the [[October Crisis]] (5 October – 28 December 1970) occurred in Canada, a brief revolution in the province of [[Quebec]], where the actions of the Marxist–Leninist and separatist [[Quebec Liberation Front]] (FLQ) featured the kidnap of James Cross, the British Trade Commissioner in Canada; and the killing of [[Pierre Laporte]], the Quebec government minister. The political manifesto of the FLQ condemned English-Canadian imperialism in French Quebec and called for an independent, socialist Quebec. The Canadian government's harsh response included the suspension of civil liberties in Quebec and compelled the FLQ leaders' flight to Cuba. Uruguay faced Marxist–Leninist revolution from the [[Tupamaros]] movement from the 1960s to the 1970s.

[[File:Daniel Ortega (cropped).jpg|thumb|upright|[[Daniel Ortega]] led the [[Sandinista National Liberation Front]] to victory in the [[Nicaraguan Revolution]] in 1979.]]
In 1979, the [[Sandinista National Liberation Front]] (FSLN) led by [[Daniel Ortega]] won the [[Nicaraguan Revolution]] (1961–1990) against the government of [[Anastasio Somoza Debayle]] (1 December 1974 – 17 July 1979) to establish a socialist Nicaragua. Within months, the government of [[Ronald Reagan]] sponsored the counter-revolutionary [[Contras]] in the secret [[Contra War]] (1979–1990) against the Sandinista government. In 1989, the Contra War concluded with the signing of the Tela Accord at the port of Tela, Honduras. The Tela Accord required the subsequent, voluntary demobilisation of the Contra guerrilla armies and the FSLN army.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ucdp.uu.se/gpdatabase/gpcountry.php?id=117&regionSelect=4-Central_Americas |title=Nicaragua |website=[[Uppsala Conflict Data Program]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160331194454/http://www.ucdp.uu.se/gpdatabase/gpcountry.php?id=117&regionSelect=4-Central_Americas |archive-date=31 March 2016 |url-status=dead}}</ref> In 1990, a second national election installed to government a majority of non-Sandinista political parties, to whom the FSLN handed political power. Since 2006, the FSLN has returned to government, winning every legislative and presidential election in the process (2006, 2011 and 2016).

The [[Salvadoran Civil War]] (1979–1992) featured the popularly supported [[Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front]], an organisation of left-wing parties fighting against the right-wing military government of El Salvador. In 1983, the [[United States invasion of Grenada]] (25–29 October 1983) thwarted the assumption of power by the elected government of the [[New Jewel Movement]] (1973–1983), a Marxist–Leninist vanguard party led by [[Maurice Bishop]].

[[File:NLF Main Force troops.jpg|thumb|left|Guerrillas of the [[Viet Cong]] during the [[Vietnam War]]]]
In Asia, the [[Vietnam War]] (1955–1975) was the second East–West war fought during the Cold War (1947–1991). In the [[First Indochina War]] (1946–1954), the communist [[Việt Minh]] led by [[Ho Chi Minh]] defeated the French colonial re-establishment and its [[State of Vietnam|native associated state]] in Vietnam. To fill the geopolitical power vacuum caused by [[1954 Geneva Conference|French defeat in southeast Asia]], Vietnam was divided into South Vietnam and North Vietnam in 1954, communists took power in the North and pro-French government took power in the South, and the United States then became the Western power supporting the [[South Vietnam|Republic of Vietnam]] (1955–1975) in the South headed by president [[Ngo Dinh Diem]], an [[anti-communist]] politician.{{sfn|Kohn|2007|p=582}} [[China]] and the [[Soviet Union]] helped the North. Despite possessing military superiority, the United States failed to safeguard South Vietnam from the [[NLF and PAVN battle tactics|guerrilla warfare of the Viet Cong]] sponsored by North Vietnam. On 30 January 1968, North Vietnam launched the [[Tet Offensive]] (the General Offensive and Uprising of Tet Mau Than, 1968). Although a military failure for the guerrillas and the army, it was a successful [[psychological warfare]] operation that decisively turned international public opinion against the United States intervention to the Vietnamese civil war, with the military withdrawal of the United States from Vietnam in 1973 and the subsequent and consequent [[Fall of Saigon]] to the North Vietnamese army on 30 April 1975.{{sfn|Kohn|2007|p=584–585}}

With the end of the Vietnam War, Vietnam was reunited under Marxist–Leninist government in 1976. Marxist–Leninist regimes were also established in Vietnam's neighbour states. This included [[Kampuchea]] and [[Laos]]. Consequent to the [[Cambodian Civil War]] (1968–1975), a coalition composed of Prince [[Norodom Sihanouk]] (1941–1955), the native Cambodian Marxist–Leninists and the Maoist [[Khmer Rouge]] (1951–1999) led by [[Pol Pot]] established [[Democratic Kampuchea]] (1975–1982), a communist state led by [[Communist Party of Kampuchea|Angkar]] that featured [[Class conflict|class warfare]] to restructure the society of old Cambodia and to be effected and realised with the abolishment of [[money]] and private property, the outlawing of religion, the killing of the [[intelligentsia]] and compulsory manual labour for the [[middle class]]es by way of death-squad [[state terrorism]].<ref name="Bullock, Allan 1999 p. 458">{{cite book |editor1-last=Bullock |editor1-first=Allan |editor1-link=Alan Bullock |editor2-last=Trombley |editor2-first=Stephen |date=1999 |title=The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought |edition=3rd |pages=458 |publisher=HarperCollins |isbn=978-0-00-686383-0}}</ref> To eliminate Western cultural influence, Kampuchea expelled all foreigners and effected the destruction of the urban [[bourgeoisie]] of old Cambodia, first by displacing the population of the capital city, Phnom Penh; and then by displacing the national populace to work farmlands to increase food supplies. Meanwhile, the Khmer Rouge purged Kampuchea of internal enemies (social class and political, cultural and ethnic) at the [[Khmer Rouge Killing Fields|Killing Fields]], the scope of which became [[crimes against humanity]] for the deaths of 2,700,000 people by mass murder and [[genocide]].{{r|Bullock, Allan 1999 p. 458}}<ref name="dict 192193">{{cite book |editor-last=Cook |editor-first=Chris |date=1998 |title=Dictionary of Historical Terms |edition=2nd |pages=192–193 |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |isbn=978-0-333-67347-8}}</ref> That social restructuring of Cambodia into Kampuchea included [[Cambodian genocide#Vietnamese|attacks against the Vietnamese ethnic minority of the country]] which aggravated the historical, ethnic rivalries between the Viet and the Khmer peoples. Beginning in September 1977, Kampuchea and the [[Socialist Republic of Vietnam]] continually engaged in border clashes. In 1978, [[Cambodian–Vietnamese War|Vietnam invaded Kampuchea]] and captured Phnom Penh in January 1979, [[Khmer Rouge#Fall|deposed the Maoist Khmer Rouge]] from government by the proclamation of the [[People's Republic of Kampuchea]] and established the Cambodia Liberation Front for National Renewal as the government of Cambodia, the [[Cambodian People's Party|Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party]] (KPRP) also came to power in January 1979.{{r|dict 192193}}

[[File:DurbanSign1989 (cropped).jpg|thumb|In [[Apartheid South Africa]], a trilingual sign in English, Afrikaans and Zulu enforces the segregation of a Natal beach as exclusively "for the sole use of members of the white race group." The Afrikaner [[National Party (South Africa)|Nationalist Party]] cited anti-communism as a reason for the treatment of the black and coloured populations of South Africa.]]
A new front of Marxist–Leninist revolution erupted in Africa between 1961 and 1987. [[Angola]], [[Benin]], [[Republic of the Congo|Congo]], [[Ethiopia]], [[Mozambique]] and [[Somalia]] became communist states governed by their respective native peoples during the 1968–1980 period. Marxist–Leninist guerrillas fought the [[Portuguese Colonial War]] (1961–1974) in three countries, namely Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique.{{sfn|Kohn|2007|p=25–26}} In Ethiopia, a Marxist–Leninist revolution deposed the monarchy of Emperor [[Haile Selassie]] (1930–1974) and established the Derg government (1974–1987) of the [[Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia]]. In [[Rhodesia]] (1965–1979), [[Robert Mugabe]] led the [[Rhodesian Bush War|Zimbabwe War of Liberation]] (1964–1979) that deposed white-minority rule and then established the Republic of Zimbabwe. In the [[Seychelles]], [[France-Albert René]] ruled over a Marxist–Leninist one party system from 1977 to 1991. In the Gambia, Kukoi Samba Sanyang initiated a Marxist–Leninist coup in 1981 (the initiative failed and he turned to mercenary activity abroad). In 1983, in [[Republic of Upper Volta|Upper Volta]], [[Thomas Sankara]] established a military and peasant based version of auto-centered Marxism–Leninism. Sankara refused aid and also refused to pay the country's foreign debts. He renamed Upper Volta 'Burkina Faso' (the land of upright people). His former friend and second in command, [[Blaise Compaoré]], ordered Sankara's murder in 1987, ending the Burkinabe social experiment.

In 1986, [[Yoweri Museveni]]'s NRM force established "the Movement system," a political system where elections are held but no political parties are allowed to exist.<ref>Adam Mayer: Military Marxism: Africa's Contribution to Revolutionary Theory, 1957-2023, Lexington Books, Lanham, 2025, pp. 36-96</ref> 

In [[Apartheid South Africa]] (1948–1994), the Afrikaner government of the [[National Party (South Africa)|Nationalist Party]] caused much geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union because of the Afrikaners' violent social control and political repression of the black and coloured populations of South Africa exercised under the guise of anti-communism and national security. The Soviet Union officially supported the overthrow of apartheid while the West and the United States in particular maintained official neutrality on the matter. In the 1976–1977 period of the Cold War, the United States and other Western countries found it morally untenable to politically support Apartheid South Africa, especially when the [[Afrikaner]] government killed 176 people (students and adults) in the police suppression of the [[Soweto uprising]] (June 1976), a political protest against Afrikaner [[cultural imperialism]] upon the non-white peoples of South Africa, specifically the imposition of the Germanic language of [[Afrikaans]] as the [[standard language]] for education which black South Africans were required to speak when addressing white people and Afrikaners; and the police assassination of [[Stephen Biko]] (September 1977), a politically moderate leader of the [[internal resistance to apartheid]] in South Africa.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Cook |editor-first=Chris |date=1998 |title=Dictionary of Historical Terms |edition=2nd |pages=13–14 |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |isbn=978-0-333-67347-8}}</ref>

Under President [[Jimmy Carter]], the West joined the Soviet Union and others in enacting sanctions against weapons trade and weapons-grade material to South Africa. However, forceful actions by the United States against Apartheid South Africa were diminished under President Reagan as the [[Reagan administration]] feared the rise of revolution in South Africa as had happened in Zimbabwe against white minority rule. In 1979, the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan to establish a [[Democratic Republic of Afghanistan|communist state]] (existed until 1992), although the act was seen as an invasion by the West which responded to the Soviet military actions by boycotting the [[1980 Summer Olympics|Moscow Olympics of 1980]] and providing clandestine support to the [[Mujahideen]], including [[Osama bin Laden]], as a means to challenge the Soviet Union. The war became a Soviet equivalent of the Vietnam War to the United States and it remained a stalemate throughout the 1980s.

=== Reform and collapse (1979–1991) ===
{{Further|Revolutions of 1989|Dissolution of the Soviet Union}}
[[File:President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev at the first Summit in Geneva, Switzerland.jpg|thumb|left|Soviet General Secretary [[Mikhail Gorbachev]], who sought to end the Cold War between the Soviet-led [[Warsaw Pact]] and the United States-led [[NATO]] and its other Western allies, in a meeting with President [[Ronald Reagan]]]]
Social resistance to the policies of Marxist–Leninist regimes in Eastern Europe accelerated in strength with the rise of the [[Solidarity (Polish trade union)|Solidarity]], the first non-Marxist–Leninist controlled trade union in the Warsaw Pact that was formed in the [[People's Republic of Poland]] in 1980.

In 1985, [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] rose to power in the Soviet Union and began policies of radical political reform involving political liberalisation, called [[perestroika]] and [[glasnost]]. Gorbachev's policies were designed at dismantling authoritarian elements of the state that were developed by Stalin, aiming for a return to a supposed ideal communist state that retained one-party structure while allowing the democratic election of competing candidates within the party for political office. Gorbachev also aimed to seek détente with the West and end the Cold War that was no longer economically sustainable to be pursued by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union and the United States under President [[George H. W. Bush]] joined in pushing for the dismantlement of apartheid and oversaw the dismantlement of South African colonial rule over [[Namibia]].

[[File:00 Páneurópai Piknik emlékhely.jpg|thumb|upright|Logo of the [[Pan-European Picnic]], a peace demonstration in 1989]]
Meanwhile, the Central and Eastern European communist states politically deteriorated in response to the success of the Polish Solidarity movement and the possibility of Gorbachev-style political liberalisation. In 1989, revolts began across Central and Eastern Europe and China against Marxist–Leninist regimes. In China, the government refused to negotiate with student protestors, resulting in the [[1989 Tiananmen Square massacre]] that stopped the revolts by force. The [[Pan-European Picnic]], which was based on an idea by [[Otto von Habsburg]] to test the reaction of the Soviet Union, then triggered a peaceful chain reaction in August 1989, at the end of which there was no longer East Germany and the [[Iron Curtain]] and the Marxist–Leninist [[Eastern Bloc]] had collapsed. On the one hand, as a result of the Pan-European Picnic, the Marxist–Leninist rulers of the Eastern Bloc did not act decisively, but cracks appeared between them and on the other hand the media-informed Central and Eastern European population now noticed a steady loss of power in their governments.<ref>{{cite news |first=Hilde |last=Szabo |title=Die Berliner Mauer begann im Burgenland zu bröckeln |language=de |trans-title=The Berlin Wall began to crumble in Burgenland |work=[[Wiener Zeitung]] |date=16 August 1999}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |first=Otmar |last=Lahodynsky |title=Paneuropäisches Picknick: Die Generalprobe für den Mauerfall |language=de |trans-title=Pan-European picnic: the dress rehearsal for the fall of the Berlin Wall |work=Profil |date=9 August 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |first=Miklós |last=Németh |author-link=Miklós Németh |title=Interview |publisher=ORF (broadcaster) |work=Report |date=25 June 2019}}</ref>

[[File:Thefalloftheberlinwall1989.JPG|thumb|left|The fall of the [[Berlin Wall]] in 1989]]
The revolts culminated with the revolt in [[East Germany]] against the Marxist–Leninist regime of [[Erich Honecker]] and demands for the [[Berlin Wall]] to be torn down. The event in East Germany developed into a popular mass revolt with sections of the Berlin Wall being torn down and East and West Berliners uniting. Gorbachev's refusal to use Soviet forces based in East Germany to suppress the revolt was seen as a sign that the Cold War had ended. Honecker was pressured to resign from office and the new government committed itself to reunification with West Germany. The Marxist–Leninist regime of [[Nicolae Ceaușescu]] in [[Socialist Republic of Romania|Romania]] was forcefully overthrown in 1989 and Ceaușescu was executed. Almost Eastern Bloc regimes also fell during the [[Revolutions of 1989]] (1988–1993).

Unrest and eventual collapse of Marxism–Leninism also occurred in [[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]], although for different reasons than those of the Warsaw Pact. The death of [[Josip Broz Tito]] in 1980 and the subsequent vacuum of strong leadership amidst an economic crisis allowed the rise of rival ethnic nationalism in the multinational country. The first leader to exploit such nationalism for political purposes was [[Slobodan Milošević]], who used it to seize power as [[president of Serbia]] and demanded concessions to Serbia and [[Serbian nationalism|Serbs]] by the other republics in the Yugoslav federation. This resulted in a surge of both [[Croatian nationalism]] and [[Slovene nationalism]] in response and the collapse of the [[League of Communists of Yugoslavia]] in 1990, the victory of nationalists in multi-party elections in most of Yugoslavia's constituent republics and eventually [[Yugoslav Wars|civil war between the various nationalities]] beginning in 1991. Yugoslavia was dissolved in 1992.

The Soviet Union itself collapsed between 1990 and 1991, with a rise of secessionist nationalism and a political power dispute between Gorbachev and [[Boris Yeltsin]], the new leader of the [[Russian Federation]]. With the Soviet Union collapsing, Gorbachev prepared the country to become a loose federation of independent states called the [[Commonwealth of Independent States]]. Hardline Marxist–Leninist leaders in the military reacted to Gorbachev's policies with the [[August Coup]] of 1991 in which hardline Marxist–Leninist military leaders overthrew Gorbachev and seized control of the government. This regime only lasted briefly as widespread popular opposition erupted in street protests and refused to submit. Gorbachev was restored to power, but the various Soviet republics were now set for independence. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev officially announced the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ending the existence of the world's first Marxist–Leninist-led state.

=== Post-Cold War era (1991–present) ===
[[File:Map of Marxist–Leninist states.png|thumb|upright=1.35|Map of current and former Communist states, most of which followed, as party or state–party ideology, or were inspired by Marxist–Leninist ideology and development: {{legend|#8B2D2D|Current}} {{legend|#FF5253|Former}}]]
[[File:Xi Jinping at the APEC summit (2022).jpg|thumb|[[Xi Jinping]], [[General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party]] since 2012]]
Since the fall of the Eastern European Marxist–Leninist regimes, the Soviet Union and a variety of African Marxist–Leninist regimes in 1991, only a few Marxist–Leninist parties remained in power. This include [[China]], [[Cuba]], [[Laos]], and [[Vietnam]]. Most Marxist–Leninist communist parties outside of these nations have fared relatively poorly in elections, although other parties have remained or became a [[List of anti-capitalist and communist parties with national parliamentary representation|relative strong]] force. In [[Russia]], the [[Communist Party of the Russian Federation]] has remained a significant political force, winning the [[1995 Russian legislative election]], almost winning the [[1996 Russian presidential election]], amid allegations of United States [[foreign electoral intervention]], and generally remaining the second most popular party. In [[Ukraine]], the [[Communist Party of Ukraine]] has also exerted influence and governed the country after the [[1994 Ukrainian parliamentary election]] and again after the [[2006 Ukrainian parliamentary election]]. The [[2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election]] following the [[Russo-Ukrainian War]] and the [[annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation]] resulted in the loss of its 32 members and no parliamentary representation.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/233404.html |title=People's Front 0.33% ahead of Poroshenko Bloc with all ballots counted in Ukraine elections – CEC |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141112013057/http://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/233404.html |archive-date=12 November 2014 |website=[[Interfax-Ukraine]] |date=8 November 2014 |access-date=6 December 2019}}</ref>

In Europe, several Marxist–Leninist parties remain strong. In [[Cyprus]], [[Dimitris Christofias]] of [[AKEL]] won the [[2008 Cypriot presidential election]]. AKEL has consistently been the first and third most popular party, winning the [[1970 Cypriot legislative election|1970]], [[1981 Cypriot legislative election|1981]], [[2001 Cypriot legislative election|2001]], and [[2006 Cypriot legislative election|2006]] legislative elections. In the [[Czech Republic]] and [[Portugal]], the [[Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia]] and the [[Portuguese Communist Party]] have been the second and fourth most popular parties until the [[2017 Czech legislative election|2017]] and [[2009 Portuguese legislative election|2009]] legislative elections, respectively. From 2017 to 2021, the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia supported the [[ANO 2011]]–[[Czech Social Democratic Party|ČSSD]] [[Andrej Babiš' Second Cabinet|minority government]] while the Portuguese Communist Party has provided [[confidence and supply]] along with the [[Ecologist Party "The Greens"]] and [[Left Bloc (Portugal)|Left Bloc]] to the [[Socialist Party (Portugal)|Socialist]] [[XXI Constitutional Government of Portugal|minority government]] from 2015 to 2019. In [[Greece]], the [[Communist Party of Greece]] has led an interim and later national unity government between 1989 and 1990, constantly remaining the third or fourth most popular party. In [[Moldova]], the [[Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova]] won the [[2001 Moldovan parliamentary election|2001]], [[2005 Moldovan parliamentary election|2005]], and [[April 2009 Moldovan parliamentary election|April 2009]] parliamentary elections. The April 2009 Moldovan elections results were [[April 2009 Moldovan parliamentary election protests|protested]] and the [[July 2009 Moldovan parliamentary election]] resulted in the formation of the [[Alliance for European Integration]]. Failing to elect the president, the [[2010 Moldovan parliamentary election|2020 Moldovan parliamentary election]] resulted in roughly the same representation in the parliament. According to Ion Marandici, a Moldovan political scientist, the Party of Communists differs from those in other countries because it managed to appeal to the ethnic minorities and the anti-Romanian Moldovans. After tracing the adaptation strategy of the party, he found confirming evidence for five of the factors contributing to its electoral success, already mentioned in the theoretical literature on former Marxist–Leninist parties, namely the economic situation, the weakness of the opponents, the electoral laws, the fragmentation of the political spectrum and the legacy of the old regime. However, Marandici identified seven additional explanatory factors at work in the Moldovan case, namely the foreign support for certain political parties, separatism, the appeal to the ethnic minorities, the alliance-building capacity, the reliance on the Soviet notion of the Moldovan identity, the state-building process and the control over a significant portion of the media. It is due to these seven additional factors that the party managed to consolidate and expand its constituency. In the [[post-Soviet states]], the Party of Communists are the only ones who have been in power for so long and did not change the name of the party.<ref>{{cite conference |url=http://ssrn.com/abstract=1809029 |title=The Factors Leading to the Electoral Success, Consolidation and Decline of the Moldovan Communists' Party During the Transition Period |last1=Marandici |first1=Ion |date=23 April 2010 |publisher=SSRN |conference=Midwestern Political Science Association Convention |access-date=6 December 2019 |archive-date=7 March 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210307211735/https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1809029 |url-status=live}}</ref>

In Asia, a number of Marxist–Leninist regimes and movements continue to exist. The People's Republic of China has continued the agenda of [[Deng Xiaoping]]'s 1980s reforms by initiating significant privatisation of the national economy. At the same time, no corresponding political liberalisation has occurred as happened in previous years to Eastern European countries. In the early 2010s, the [[Manmohan Singh]]-led Indian government depended on the parliamentary support of the [[Communist Party of India (Marxist)]] which has led state governments in [[Kerala]], [[Tripura]] and [[West Bengal]]. However, with the rise of [[Hindu nationalism]], the communists continued to shrink in India and are currently only take power in the state of Kerala.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Nathalène |first=Reynolds |title=Mid-life crisis or terminal decline? The Indian Communist movement from its foundation to-date |url=https://sdpi.org/sdpiweb/publications/files/mid-life-crisis-or-terminal-decline-the-indian-communist-movementfrom-its-foundation-to-date-(m25).pdf |access-date=2023-06-19 |website=SDPI}}</ref> The armed wing of the [[Communist Party of India (Maoist)]] has been fighting in the ongoing [[Naxalite–Maoist insurgency]] against the government of India since 1967 and is still active in [[East India]]. [[Sri Lanka]] has had Marxist–Leninist ministers in their national governments such as [[Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna]] and [[National People's Power]] with its [[Marxism|Marxist]] leader [[Anura Kumara Dissanayake]] came to power in 2024. Maoist rebels in [[Nepal]] engaged in a [[Nepalese Civil War|civil war]] from 1996 to 2006 that managed to topple the monarchy there and create a republic. [[Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist)]] leader [[Man Mohan Adhikari]] briefly became [[List of prime ministers of Nepal|prime minister]] and national leader from 1994 to 1995 and the [[Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (1994)|Maoist]] guerrilla leader [[Prachanda]] was elected prime minister by the [[Constituent Assembly of Nepal]] in 2008. Prachanda has since been deposed as prime minister, leading the Maoists, who consider Prachanda's removal to be unjust, to abandon their legalistic approach and return to their street actions and militancy and to lead sporadic [[general strike]]s using their substantial influence on the Nepalese labour movement. These actions have oscillated between mild and intense. In the [[Philippines]], the Maoist-oriented [[Communist Party of the Philippines]], through its armed wing the [[New People's Army]], has [[First Great Rectification Movement|since 1968]] sought to [[Communist rebellion in the Philippines|overthrow]] [[Bourgeois democracy|oligarchic]] state structures in the Philippines; under the administration, however, of an [[Political positions of Rodrigo Duterte|otherwise-sympathetic]] [[presidency of Rodrigo Duterte|Rodrigo Duterte]], its armed attacks were [[National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict|greatly diminished]]. By contrast, the [[Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas-1930|original Marxist–Leninist party founded in 1930]] has preferred nonviolent parliamentary struggle through participation in [[Electoral process in the Philippines|general elections]].<ref name=electionsPKP>{{cite web | url=http://www.pkp-1930.com/history | title=History }}</ref>

In Africa, several communist states reformed themselves and maintained power. In [[South Africa]], the [[South African Communist Party]] is a member of the [[Tripartite alliance]] alongside the [[African National Congress]] and the [[Congress of South African Trade Unions]]. The [[Economic Freedom Fighters]] is a pan-African, Marxist–Leninist party founded in 2013 by expelled former president of the [[African National Congress Youth League]] [[Julius Malema]] and his allies. In [[Zimbabwe]], former President [[Robert Mugabe]] of the [[ZANU–PF]], the country's long standing leader, was a professed Marxist–Leninist.<ref>{{cite news |last=Talbot |first=Stephen |author-link=Stephen Talbot |date=27 June 2006 |url=https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/zimbabwe504/profile.html |title=From Liberator to Tyrant: Recollections of Robert Mugabe |work=Frontline/World |publisher=[[Public Broadcasting Service]] |access-date=7 December 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211010215809/https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/zimbabwe504/profile.html |archive-date=10 October 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Smith |first=David |date=24 May 2013 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/24/zimbabwe-tv-lunch-with-mugabes |title=Mugabes under the spotlight – Zimbabwe's first family filmed at home |work=[[The Guardian]] |access-date=7 December 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210607124017/http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/24/zimbabwe-tv-lunch-with-mugabes |archive-date=7 June 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref>

In the Americas, there have been several insurgencies and Marxist–Leninist movements. In the [[United States]], there are several Marxist–Leninist parties, such as the [[Communist Party USA]] and the [[Party for Socialism and Liberation]].<ref>{{cite web |last=Riggins |first=Thomas |date=30 June 2020 |url=https://www.cpusa.org/article/engels-at-200-intellectual-giant-and-rebel/ |title=Engels at 200: Intellectual giant and rebel |publisher=Communist Party USA |access-date=13 August 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210803130541/https://www.cpusa.org/article/engels-at-200-intellectual-giant-and-rebel/ |archive-date=3 August 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://liberationschool.org/program-of-the-party-for-socialism-and-liberation/ |title=Program of the Party for Socialism and Liberation |work=Liberation School |publisher=Party for Socialism and Liberation |date=18 November 2019 |access-date=13 August 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210904034505/https://liberationschool.org/program-of-the-party-for-socialism-and-liberation/ |archive-date=4 September 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref> In South America, [[Colombia]] has been in the midst of a [[Colombian conflict|civil war]] which has been waged since 1964 between the Colombian government and aligned [[Paramilitarism in Colombia|right-wing paramilitaries]] against two Marxist–Leninist guerrilla groups, namely the [[National Liberation Army (Colombia)|National Liberation Army]] and [[Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia]]. In [[Peru]], there has been an [[Internal conflict in Peru|internal conflict]] between the Peruvian government and Marxist–Leninist–Maoist militants including the [[Shining Path]]. The [[2021 Peruvian general election]] was won by presidential candidate [[Pedro Castillo]] on the Marxist–Leninist program put forward by [[Free Peru]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Palacios Dongo |first=Alfredo |date=29 May 2021 |url=https://www.expreso.com.pe/opinion/partido-marxista-leninista-peru-libre-y-la-lucha-de-clases/ |title=Partido marxista-leninista Perú Libre y la lucha de clases |trans-title=Marxist–Leninist Party Peru Libre and the class struggle |website=Diario Expreso |language=es |access-date=13 August 2021 |archive-date=23 July 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210723031727/https://www.expreso.com.pe/opinion/partido-marxista-leninista-peru-libre-y-la-lucha-de-clases/ |url-status=live}}</ref>

== Ideology ==
=== Political system ===
Marxism–Leninism involves the creation of a [[one-party state]] led by a [[communist party]], as a means to develop socialism and then communism.<ref name="Alexander Shtromas 2003. p. 18">{{cite book |editor1-last=Štromas |editor1-first=Alexander |editor1-link=Aleksandras Štromas |editor2-last=Faulkner |editor2-first=Robert K. |editor3-last=Mahoney |editor3-first=Daniel J. |date=2003 |title=Totalitarianism and the Prospects for World Order: Closing the Door on the Twentieth Century |location=Oxford, England; Lanham, Maryland |publisher=[[Lexington Books]] |pages=18 |isbn=978-0-7391-0534-4}}</ref> The communist party is the supreme political institution of the state.{{sfn|Albert|Hahnel|1981|pp=24–25}} Marxism–Leninism asserts that the people's interests are fully represented through the communist party and other state institutions.{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=306}} In the words of historians Silvio Pons and [[Robert Service (historian)|Robert Service]], elections are "generally not competitive, with voters having no choice or only a strictly limited choice".{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=306}} Generally, when alternative candidates have been allowed to stand for election, they have not been allowed to promote very different political views.{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=306}} In communist states, elections are generally held for all positions at all levels of government.{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=306}} In most states, this has taken the form of directly electing representatives, although in some states such as [[People's Republic of China]], the [[Republic of Cuba]] and the [[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia]], this also included indirect elections, such as deputies being elected by deputies as the next lower level of government.{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=306}}

=== Collectivism and egalitarianism ===
[[File:RIAN_archive_79113_Seizing_grain_from_kulaks.jpg|thumb|[[Komsomol|YCLers]] seizing grain from "[[kulak]]s" which was hidden in the graveyard, Ukraine]]
[[Soviet collectivism]] and [[egalitarianism]] were an important part of Marxist–Leninist ideology in the [[Soviet Union]], where it played a key part in forming the [[New Soviet man]], willingly sacrificing their life for the good of the collective. Terms such as ''collective'' and ''the masses'' were frequently used in the official language and praised in [[agitprop]] literature by [[Vladimir Mayakovsky]] (''Who needs a "1"'') and [[Bertolt Brecht]] (''[[The Decision (play)|The Decision]]'' and ''[[Man Equals Man]]'').<ref>{{cite book |title=The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia |last=Overy |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Overy |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-393-02030-4 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/dictators00rich/page/301 301] |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |url=https://archive.org/details/dictators00rich/page/301}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Horn |first=Eva |date=2006 |title=Actors/Agents: Bertolt Brecht and the Politics of Secrecy |journal=Grey Room |volume=24 |pages=38–55 |doi=10.1162/grey.2006.1.24.38 |s2cid=57572547}}</ref>

The fact that Marxist–Leninist governments confiscated private businesses and landholdings radically increased income and property equality in practice. [[Income inequality]] dropped in Russia under the rule of the Soviet Union, then rebounded after its demise in 1991. It also dropped rapidly in the [[Eastern Bloc]] after the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II. Similarly, inequality went back up after the collapse of the Soviet system.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Novokmet |first1=Filip |last2=Piketty |first2=Thomas |author2-link=Thomas Piketty |last3=Zucman |first3=Gabriel |author3-link=Gabriel Zucman |date=9 November 2017 |url=https://voxeu.org/article/inequality-and-property-russia-1905-2016 |title=From Soviets to oligarchs: Inequality and property in Russia, 1905–2016 |website=Vox |publisher=Centre for Economic Policy Research |access-date=22 June 2020 |archive-date=21 June 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200621061108/https://voxeu.org/article/inequality-and-property-russia-1905-2016 |url-status=live}}</ref> According to [[Paul Hollander]], this was one of the features of [[Communist state]]s that was so attractive to egalitarian Western intellectuals that they quietly justified the killing of millions of [[Bourgeoisie|capitalists]], [[Chinese Land Reform|landowners]] and supposedly wealthy [[Dekulakization|kulaks]] in order to achieve this equality.<ref>{{cite book |last=Hollander |first=Paul |author-link=Paul Hollander |year=1998 |title=Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society |edition=4th |location=New Brunswick, New Jersey |publisher=Transaction Publishers |isbn=1-56000-954-3 |oclc=36470253}}</ref> According to [[Walter Scheidel]], they were correct to the extent that historically only violent shocks have resulted in major reductions in economic inequality.<ref>{{cite book |last=Scheidel |first=Walter |author-link=Walter Scheidel |year=2017 |title=The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century |series=The Princeton Economic History of the Western World |edition=hardcover |location=Princeton, New Jersey |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |isbn=978-0-691-16502-8 |oclc=958799667}}</ref>

Marxist–Leninists respond to this type of criticism by highlighting the ideological differences in the concept of [[freedom]] and [[liberty]]. It was stated that "Marxist–Leninist norms disparaged ''[[laissez-faire]]'' [[Liberal individualism|individualism]] (as when housing is determined by one's ability to pay)", and condemned "wide variations in personal wealth as the West has not" whilst emphasizing equality, by which they mean "free education and medical care, little disparity in housing or salaries, and so forth."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=McFarland |first1=Sam |last2=Ageyev |first2=Vladimir |author2-link=Vladimir Ageyev |last3=Abalakina-Paap |first3=Marina |title=Authoritarianism in the former Soviet Union |journal=[[Journal of Personality and Social Psychology]] |volume=63 |issue=6 |pages=1004–1010 |date=1992 |doi=10.1037/0022-3514.63.6.1004 |citeseerx=10.1.1.397.4546}}</ref> When asked to comment on the claim that former citizens of [[List of communist states|communist states]] now enjoy increased freedoms, [[Heinz Kessler]], former [[Ministry of National Defence (East Germany)|East German Minister of National Defence]], replied: "Millions of people in Eastern Europe are now free from employment, free from safe streets, free from health care, free from social security."{{sfn|Parenti|1997|p=[https://archive.org/details/blackshirtsredsr00pare/page/n70 118]}}

=== Economy ===
[[File:“Strengthen working discipline in collective farms” – Uzbek, Tashkent, 1933 (Mardjani).jpg|thumb|left|1933 [[Soviet propaganda]] encouraging peasants and farmers to strengthen working discipline in [[Collectivization in the Soviet Union|collective farms]] in the [[Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic]]]]
The goal of Marxist–Leninist [[political economy]] is the emancipation of people from the [[dehumanisation]] caused by mechanistic work that is [[Theory of alienation|psychologically alienating]], without work–life balance, which is performed in exchange for [[wage]]s that give limited financial-access to the material necessities of life, such as food and shelter. That personal and societal emancipation from [[poverty]] (material necessity) would maximise individual liberty by enabling men and women to pursue their interests and innate talents (artistic, industrial and intellectual) whilst working by choice, without the economic coercion of poverty. In the [[communist society]] of upper-stage economic development, the elimination of alienating labour (mechanistic work) depends upon the developments of [[high technology]] that improve the means of production and the means of distribution. To meet the material needs of a socialist society, the state uses a [[planned economy]] to co-ordinate the [[means of production]] and of distribution to supply and deliver the goods and services required throughout society and the national economy. The state serves as a safeguard for the ownership and as the coordinator of production through a universal economic plan.{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=138}}

For the purpose of reducing waste and increasing efficiency, scientific planning replaces [[market mechanism]]s and [[price mechanism]]s as the guiding principle of the economy.{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=138}} The state's huge purchasing power replaces the role of market forces, with [[macroeconomic]] [[Economic equilibrium|equilibrium]] not being achieved through market forces but by economic planning based on scientific [[Program evaluation|assessment]].{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=139}} The [[wages]] of the worker are determined according to the type of skills and the type of work he or she can perform within the national economy.{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=140}} Moreover, the economic value of the goods and services produced is based upon their [[use value]] (as material objects) and not upon the [[Labor theory of value|cost of production]] (value) or the [[exchange value]] ([[marginal utility]]). The [[profit motive]] as a driving force for production is replaced by social obligation to fulfil the economic plan.{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=139}} [[Wage]]s are set and differentiated according to skill and intensity of work. While socially utilised means of production are under public control, personal belongings or property of a personal nature that does not involve mass production of goods remains unaffected by the state.{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=140}}

Because Marxism–Leninism has historically been the state ideology of countries who were economically undeveloped prior to [[socialist revolution]], or whose economies were nearly obliterated by war such as the [[German Democratic Republic]] and the [[Socialist Republic of Vietnam]], the primary goal before achieving communism was the development of socialism in itself. Such was the case in the Soviet Union, where the economy was largely agrarian and urban industry was in a primitive stage. To develop socialism, the Soviet Union underwent [[Industrialization in the Soviet Union#Industrialization in practice|rapid industrialisation]] with pragmatic programs of [[Social engineering (political science)|social engineering]] that transplanted peasant populations to the cities, where they were educated and trained as [[industrial workers]] and then became the workforce of the new factories and industries. Similarly, the farmer populations worked the [[Collectivisation in the Soviet Union|system of collective farms]] to grow food to feed the industrial workers in the industrialised cities. Since the mid-1930s, Marxism–Leninism has advocated an austere social-equality based upon [[asceticism]], [[egalitarianism]], and [[self-sacrifice]].{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=731}} In the 1920s, the [[Bolshevik party]] semi-officially allowed some limited, small-scale wage inequality to boost labour productivity in the [[economy of the Soviet Union]]. These reforms were promoted to encourage materialism and acquisitiveness in order to stimulate economic growth.{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=731}} This pro-consumerist policy has been advanced on the lines of industrial pragmatism as it advances economic progress through bolstering industrialisation.{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=732}}

In the economic praxis of Bolshevik Russia, there was a defining difference of political economy between socialism and communism. Lenin explained their conceptual similarity to Marx's descriptions of the lower-stage and the upper-stage of economic development, namely that immediately after a proletarian revolution in the socialist lower-stage society the practical economy must be based upon the individual labour contributed by men and women,<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Cook |editor-first=Chris |date=1998 |title=Dictionary of Historical Terms |edition=2nd |pages=221–222 |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |isbn=978-0-333-67347-8}}</ref> and paid labour would be the basis of the communist upper-stage society that has realised the social precept of the slogan "[[From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs]]."<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Krieger |editor1-first=Joel |editor2-last=Murphy |editor2-first=Craig N. |date=2012 |title=The Oxford Companion to Comparative Politics |location=Oxford |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |pages=218 |isbn=978-0-19-973859-5}}</ref>

=== Society ===
[[File:Чтобы больше иметь — надо больше производить. Чтобы больше производить — надо больше знать.jpg|thumb|A 1920 Bolshevik [[Agitprop|pro-education propaganda]] which reads the following: "In order to have more, it is necessary to produce more. In order to produce more, it is necessary to know more."]]
Marxism–Leninism supports universal [[social welfare]].{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=722–723}} The communist state provides for the national welfare with [[universal healthcare]], free [[public education]] (academic, technical and professional) and the [[Welfare state|social benefits]] (childcare and continuing education) necessary to increase the productivity of the workers and the socialist economy to develop a communist society. As part of the planned economy, the communist state is meant to develop the [[proletariat]]'s universal education (academic and technical) and their [[class consciousness]] (political education) to facilitate their contextual understanding of the historical development of communism as presented in Marx's [[Historical materialism|theory of history]].{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=580}}

Marxism–Leninism supports [[women's liberation]] and ending the exploitation of women. Marxist–Leninist policy on family law has typically involved the elimination of the political power of the [[bourgeoisie]], the abolition of [[private property]] and an education that teaches citizens to abide by a disciplined and self-fulfilling lifestyle dictated by the social norms of communism as a means to establish a new social order.{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=319}} The judicial reformation of [[family law]] eliminates [[patriarchy]] from the legal system. This facilitates the political [[emancipation]] of women from [[Traditionalist conservatism|traditional]] social inferiority and [[Exploitation of labour|economic exploitation]]. The reformation of [[Civil law (legal system)|civil law]] made [[marriage]] secular into a "free and voluntary union" between persons who are social-and-legal equals, facilitated [[divorce]], legalised [[abortion]], eliminated [[bastardy]] ("illegitimate children"), and voided the political power of the bourgeoisie and the private property-status of the [[means of production]]. The educational system imparts the social norms for a self-disciplined and self-fulfilling way of life, by which the socialist citizens establish the social order necessary for realising a communist society.{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=854–856}} With the advent of a classless society and the abolition of private property, society collectively assume many of the roles traditionally assigned to mothers and wives, with women becoming integrated into industrial work. This has been promoted by Marxism–Leninism as the means to achieve women's emancipation.{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=854}}

Marxist–Leninist cultural policy [[modernise]]s social relations among citizens by eliminating the capitalist value system of [[traditionalist conservatism]], by which Tsarism classified, divided and controlled people with [[Social stratification|stratified social classes]] without any socio-economic mobility. It focuses upon modernisation and distancing society from the past, the bourgeoisie and the old intelligentsia.{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=250}} The socio-cultural changes required for establishing a communist society are realised with education and [[agitprop]] (agitation and propaganda) which reinforce communal and communist values.{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=250–251}} The modernisation of educational and cultural policies eliminates the societal atomisation, including [[anomie]] and [[social alienation]], caused by [[cultural backwardness]]. Marxism–Leninism develops the [[New Soviet man]], an educated and cultured citizen possessed of a proletarian [[class consciousness]] who is oriented towards the [[Soviet collectivism|social cohesion]] necessary for developing a communist society as opposed to the antithetic bourgeois individualist associated with social atomisation.{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=581}}

=== International relations ===
Marxism–Leninism aims to create an international communist society.{{sfn|Albert|Hahnel|1981|pp=24–25}} It opposes [[colonialism]] and [[imperialism]] and advocates [[decolonisation]] and anti-colonial forces.{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=258}} It supports [[anti-fascist]] international alliances and has advocated the creation of [[popular front]]s between communist and non-communist anti-fascists against strong fascist movements.{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=326}} This Marxist–Leninist approach to [[international relations]] derives from the analyses (political, economic, sociological and geopolitical) that Lenin presented in the essay ''[[Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism]]'' (1917). Extrapolating from five philosophical bases of Marxism, namely that human history is the history of [[class struggle]] between a ruling class and an exploited class; that capitalism creates antagonistic [[social class]]es, i.e. the [[bourgeois]] exploiters and the exploited [[proletariat]]; that capitalism employs [[nationalist]] [[war]] to further private economic expansion; that [[socialism]] is an economic system that voids social classes through [[public ownership]] of the means of production and so will eliminate the economic causes of war; and that once the state ([[Socialist state (communism)|socialist]] or [[Communist state|communist]]) withers away, so shall international relations wither away because they are projections of national economic forces, Lenin said that the capitalists' exhaustion of domestic sources of investment profit by way of price-fixing [[Trust (business)|trusts]] and [[cartel]]s, then prompts the same capitalists to export [[investment capital]] to undeveloped countries to finance the [[exploitation of natural resources]] and the native populations and to create new markets. That the capitalists' control of national politics ensures the government's military safeguarding of colonial investments and the consequent imperial competition for economic supremacy provokes international wars to protect their national interests.<ref name="Evans & Newnham 1998">{{cite book |editor1-last=Evans |editor1-first=Graham |editor2-last=Newnham |editor2-first=Jeffrey |date=1998 |title=Penguin Dictionary of International Relations |publisher=[[Penguin Random House]] |isbn=978-0-14-051397-4 |pages=316–317}}</ref>

In the vertical perspective (social-class relations) of Marxism–Leninism, the internal and international affairs of a country are a political continuum, not separate realms of human activity. This is the philosophic opposite of the horizontal perspectives (country-to-country) of the [[Liberalism (international relations)|liberal]] and the [[Realism (international relations)|realist]] approaches to international relations. Colonial imperialism is the inevitable consequence in the course of economic relations among countries when the domestic price-fixing of [[Monopoly|monopoly capitalism]] has voided profitable competition in the capitalist homeland. The ideology of [[New Imperialism]], rationalised as a [[civilising mission]], allowed the exportation of high-profit investment capital to undeveloped countries with uneducated, native populations (sources of cheap labour), plentiful raw materials for exploitation (factors for manufacture) and a colonial market to consume the [[surplus production]] which the capitalist homeland cannot consume. The example is the European [[Scramble for Africa]] (1881–1914) in which imperialism was safeguarded by the national military.{{r|Evans & Newnham 1998}}

To secure the economic and settler colonies, foreign sources of new capital-investment-profit, the imperialist state seeks either political or military control of the limited resources (natural and human). The First World War (1914–1918) resulted from such geopolitical conflicts among the empires of Europe over colonial [[spheres of influence]].<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Cook |editor-first=Chris |date=1998 |title=Dictionary of Historical Terms |edition=2nd |pages=221 |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |isbn=978-0-333-67347-8}}</ref> For the colonised working classes who create the wealth (goods and services), the elimination of war for natural resources (access, control, and exploitation) is resolved by overthrowing the [[militaristic]] [[capitalist state]] and establishing a socialist state because a peaceful world economy is feasible only by [[proletarian revolution]]s that overthrow systems of [[political economy]] based upon the [[exploitation of labour]].{{r|Evans & Newnham 1998}}

=== Theology ===
{{Main|Marxist–Leninist atheism}}
[[File:Christ saviour explosion.jpg|thumb|In establishing [[state atheism]] in the Soviet Union, Stalin ordered in 1931 the razing of the [[Cathedral of Christ the Saviour]] in Moscow.]]

The Marxist–Leninist worldview is [[atheist]], wherein all human activity results from human [[Volition (psychology)|volition]] and not the will of [[Supernaturalism|supernatural beings]] (gods, goddesses and demons) who have direct [[Agency (sociology)|agency]] in the public and private affairs of human society.<ref>{{cite book |last=Thrower |first=James |author-link=James Thrower |date=1992 |title=Marxism–Leninism as the Civil Religion of Soviet Society |publisher=[[E. Mellen Press]] |pages=45 |isbn=978-0-7734-9180-9}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Kundan |first=Kumar |date=2003 |title=Ideology and Political System |publisher=Discovery Publishing House |pages=90 |isbn=978-81-7141-638-7}}</ref> The tenets of the Soviet Union's national policy of [[Marxist–Leninist atheism]] originated from the philosophies of [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel]] (1770–1831) and [[Ludwig Feuerbach]] (1804–1872) as well as that of [[Karl Marx]] (1818–1883) and [[Vladimir Lenin]] (1870–1924).<ref>{{cite journal |journal=Slovak Studies |title=Atheism in East European Countries |volume=21 |publisher=The Slovak Institute in North America |pages=231 |quote=The origin of Marxist–Leninist atheism, as understood in the USSR, is linked with the development of the German philosophy of Hegel and Feuerbach.}}</ref>

As a basis of Marxism–Leninism, the philosophy of [[materialism]] (the [[physical universe]] exists independently of [[human consciousness]]) is applied as [[dialectical materialism]] (considered by its proponents a [[philosophy of science]], [[Philosophy of history|history]] and [[Marxist philosophy of nature|nature]]) to examine the socio-economic relations among people and things as parts of a dynamic, material world that is unlike the immaterial world of [[metaphysics]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.wadenstrom.net/texter/madi.htm |title=Materialistisk dialektik |language=sv |trans-title=Materialist dialectic |first=Ralf |last=Wadenström |date=1991 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170923172817/http://www.wadenstrom.net/texter/madi.htm |archive-date=23 September 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Jordan |first=Z. A. |date=1967 |title=The Evolution of Dialectical Materialism: A Philosophical and Sociological Analysis |publisher=[[Macmillan Publishers|Macmillan]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Thomas |first=Paul |date=2008 |title=Marxism and Scientific Socialism: From Engels to Althusser |location=London |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-0-415-77916-6}}</ref> Soviet astrophysicist [[Vitaly Ginzburg]] said that ideologically the "Bolshevik communists were not merely atheists, but, according to Lenin's terminology, militant atheists" in excluding religion from the social mainstream, from education and from government.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ginzburg |first=Vitalij Lazarevič |author-link=Vitaly Ginzburg |date=2009 |title=On Superconductivity and Superfluidity: A Scientific Autobiography |pages=45 |publisher=[[Springer Science+Business Media|Springer]] |isbn=978-3-540-68008-6}}</ref>

== Criticism ==
===General===
[[File:Berlinermauer.jpg|thumb|The [[Berlin Wall]] was constructed in 1961 to stop emigration from [[East Berlin]] to [[West Berlin]] and in the last phase of the wall's development the "death strip" between fence and concrete wall gave guards a clear shot at would-be escapees from the East]]
Marxism–Leninism has been broadly criticized, particularly in its [[Stalinist]] and [[Maoist]] variants, across the political spectrum. Most communist states have been regarded as [[authoritarian]], and some of them have been accused of being [[totalitarian]],<ref name="service totalitarian">{{harvnb|Service|2007|pp=5–6}}: "Whereas fascist totalitarianism in Italy and Germany was crushed in 1945, communist totalitarianism was reinforced in the USSR and other Marxist-Leninist states ... enough was achieved in the pursuit of comprehensive political monopoly for the USSR – as well as most other communist states – to be rightly described as totalitarian."</ref> especially the [[Stalin era|Soviet Union]] under [[Joseph Stalin]], [[Mao era|China]] under [[Mao Zedong]], [[North Korea]] under [[Kim Il Sung]], and [[Communist Romania|Romania]] under [[Nicolae Ceaușescu]].{{sfn|Albert|Hahnel|1981|pp=24–26}}{{sfn|Walker|Gray|2009|pp=303–305}}{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=526}} Rival ideologies were persecuted,{{sfn|Service|2007|p=293|ps=: "The new communist states in eastern Europe and east Asia ... had much in common. Usually a single party governed ... . Dictatorship was imposed. The courts and the press were subordinated to political command. The state expropriated large sectors of the economy ... . Religion was persecuted ... . Marxism-Leninism in its Stalinist variant was disseminated, and rival ideologies were persecuted."}} including dissident leftists, and most elections had only one candidate.<ref>{{harvnb|Pons|Service|2010|p=306|ps=: "Elections in the Communist states, at least until the final years when the systems were undergoing reform, were generally not competitive, with voters having no choice or only a strictly limited choice. Most elections had only one candidate standing for each position."}}</ref> According to Daniel Gray, Silvio Pons, and David Martin Walker, Marxist–Leninist regimes have carried out killings and [[political repression]] of dissidents and social classes ("[[enemies of the people]]"),{{sfn|Walker|Gray|2009|pp=303–305}}{{sfn|Service|2007|p=3–6}} such as the [[Red Terror]] and [[Great Purge]] in the Soviet Union and the [[Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries]] in China,{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=307}} partly as a result of Marxist–Leninist ideology.{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=307}} According to Gray, they were justified as a means of maintaining "proletarian power".{{sfn|Walker|Gray|2009|p=90}} According to Gray and Walker, political dissidents were deemed to be "distorting the true path to communism".{{sfn|Walker|Gray|2009|p=298}} According to Pons, repression of social groups was deemed a necessary part of [[Intensification of the class struggle under socialism|class struggle]] against the "exploiting classes".{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=307}} In addition, [[Robert Service (historian)|Robert Service]] stated that mass [[religious persecution]], such as [[Soviet anti-religious legislation|in the Soviet Union]] and [[Antireligious campaigns of the Chinese Communist Party|in China]], was motivated by [[Marxist–Leninist atheism]].{{sfn|Service|2007|p=3–6}}

According to Pons, communist states carried out [[ethnic cleansing]],<ref name="pons ethnic cleansing">{{harvnb|Pons|Service|2010|pp=308–310}}: "The linkages between ethnic cleansing and the history of communism in power are manifold. Communist governments, wherever they arose, sought to increase the purview of their states by homogenizing, categorizing and making more transparent their populations. ... The state would weed out the weak and ungovernable ... and eliminate those ethnicities or nationalities that proved able to perpetuate their cultural, political and economic distinctiveness. ... Ethnic cleansing and communism are linked not only in the history of the Soviet Union and Stalin ... Communist governments saw it in their interests to establish ethnically-homogeneous states and territories, sometimes even claiming that 'national' expulsions constituted a 'social' revolution, since those expelled were the bourgeois or aristocratic 'oppressors' of the native peoples"</ref><ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Tooley |editor1-first=T. Hunt |editor2-last=Várdy |editor2-first=Steven |editor2-link=Steven Béla Várdy |date=2003 |title=Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe |publisher=Social Science Monographs |pages=81 |isbn=978-0-88033-995-7}}</ref> most notably the forced [[population transfer in the Soviet Union]] and the [[Cambodian genocide]],{{r|pons ethnic cleansing}} as part of an effort to extend state control by homogenising their populations and removing ethnic groups that maintained their "cultural, political and economic distinctiveness".{{r|pons ethnic cleansing}} Such states have been accused of [[genocidal]] acts in [[Maoist China|China]],<ref>{{cite news |last=Becker |first=Jasper |author-link=Jasper Becker |date=24 September 2010 |url=http://www.jasperbecker.com/Spectator%20-%20Systematic%20genocide.pdf |title=Systematic genocide |newspaper=[[The Spectator]] |access-date=6 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210802040238/http://www.jasperbecker.com/Spectator%20-%20Systematic%20genocide.pdf |archive-date=2 August 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref> [[Communist Poland|Poland]],<ref>{{cite journal |last=Karski |first=Karol |author-link=Karol Karski |year=2012 |url=https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1078&context=jil |title=The Crime of Genocide Committed against the Poles by the USSR before and during World War II: An International Legal Study |journal=Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law |volume=45 |issue=3 |pages=703–760 |access-date=6 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211105110834/https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1078&context=jil |archive-date=5 November 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref> and [[Holodomor genocide question|Ukraine]];<ref>{{cite web|url=https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/resource-guides/holodomor |title=Holodomor |website=Holocaust and Genocide Studies |publisher=College of Liberal Arts, [[University of Minnesota]] |access-date=6 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211030035451/https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/resource-guides/holodomor |archive-date=30 October 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref> there is still a debate among scholars whether ideology played a role, to what extent, and whether they meet the legal definition of genocide.<ref name="Sawicky 2013">{{cite thesis |last=Sawicky |first=Nicholas D. |date=20 December 2013 |url=https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1318&context=ehd_theses |title=The Holodomor: Genocide and National Identity |type=Education and Human Development Master's Theses |publisher=The College at Brockport: [[State University of New York]] |access-date=6 October 2020 |via=Digital Commons |quote=Scholars also disagree over what role the Soviet Union played in the tragedy. Some scholars point to Stalin as the mastermind behind the famine, due to his hatred of Ukrainians (Hosking, 1987). Others assert that Stalin did not actively cause the famine, but he knew about it and did nothing to stop it (Moore, 2012). Still other scholars argue that the famine was just an effect of the Soviet Union's push for rapid industrialization and a by-product of that was the destruction of the peasant way of life (Fischer, 1935). The final school of thought argues that the Holodomor was caused by factors beyond the control of the Soviet Union and Stalin took measures to reduce the effects of the famine on the Ukrainian people (Davies & Wheatcroft, 2006). |archive-date=6 February 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210206042729/https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1318&context=ehd_theses |url-status=live}}</ref> For [[Robert Service (historian)|Robert Service]], the Soviet Union and China enforced [[collectivisation]], and their widespread use of [[forced labour]] in [[labour camps]], such as the [[Gulag]] and ''[[Laogai]]'', was inherited by [[Nazi Germany]].<ref name="service labor camps">{{harvnb|Service|2007|p=301}}: "The labor camps developed in the USSR were introduced across the communist world. This was especially easy in eastern Europe where they inherited the punitive structures of the Third Reich. But China too was quick in developing its camp network. This became one of the defining features of communism. It is true that other types of society used forced labour as part of their penal system … What was different about communist rulership was the dispatch of people to the camps for no reason other than the misfortune of belonging to a suspect social class."</ref>{{sfn|Walker|Gray|2009|pp=303–305}} Although some non-communist states used forced labour, according to Service what was different was "the dispatch of people to the camps for no reason other than the misfortune of belonging to a suspect social class."{{r|service labor camps}} According to Pons, this was justified by Marxist–Leninist ideology and seen as a means of "redemption".{{sfn|Pons|Service|2010|p=86}} According to Service, their economic policies are blamed for causing major [[famine]]s such as the [[Holodomor]] and [[Great Chinese Famine]];{{sfn|Service|2007|p=3–6}} however, scholars disagree on the [[Holodomor genocide question]],{{r|Sawicky 2013}} and Nobel laureate [[Amartya Sen]] put the Great Chinese Famine in a global context, stating that lack of [[democracy]] was the major culprit and comparing it to other famines in [[capitalist countries]].<ref>{{cite book |first=Amartya Kumar |last=Sen |author-link=Amartya Sen |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Qm8HtpFHYecC |title=Development as freedom |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=1999 |isbn=978-0-19-289330-7 |access-date=14 April 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140103042841/http://books.google.com/books?id=Qm8HtpFHYecC |archive-date=3 January 2014 |url-status=live |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Wiener |first=Jon |author-link=Jon Wiener |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1KiD069CPsUC&pg=PA38 |title=How We Forgot the Cold War. A Historical Journey across America |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190226022039/https://books.google.com/books?id=1KiD069CPsUC&pg=PA38 |archive-date=26 February 2019 |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |date=2012 |pages=38 |isbn=978-0-520-95425-0 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Škof |first=Lenart |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UEGSBgAAQBAJ |title=Breath of Proximity: Intersubjectivity, Ethics and Peace |year=2015 |publisher=[[Springer Science+Business Media|Springer]] |page=161 |isbn=978-94-017-9738-2 |access-date=8 October 2020 |archive-date=6 February 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210206193017/https://books.google.com/books?id=UEGSBgAAQBAJ |url-status=live |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref>

Philosopher [[Eric Voegelin]] stated that Marxism–Leninism is inherently oppressive, writing that the "Marxian vision dictated the Stalinist outcome not because the communist utopia was inevitable but because it was impossible."<ref name="Voegelin">{{harvnb|Daniels|2007|p=200}}. "There remains another theory of Marxism's evil ideological influence that has come into vogue in recent years. This is the argument advanced by the American Catholic political philosopher Eric Voegelin, among others, that the commitment of Marxists to a political belief at one and the same time both deterministic and utopian was a form of "gnosticism," a heresy of hubris, leading them inexorably to the monumental crimes of Stalinism. In this view, the Marxian vision dictated the Stalinist outcome not because the communist utopia was inevitable but because it was impossible."</ref> Criticism like this has itself been criticised for philosophical determinism, i.e. that the negative events in the movement's history were predetermined by their convictions, with historian [[Robert Vincent Daniels]] stating that Marxism was used to "justify Stalinism, but it was no longer allowed to serve either as a policy directive or an explanation of reality" during Stalin's rule.{{sfn|Daniels|2007|p=200|ps=. "When the full record is considered, it makes little sense to try to understand Stalinism either as the victorious implementation of Marxism or as the pure fury of fanatics who cannot achieve their imagined goal. Stalinism meant the substantive abandonment of the Marxian program and the pragmatic acceptance of postrevolutionary Russian reality, while the power of the dictatorship was used to reinterpret and enforce Marxist doctrine as a tool of propaganda and legitimation. No genuine ideological imperative remained. Marxism could be made to appear to justify Stalinism, but it was no longer allowed to serve either as a policy directive or an explanation of reality."}} In contrast, E. Van Ree wrote that Stalin considered himself to be in "general agreement" with the classical works of Marxism until his death.{{sfn|Ree|1997|p=23|ps=. "This article concerns the research done by the author in Stalin's private library. The notes made in the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin suggest that until the end of his life Stalin felt himself in general agreement with these "classics." The choice of books and the notes support the thesis that, despite his historical interest and his identification with some of the tsars as powerful rulers, Stalin always continued to consider himself a Marxist, and that he was uninterested in other systems of thought, including those of traditional Russia."}} Graeme Gill stated that Stalinism was "not a natural flow-on of earlier developments; [it was a] sharp break resulting from conscious decisions by leading political actors." Gill added that "difficulties with the use of the term reflect problems with the concept of Stalinism itself. The major difficulty is a lack of agreement about what should constitute Stalinism."<ref>{{cite book |last=Gill |first=Graeme J. |title=Stalinism |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3Pt35DCU580C |access-date=1 October 2010 |year=1998 |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |page=1 |isbn=978-0-312-17764-5 |archive-date=16 June 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130616092149/http://books.google.com/books?id=3Pt35DCU580C |url-status=live |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> Historians such as [[Michael Geyer]] and [[Sheila Fitzpatrick]] criticised the focus upon the upper levels of society and the use of Cold War concepts, such as totalitarianism, which have obscured the reality of Marxist–Leninist systems, such as that of the Soviet Union.<ref name="Geyer&Fitzpatrick">{{cite book |title=Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared |last1=Geyer |first1=Michael |author1-link=Michael Geyer |last2=Fitzpatrick |first2=Sheila |author2-link=Sheila Fitzpatrick |editor1-first=Michael |editor1-last=Geyer |editor1-link=Michael Geyer |editor2-first=Sheila |editor2-last=Fitzpatrick |editor2-link=Sheila Fitzpatrick |year=2009 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-0-521-72397-8 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3wzDPQAACAAJ |doi=10.1017/CBO9780511802652 |access-date=8 October 2020 |archive-date=6 February 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210206043119/https://books.google.com/books?id=3wzDPQAACAAJ |url-status=live |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref>

[[Mervyn Matthews]] criticized Marxism–Leninism for failing to solve [[poverty]], noting that a large number of people in the Soviet Union were still in poverty despite its planned economy.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Matthews |first=Mervyn |title=Poverty in the Soviet Union: The Life-styles of the Underprivileged in Recent Years |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=1986}}</ref>

The principle in Marxism–Leninism of [[one-party state]] with [[unitary power]] and [[democratic centralism]] has been argued as leading to [[authoritarianism]].<ref>[http://www.jstor.org/stable/25663569 Alam, Javeed. "Can Democratic Centralism Be Conducive to Democracy?" Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 44, no. 38, 2009, pp. 37–42.]</ref>

=== Left-wing criticism ===
{{See also|Anti-Stalinist left}}
Marxism–Leninism has been criticized by other [[socialists]], such as [[anarchists]], [[communists]], [[democratic socialists]], [[libertarian socialists]], [[Marxists]], and [[social democrats]]. [[Anti-Stalinist left]] and other [[left-wing]] critics see it as an example of state capitalism,<ref>{{cite book |last=Cliff |first=Tony |author-link=Tony Cliff |year=1996 |url=https://www.marxists.org/ebooks/cliff/state-capitalism-in-russia-cliff.pdf |title=State Capitalism in Russia |access-date=6 October 2020 |via=Marxists Internet Archive |archive-date=17 October 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211017084649/https://www.marxists.org/ebooks/cliff/state-capitalism-in-russia-cliff.pdf |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Alami |first1=Ilias |last2=Dixon |first2=Adam D. |date=January 2020 |title=State Capitalism(s) Redux? Theories, Tensions, Controversies |journal=Competition & Change |volume=24 |issue=1 |pages=70–94 |doi=10.1177/1024529419881949 |s2cid=211422892 |issn=1024-5294 |doi-access=free}}</ref> and have referred to it as a "[[red fascism]]" contrary to left-wing politics.<ref>{{cite journal |author=Voline |year=1995 |url=https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/voline-red-fascism |title=Red Fascism |translator-last=Sharkey |translator-first=Paul |journal=Itinéraire |location=Paris |issue=13 |access-date=6 October 2020 |via=The Anarchist Library |archive-date=17 October 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211017084653/https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/voline-red-fascism |url-status=live}} First published in the July 1934 edition of ''Ce qu'il faut dire'' (Brussels).</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Meyer |first=Gerald |date=Summer 2003 |title=Anarchism, Marxism and the Collapse of the Soviet Union |journal=Science & Society |volume=67 |issue=2 |pages=218–221 |doi=10.1521/siso.67.2.218.21187 |jstor=40404072 |issn=0036-8237}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Tamblyn |first=Nathan |date=April 2019 |title=The Common Ground of Law and Anarchism |journal=Liverpool Law Review |volume=40 |issue=1 |pages=65–78 |doi=10.1007/s10991-019-09223-1 |s2cid=155131683 |issn=1572-8625 |doi-access=free|hdl=10871/36939 |hdl-access=free }}</ref> [[Anarcho-communists]], [[Classical Marxism|classical]], [[Libertarian Marxism|libertarian]], and [[orthodox Marxists]], as well as [[Council communism|council]] and [[left communists]], are critical of Marxism–Leninism, particularly for what they see as its authoritarianism. Polish Marxist [[Rosa Luxemburg]] dismissed the Marxist–Leninist idea of a "vanguard", stating that a revolution could not be brought about by command. She predicted that once the Bolsheviks had banned multi-party democracy and internal dissent, the "dictatorship of the proletariat" would become the dictatorship of a faction, and then of an individual.{{sfn|Morgan|2015|p=658}} [[Trotskyists]] believe Marxism–Leninism leads to the establishment of a [[degenerated workers' state|degenerated]] or [[deformed workers' state]], where the capitalist elite have been replaced by an unaccountable bureaucratic elite and there is no true democracy or workers' control of industry.<ref>{{cite book |last=Taaffe |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Taaffe |date=October 1995 |title=The Rise of Militant |url=https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/militant/ |chapter=Preface, and Trotsky and the Collapse of Stalinism |publisher=Bertrams |quote=The Soviet bureaucracy and Western capitalism rested on mutually antagonistic social systems. |isbn=978-0-906582-47-3 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20021217071256/https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/militant/ |archive-date=17 December 2002 |url-status=live}}</ref>

American Marxist [[Raya Dunayevskaya]] dismissed Marxism–Leninism as a type of [[state capitalism]] because of [[state ownership]] of the means of production,{{harvnb|Howard|King|2001|pp=110–126}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Lichtenstein |first=Nelson |author-link=Nelson Lichtenstein |date=2011 |title=American Capitalism: Social Thought and Political Economy in the Twentieth Century |publisher=[[University of Pennsylvania Press]] |pages=160–161}}</ref> and dismissed one-party rule as undemocratic.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ishay |first=Micheline |author-link=Micheline Ishay |date=2007 |title=The Human Rights Reader: Major Political Essays, Speeches, and Documents from Ancient Times to the Present |publisher=[[Taylor & Francis]] |pages=245}}</ref> She further stated that it is neither [[Marxism]] nor [[Leninism]] but rather a composite ideology that Stalin used to expediently determine what is communism and what is not communism for the countries of the [[Eastern Bloc]].<ref name="sioc32">{{cite book |last=Todd |first=Allan |date=2012 |title=History for the IB Diploma: Communism in Crisis 1976–89 |pages=16}}</ref> Italian left communist [[Amadeo Bordiga]] dismissed Marxism–Leninism as political opportunism that preserved capitalism because of the claim that the exchange of commodities would occur under socialism. He believed that the use of [[popular front]] organisations by the Communist International and a political vanguard organised by [[organic centralism]] were more effective than a vanguard organised by democratic centralism.<ref>{{cite web |last=Bordiga |first=Amadeo |author-link=Amadeo Bordiga |year=1920|title=Theses on the Role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution |url=https://libcom.org/library/role_party_bordiga|publisher=Communist International |access-date=25 March 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190325173122/https://libcom.org/library/role_party_bordiga |archive-date=25 March 2019 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="dialougestalin">{{cite book |last=Bordiga |first=Amadeo |author-link=Amadeo Bordiga |date=1952 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1952/stalin.htm |title=Dialogue With Stalin |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180715104831/https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1952/stalin.htm |archive-date=15 July 2018 |url-status=live |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref> Anarcho-communist [[Peter Kropotkin]] criticised Marxism–Leninism as centralising and authoritarian.{{sfn|Morgan|2015|p=658}}

Other leftists, including Marxist–Leninists, criticise it for its repressive state actions, while recognising certain advancements, such as [[egalitarian]] achievements and [[modernisation]] under those states.<ref name="Milne 2006">{{cite news |last=Milne |first=Seumas |author-link=Seumas Milne |date=6 February 2006 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/Columnists/Column/0,,1710891,00.html |title=Communism may be dead, but clearly not dead enough |work=[[The Guardian]] |access-date=18 April 2020 |quote=The dominant account gives no sense of how communist regimes renewed themselves after 1956 or why western leaders feared they might overtake the capitalist world well into the 1960s. For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialisation, mass education, job security and huge advances in social and gender equality. |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140811031005/https://www.theguardian.com/Columnists/Column/0,,1710891,00.html |archive-date=11 August 2014 |url-status=live}}</ref>{{sfn|Parenti|1997}} While [[Michael Parenti]] disagrees with blanket condemnations of former Marxist–Leninist countries, he condemned "Stalin and his autocratic system of rule and believed there were things seriously wrong with existing Soviet society.", including "serious problems of labor productivity, industrialization, urbanization, bureaucracy, corruption, and alcoholism. There are production and distribution bottlenecks, plan failures, consumer scarcities, criminal abuses of power, suppression of dissidents, and expressions of alienation among some of the population." Parenti further argued that the economies of Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union suffered from "fatal distortions in their development" because of "embargo[s], invasion, devastating wars, and costly arms buildup; excessive bureaucratization and poor incentive systems; lack of administrative initiative and technological innovation; and a repressive political rule that allowed little critical expression and feedback while fostering stagnation and elitism."<ref>Parenti, Michael (1995). Against Empire. {{ISBN|0-87286-298-4}}.</ref><ref>Parenti, Michael (1997). Blackshirts and Reds. {{ISBN|0-87286-329-8}}.</ref><ref>Parenti, Michael (August 2007). Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader. City Lights Books, 403. {{ISBN|978-0-87286-482-5}}.</ref>

In Western Europe, communist parties, which were still committed to Marxism–Leninism through more democratic means, were part of the initial post-war governments, and even when the Cold War forced many of those countries to remove them from government, such as in Italy, they remained part of the liberal-democratic process. By the 1960s and 1970s, many Western Marxist–Leninists had criticised many of the actions of Communist states, distanced from them, and developed a [[democratic road to socialism]], which became known as [[Eurocommunism]].<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Kindersley |editor-first=Richard |date=2016 |orig-year=1981 |title=In Search of Eurocommunism |publisher=[[Macmillan Press|Palgrave Macmillan UK]] |isbn=978-1-349-16581-0}}</ref> This development was criticised by both non-Marxist–Leninists and other Marxist–Leninists in the East as amounting to social democracy.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Deutscher |first=Tamara |date=January–February 1983 |title=E. H. Carr—A Personal Memoir |url=http://newleftreview.org/I/137/tamara-deutscher-e-h-carr-a-personal-memoir |journal=New Left Review |volume=I |issue=137 |pages=78–86 |article-number=378 |doi=10.64590/ylt |access-date=13 August 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210224151819/https://newleftreview.org/issues/i137/articles/tamara-deutscher-e-h-carr-a-personal-memoir |archive-date=24 February 2021 |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref> With the [[dissolution of the Soviet Union]] and the [[Fall of Communism]], there was a split among Marxist–Leninists between those hardline Marxist–Leninists, sometimes referred to in the media as ''[[neo-Stalinist]]s'', which remained committed to orthodox Marxism–Leninism, and those democratic Marxist–Leninists which continued to work within the liberal-democratic process for a democratic road to socialism,<ref>{{cite book |last=Sargent |first=Lyman Tower |year=2008 |title=Contemporary Political Ideologies: A Comparative Analysis |url=https://archive.org/details/contemporarypoli00sarg_989 |url-access=limited |edition=14th |publisher=Wadsworth Publishing |page=[https://archive.org/details/contemporarypoli00sarg_989/page/n135 117] |isbn=978-0-495-56939-8 |quote=Because many communists now call themselves democratic socialists, it is sometimes difficult to know what a political label really means. As a result, social democratic has become a common new label for democratic socialist political parties.}}</ref> while many other ruling Marxist–Leninist parties became closer to democratic socialist and social democratic parties.<ref>{{cite book |last=Lamb |first=Peter |year=2015 |title=Historical Dictionary of Socialism |edition=3rd |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |page=415 |isbn=978-1-4422-5826-6 |quote=In the 1990s, following the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the breakup of the Soviet Union, social democracy was adopted by some of the old communist parties. Hence, parties such as the Czech Social Democratic Party, the Bulgarian Social Democrats, the Estonian Social Democratic Party, and the Romanian Social Democratic Party, among others, achieved varying degrees of electoral success. Similar processes took place in Africa as the old communist parties were transformed into social democratic ones, even though they retained their traditional titles ... .}}</ref> Outside Communist states, reformed Marxist–Leninist communist parties have led or been part of left-leaning coalitions, including in the former [[Eastern Bloc]]. In Nepal, Marxist–Leninists ([[CPN UML]] and [[Nepal Communist Party]]) were part of the [[1st Nepalese Constituent Assembly]], which abolished the monarchy in 2008 and turned the country into a federal liberal-democratic republic, and have democratically shared power with [[Maoists]] ([[CPN Maoist]]), social democrats ([[Nepali Congress]]), and others as part of their [[People's Multiparty Democracy]].<ref name="Battharai 2018">{{cite news |last=Bhattarai |first=Kamal Dev |date=21 February 2018 |url=https://thediplomat.com/2018/02/the-rebirth-of-the-nepal-communist-party/ |title=The (Re)Birth of the Nepal Communist Party |work=The Diplomat |access-date=29 November 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210302222331/https://thediplomat.com/2018/02/the-rebirth-of-the-nepal-communist-party/ |archive-date=2 March 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Responses to criticism ===
Marxist–Leninists respond that there was generally no unemployment in communist states and all citizens were guaranteed housing, schooling, healthcare and public transport at little or no cost.{{sfn|Service|2007|p=368}} In his critical analysis of communist states, Ellman stated that they compared favorably with Western states in some health indicators such as infant mortality and life expectancy.<ref>{{cite book |author-link=Michael Ellman |last=Ellman |first=Michael |date=2014 |title=Socialist Planning |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4L2ZBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA372 |pages=372 |isbn=978-1-107-42732-7 |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=3 December 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201203021221/https://books.google.com/books?id=4L2ZBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA372 |url-status=live |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> [[Philipp Ther]] wrote that there was a rise in living standards throughout Eastern Bloc countries as the result of modernisation programs under Marxist–Leninist governments.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ther |first=Philipp |author-link=Philipp Ther |date=2016 |title=Europe Since 1989: A History |url=https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10812.html |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |page=132 |isbn=978-0-691-16737-4 |quote=As a result of communist modernization, living standards in Eastern Europe rose. |access-date=8 October 2020 |archive-date=2 April 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190402224229/https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10812.html |url-status=live}}</ref> Sen found that several communist states made significant gains in life expectancy and commented "one thought that is bound to occur is that communism is good for poverty removal."<ref>{{cite book |author1-link=Richard G. Wilkinson |last1=Wilkinson |first1=Richard G. |date=November 1996 |title=Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality |publisher=[[Routledge]] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Zo-JAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA122 |pages=122 |isbn=0-415-09235-3 |access-date=24 April 2022 |archive-date=15 April 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220415182351/https://books.google.com/books?id=Zo-JAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA122 |url-status=live |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> [[Olivia Ball]] and Paul Gready reported that communist states pressed Western governments to include economic rights in the [[Universal Declaration of Human Rights]].<ref>{{cite magazine|last1=Ball |first1=Olivia |authorlink1 = Olivia Ball |last2=Gready |first2=Paul |date=2007 |title=The No-Nonsense Guide to Human Rights |magazine=New Internationalist |pages=35 |isbn=978-1-904456-45-2}}</ref>

Others such as Parenti stated that communist states experienced greater economic development than they would have otherwise, or that their leaders were forced to take harsh measures to defend their countries against the [[Western Bloc]] during the [[Cold War]]. Parenti wrote that accounts of political repression are exaggerated by anti-communists and that communist party rule provided some human rights such as [[economic, social, and cultural rights]] not found under [[capitalist states]], including the rights that everyone is treated equal regardless of education or financial stability; that any citizen can keep a job; or that there is a more efficient and equal distribution of resources.{{sfn|Parenti|1997|p=58}} [[David L. Hoffmann]] stated that many forms of state interventionism used by Marxist–Leninist governments, including social cataloging, surveillance and internment camps, pre-dated the Soviet regime and originated outside Russia. Hoffman further stated that technologies of social intervention developed together with the work of 19th-century European reformers and were greatly expanded during World War I, when state actors in all the combatant countries dramatically increased efforts to mobilise and control their populations. As the Soviet state was born at this moment of total war, it institutionalised state intervention as permanent features of governance.<ref>{{cite book |last=Hoffmann |first=David |year=2011 |title=Cultivating the Masses: Modern State Practices and Soviet Socialism, 1914–1939 |location=Ithaca, New York |publisher=[[Cornell University Press]] |pages=6–10 |isbn=978-0-8014-4629-0}}</ref>

Writing for ''[[The Guardian]]'',{{r|Milne 2006}} [[Seumas Milne]] stated the result of the [[Post–Cold War era|post–Cold War]] narrative that Stalin and Hitler were twin evils, therefore communism is as monstrous as [[Nazism]], "has been to relativise the unique crimes of Nazism, bury those of colonialism and feed the idea that any attempt at radical social change will always lead to suffering, killing and failure."<ref name="Milne 2002">{{cite news |last=Milne |first=Seumas |author-link=Seumas Milne |date=2 September 2002 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/sep/12/highereducation.historyandhistoryofart |title=The battle for history |work=[[The Guardian]] |access-date=7 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201018062813/https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/sep/12/highereducation.historyandhistoryofart |archive-date=18 October 2020 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Milne |first=Seumas |author-link=Seumas Milne |date=16 February 2006 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/Columnists/Column/0,,1710891,00.html |title=Communism may be dead, but clearly not dead enough |work=[[The Guardian]] |access-date=18 April 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200726062745/https://www.theguardian.com/Columnists/Column/0,,1710891,00.html |archive-date=26 July 2020 |url-status=live}}</ref> Other leftists, including some Marxist–Leninists, apply [[Self-criticism (Marxism–Leninism)|self-criticism]], and have at times criticised Marxist–Leninist praxis and some actions by Marxist–Leninist governments, while acknowledging its advancements, [[emancipatory]] acts such as their support of [[labour rights]],<ref>{{cite journal |last=Towe |first=Thomas E. |date=1967 |url=https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=6224&context=penn_law_review |title=Fundamental Rights in the Soviet Union: A Comparative Approach |journal=University of Pennsylvania Law Review |volume=115 |issue=1251 |pages=1251–1274 |doi=10.2307/3310959 |jstor=3310959 |access-date=14 October 2020 |archive-date=27 November 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201127172325/https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=6224&context=penn_law_review |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref name="Braga 2017">{{cite journal |last=Braga |first=Alexandre |date=January–July 2017 |url=https://periodicos.ufmg.br/index.php/revice/article/download/5032/3100/ |title=Direito e Socialismo na Perspectiva da Emancipação Humana |trans-title=Law and Socialism in the Perspective of Human Emancipation |via=Revice |language=pt |journal=Belo Horizonte: Revista de Ciências do Estado |volume=2 |number=1 |pages=400–402 |access-date=14 October 2020 |archive-date=29 November 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201129023536/https://periodicos.ufmg.br/index.php/revice/article/download/5032/3100/ |url-status=live}}</ref> [[women's rights]],{{r|Braga 2017}} [[anti-imperialism]],<ref>{{cite thesis |last=Drachewych |first=Oleksa |date=2018 |url=https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/bitstream/11375/22007/2/drachewych_oleksa_m_2017september_PhD.pdf |title=The Communist International, Anti-Imperialism and Racial Equality in British Dominions |location=London |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-0-8153-5478-9 |access-date=14 October 2020 |via=McMaster University's MacSphere |archive-date=6 February 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210206043235/https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/bitstream/11375/22007/2/drachewych_oleksa_m_2017september_PhD.pdf |url-status=live}}</ref> [[Socialist democracy|democratic]] efforts,<ref>{{cite book |last=Losurdo |first=Domenico |author-link=Domenico Losurdo |date=2020 |orig-date=2015 |title=War and Revolution: Rethinking the Twentieth Century |translator-last=Elliott |translator-first=Gregory |location=London |publisher=[[Verso Books]] |pages=00 |isbn=978-1-78873-666-4}}</ref> [[egalitarian]] achievements, [[modernisation]],<ref>{{cite book |last=Davies |first=R. W. |author-link=R. W. Davies |date=1998 |title=Soviet Economic Development from Lenin to Khrushchev |edition=illustrated |location=Cambridge |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |doi=10.1017/CBO9780511622335 |isbn=978-0-521-62742-9 |url=http://www.h-net.org/review/hrev-a0b2j7-aa |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230404070038/https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=3043 |archive-date=4 April 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Easterly |first1=William |author1-link=William Easterly |last2=Fischer |first2=Stanley |author2-link=Stanley Fischer |date=April 2001 |url=https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/dataset/wps1284-soviet-economic-decline |title=The Soviet Economic Decline: Historical and Republican Data |via=World Bank Policy Research Working Paper Number 1284 |orig-date=1995 |journal=World Bank Economic Review |volume=9 |number=3 |pages=341–371 |doi=10.1093/wber/9.3.341 |access-date=14 October 2020 |archive-date=20 December 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201220215507/https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/dataset/wps1284-soviet-economic-decline |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref> and the creation of mass [[social program]]s for education, health, housing, and jobs as well as the increase of [[living standards]].{{sfn|Parenti|1997}} According to Parenti, these revolutionary governments "extended a number of popular freedoms without destroying those freedoms that never existed in the previous regimes", such as [[democracy]] and [[individual rights]], citing the examples of the "feudal regime" of [[Chiang Kai-shek]] in China, the "U.S.-sponsored police state" of [[Fulgencio Batista]] in Cuba, the "U.S.-supported puppet governments" of [[Bảo Đại]] and others in Vietnam as well as [[French colonialism]] in Algeria; nonetheless, they "fostered conditions necessary for [[national self-determination]], economic betterment, the preservation of health and human life, and the end of many of the worst forms of [[Ethnic oppression|ethnic]], [[patriarchal]], and [[class oppression]]."{{sfn|Parenti|1997|p=34–35}}

Writing about the [[Stalinist era]] of Marxism–Leninism and its repressions, historian [[Michael Ellman]] stated that mass deaths from famines are not a "uniquely Stalinist evil", and compared the behavior of the Stalinist regime vis-à-vis the Holodomor to that of the [[British Empire]] (towards [[Great Famine (Ireland)|Ireland]] and [[Bengal famine of 1943|India]]), and even the [[G8]] in contemporary times, writing that the latter "are guilty of mass manslaughter or mass deaths from criminal negligence because of their not taking obvious measures to reduce mass deaths", and a possible defense of [[Joseph Stalin]] and his associates is that "their behaviour was no worse than that of many rulers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."<ref>{{cite journal |last=Ellman |first=Michael |author-link=Michael Ellman |date=November 2002 |title=Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments |journal=Europe-Asia Studies |publisher=[[Taylor & Francis]] |volume=54 |number=7 |pages=1152–1172 |doi=10.1080/0966813022000017177 |jstor=826310 |s2cid=43510161}}</ref>

== See also ==
{{Portal|Communism|Politics|Socialism|Soviet Union}}
* {{anl|Anti-Stalinist left}}
* [[Demolition of monuments to Vladimir Lenin in Ukraine]]
* [[History of Cuba]]
* [[History of the People's Republic of China]]
* [[History of the Soviet Union]]
* [[History of Vietnam]]
* [[List of communist states]]
* {{anl|List of socialist states (communism)}}
* {{anl|Neo-Stalinism}}
* {{anl|People's democracy (Marxism—Leninism)}}
* {{anl|Stalinism}}

== References ==
=== Citations ===
{{reflist}}

=== Bibliography ===
{{refbegin|colwidth=30em|indent=yes}}
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* {{cite web |last=Fitzgibbons |first=Daniel J. |date=11 October 2002 |title=USSR strayed from communism, say Economics professors |url=https://www.umass.edu/pubaffs/chronicle/archives/02/10-11/economics.html |access-date=22 September 2021 |website=The Campus Chronicle |publisher=[[University of Massachusetts Amherst]]}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Howard |first1=M. C. |last2=King |first2=J. E. |date=2001 |url=http://www.hetsa.org.au/pdf/34-A-08.pdf |title='State Capitalism' in the Soviet Union |journal=History of Economics Review |volume=34 |number=1 |pages=110–126 |doi=10.1080/10370196.2001.11733360 |s2cid=42809979 |access-date=12 April 2017 |archive-date=28 July 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190728140836/https://www.hetsa.org.au/pdf/34-A-08.pdf |url-status=live}}
* {{cite book |editor-last=Kohn |editor-first=George Childs |date=2007 |title=Dictionary of Wars |edition=3rd |publisher=Checkmark Publishing |isbn=978-0-8160-6578-3}}
* {{cite book |last=Lee |first=Stephen J. |date=2000 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KnvJO9yfvEAC |title=European Dictatorships, 1918–1945 |edition=2nd |location=London, England; New York, New York |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=0-415-23046-2 |via=[[Google Books]]}}
* {{cite encyclopedia |last=Morgan |first=W. John |year=2001 |title=Marxism–Leninism: The Ideology of Twentieth-Century Communism |editor1-last=Smelser |editor1-first=Neil J. |editor2-last=Baltes |editor2-first=Paul B. |encyclopedia=[[International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences]] |volume=26 |edition=1st |location=Oxford |publisher=[[Elsevier]] |isbn=978-0-08-043076-8 |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/referencework/9780080430768/international-encyclopedia-of-the-social-and-behavioral-sciences |access-date=25 August 2021 |via=[[Science Direct]] |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211031003018/https://www.sciencedirect.com/referencework/9780080430768/international-encyclopedia-of-the-social-and-behavioral-sciences |archive-date=31 October 2021}}
* {{cite encyclopedia |last=Morgan |first=W. John |date=2015 |orig-year=2001 |title=Marxism-Leninism: The Ideology of Twentieth-Century Communism |editor-last=Wright |editor-first=James D. |editor-link=James D. Wright |encyclopedia=[[International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences]] |edition=2nd |location=Oxford |publisher=[[Elsevier]] |pages=656–662 |isbn=978-0-08-097087-5 |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/referencework/9780080970875/international-encyclopedia-of-the-social-and-behavioral-sciences |access-date=25 August 2021 |via=Science Direct}}
* {{cite book |last=Parenti |first=Michael |author-link=Michael Parenti |year=1997 |title=Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism |location=San Francisco |publisher=[[City Lights Books]] |isbn=978-0-87286-330-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/blackshirtsredsr00pare |url-access=limited}}
* {{cite book |last=Patman |first=Robert G. |year=1993 |chapter=Soviet–Ethiopian relations: the horn of dilemma |pages=110–139 |editor=Margot Light |title=Troubled Friendships: Moscow's Third World Ventures |location=London |publisher=British Academic Press |isbn=9781850436492}}
* {{cite book |editor1-last=Pons |editor1-first=Silvo |editor1-link=:it:Silvio Pons |editor2-last=Service |editor2-first=Robert |editor2-link=Robert Service (historian) |title=A Dictionary of 20th Century Communism |location=Princeton, New Jersey; Oxfordshire, England |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |isbn=978-0-691-15429-9 |date=2010}}
* {{cite journal |last=Ree |first=E. Van |date=March 1997 |title=Stalin and Marxism: A Research Note |journal=Studies in East European Thought |publisher=[[Springer (publisher)|Springer]] |volume=49 |issue=1 |pages=23–33 |doi=10.1023/A:1017935822255 |jstor=20099624 |s2cid=189772356 |url=http://dare.uva.nl/personal/pure/en/publications/stalin-and-marxism-a-research-note(3224e098-db62-483b-8dc5-a6e749d23895).html}}
* {{cite book |last=Remnek |first=Richard B. |year=1992 |chapter=Translating 'New Soviet Thinking' into practice: the case of Ethiopia |editor-first=George W. |editor-last=Breslauer |title=Soviet Policy in Africa: From the Old to the New Thinking |location=Berkeley, CA |publisher=[[University of California at Berkeley]] |isbn=9780962262937}}
* {{cite book |last1=Rosser |first1=Marina V. |last2=Barkley Rosser |first2=J. Jr. |author2-link=J. Barkley Rosser Jr. |title=Comparative Economics in a Transforming World Economy |publisher=[[MIT Press]] |date=23 July 2003 |isbn=978-0-262-18234-8}}
* {{cite book |last=Sandle |first=Mark |date=1999 |title=A Short History of Soviet Socialism |location=London |publisher=[[UCL Press]] |doi=10.4324/9780203500279 |isbn=978-1-85728-355-6}}
* {{cite book |last=Service |first=Robert |author-link=Robert Service (historian) |date=2007 |title=Comrades!: A History of World Communism |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |isbn=978-0-674-04699-3}}
* {{cite book |last=Steele |first=David Ramsay |author-link=David Ramsay Steele |title=From Marx to Mises: Post Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation |publisher=Open Court |date=September 1999 |isbn=978-0-87548-449-5}}
* {{cite book |last=Strong |first=Anna Louise |author-link=Anna Louise Strong |title=The Stalin Era |publisher=New York Mainstream Publishers |year=1956 |isbn=0-900988-54-1 |url=https://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/books/SovietUnion/StalinEra_StrongAL.pdf |location=New York City}}
* {{cite book |last=Ulam |first=Adam |author-link=Adam Ulam |orig-date=1965 |date=1998 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TdCK1WkconkC |title=The Bolsheviks: The Intellectual and Political History of the Triumph of Communism in Russia |location=Cambridge |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |isbn=0-674-07830-6 |access-date=27 June 2015 |archive-date=18 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220318055909/https://books.google.com/books?id=TdCK1WkconkC |url-status=live |via=[[Google Books]]}}
* {{cite book |last1=Walker |first1=David |last2=Gray |first2=Daniel |author1-link=David Grant Walker |date=2009 |title=The A to Z of Marxism |publisher=[[Rowman & Littlefield]] |isbn=978-0-8108-6852-6}}
* {{cite book |last=Wilczynski |first=J. |title=The Economics of Socialism after World War Two: 1945-1990 |publisher=[[Transaction Publishers|Aldine Transaction]] |date=2008 |isbn=978-0-202-36228-1}}
* {{cite web |last=Wolff |first=Richard D. |author-link=Richard D. Wolff |date=27 June 2015 |title=Socialism Means Abolishing the Distinction Between Bosses and Employees |url=http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31567-socialism-means-abolishing-the-distinction-between-bosses-and-employees |access-date=29 January 2020 |website=[[Truthout]] |archive-date=11 March 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180311070639/http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31567-socialism-means-abolishing-the-distinction-between-bosses-and-employees |url-status=dead}}
{{refend}}

== Further reading ==
* {{cite book|last1=Buzuev|first1=Vladimir|last2=Gorodnov|first2=Vladimir|year=1987|url=https://archive.org/details/whatismarxismleninism|title=What Is Marxism–Leninism?|location=Moscow|publisher=[[Progress Publishers]]}}
* {{cite book|article-url=http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/a.htm#Marxism–Leninism|article=Marxism–Leninism|title=Encyclopedia of Marxism|publisher=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]|accessdate=31 December 2020}}
* {{cite book|authorlink=Otto Wille Kuusinen|last=Kuusinen|first=Otto Will|year=1963|url=https://archive.org/details/fundamentalsml1963|title=Fundamentals of Marxism–Leninism|edition=2nd rev.|translator-last=Dutt|translator-first=Clemens|location=Moscow|publisher=Foreign Languages Publishing House|ol=OL5975949M|oclc=1091006}}
* {{cite book|authorlink=Otto Wille Kuusinen|last=Kuusinen|first=Otto Will|year=2022|url=https://archive.org/details/fundamentalsmarxlenin|title=Fundamentals of Marxism–Leninism|translator-last=Dutt|translator-first=Clemens|location=United States|publisher=Marx Engels Lenin Press|isbn=979-8-8114-4663-6}}
* {{cite book|last=Sheptulin|first=Alexander|url=https://archive.org/details/mlphilosophy|title=Marxist-Leninist Philosophy|location=Moscow|publisher=Progress Publishers|ol=OL2170371W}}
* {{cite book|authorlink=Joseph Stalin|last=Stalin|first=Joseph|year=1924|section-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/index.htm|section=The Foundations of Leninism|title=Works|volume=6|url=https://archive.org/details/CollectedWorksVolume6|location=Moscow|publisher=Foreign Languages Publishing House|pages=71–196}}
* {{cite book|authorlink=Alexander Spirkin|last=Spirkin|first=Alexander|year=1990|url=https://archive.org/details/FundamentalsOfPhilosophy_913|title=Fundamentals of Philosophy|translator-last=Syrovatkin|translator-first=Sergei|location=Moscow|publisher=Progress Publishers|isbn=978-5-0100-2582-3}}

{{Marxism–Leninism}}
{{authoritarian types of rule}}
{{Soviet Union topics}}{{Chinese Communist Party}}{{Political ideologies}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Marxism-Leninism}}
[[Category:Marxism–Leninism| ]]
[[Category:Authoritarianism]]
[[Category:Communism]]
[[Category:Dialectical materialism]]
[[Category:Eponymous political ideologies]]
[[Category:Ideology of the Chinese Communist Party]]
[[Category:Ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Leninism]]
[[Category:Maoism]]
[[Category:Marxism]]
[[Category:Marxist schools of thought]]
[[Category:Politics of the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Joseph Stalin]]
[[Category:Stalinism]]
[[Category:State ideologies]]
[[Category:Totalitarianism]]
[[Category:Types of socialism]]
[[Category:Totalitarian ideologies]]
[[Category:Dictatorship of the proletariat]]