Editing Marxism–Leninism (section)

== 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 Marxist–Leninist 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 Marxist–Leninist 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 expediently suppressed, 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 Marxist–Leninist 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 Marxist–Leninist 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.{{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 Marxist–Leninist 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|Marxist–Leninist 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 Leninist 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 Marxist–Leninist 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 Marxist–Leninist 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>