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196-574: It is the largest gay pride parade in Central and Eastern Europe, and has been described as "the first Europe-wide gay pride parade held in a former Communist bloc country". The organizers of the parade want to promote social equality in general, and draw attention to the problems faced by the LGBT community in Poland . Its organizers, including Szymon Niemiec (who founded the event in 2001), stress that

392-484: A troika that featured Stalin as General Secretary, the de facto centre of power in the party and the country. 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 . Trotsky's permanent revolution advocated rapid industrialisation, elimination of private farming and having

588-531: A " sovietization " of Central Europe. In addition to reparations, Stalin pushed for "war booty", which would permit the Soviet Union to directly seize property from conquered nations without quantitative or qualitative limitation. A clause was added permitting this to occur with some limitations. At first, the Soviets concealed their role in other Eastern Bloc politics, with the transformation appearing as

784-688: A "loophole" through which Eastern Bloc citizens could still move west. The 3.5 million East Germans that had left by 1961, called Republikflucht , totaled approximately 20% of the entire East German population. In August 1961, East Germany erected a barbed-wire barrier that would eventually be expanded through construction into the Berlin Wall , effectively closing the loophole. With virtually non-existent conventional emigration, more than 75% of those emigrating from Eastern Bloc countries between 1950 and 1990 did so under bilateral agreements for "ethnic migration". About 10% were refugee migrants under

980-557: A broader democratic basis in Poland. He stated that the new government's primary task would be to prepare elections. However, the 1946 Polish people's referendum (known as the "Three Times Yes" referendum) and the subsequent 1947 Polish parliamentary election did not meet democratic standards and were largely manipulated. The parties at Yalta further agreed that the countries of liberated Europe and former Axis satellites would be allowed to "create democratic institutions of their own choice", pursuant to "the right of all peoples to choose

1176-577: A death sentence and execution. A number of other high ranking Bulgarian officials were also jailed. Stalin and Hungarian leader Mátyás Rákosi met in Moscow to orchestrate a show trial of Rákosi opponent László Rajk , who was thereafter executed. The preservation of the Soviet bloc relied on maintaining a sense of ideological unity that would entrench Moscow's influence in Eastern Europe as well as

1372-419: A distance. In addition to emigration restrictions, civil society, defined as a domain of political action outside the party's state control, was not allowed to firmly take root, with the possible exception of Poland in the 1980s . While the institutional design of the communist systems were based on the rejection of rule of law, the legal infrastructure was not immune to change reflecting decaying ideology and

1568-423: A distinct movement in the Soviet Union when Stalin and his supporters gained control of the 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 and

1764-520: A high degree of centralised control by the state and Communist party , political repression , state atheism , collectivisation and use of labour camps , as well as free universal education and healthcare , low unemployment and lower prices for certain goods . Historians such as Silvio Pons and Robert Service stated that the repression and totalitarianism came from Marxist–Leninist ideology. Historians such as Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick have offered other explanations and criticise

1960-508: A homosexual lifestyle. In protest, a different event, Wiec Wolności ("Freedom Veche "), was organized in Warsaw in 2004, and was estimated to have drawn 600 to 1,000 attendees. In response to the 2005 ban, about 2,500 people marched on 11 June of that year, an act of civil disobedience that led to several brief arrests. The 2006 parade was held without official interference, and is estimated to have gathered about 20,000 attendees. In May 2007

2156-482: A large-scale party programs to train personnel who would meet political requirements. Former members of the middle-class were officially discriminated against, though the state's need for their skills and certain opportunities to re-invent themselves as good Communist citizens did allow many to nonetheless achieve success. Communist regimes in the Eastern Bloc viewed marginal groups of opposition intellectuals as

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2352-710: A late September 1947 meeting of all communist parties in Szklarska Poręba , Eastern Bloc communist parties were blamed for permitting even minor influence by non-communists in their respective countries during the run up to the Marshall Plan. In the former German capital Berlin, surrounded by Soviet-occupied Germany, Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade on 24 June 1948, preventing food, materials and supplies from arriving in West Berlin . The blockade

2548-601: A massive urbanisation in the country. Unemployment was virtually eliminated in the country during the 1930s. However, this rapid industrialisation also resulted in the Soviet famine of 1930–1933 that killed millions. 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. Organised religion

2744-762: A member of the Comecon or the Warsaw Pact. Parting with the USSR in 1948, Yugoslavia did not belong to the East, but it also did not belong to the West because of its socialist system and its status as a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement . However, some sources consider Yugoslavia to be a member of the Eastern Bloc. Others consider Yugoslavia not to be a member after it broke with Soviet policy in

2940-767: 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. Historiography of Marxist–Leninist states is polarised. According to John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr , historiography is characterised by a split between traditionalists and revisionists. "Traditionalists", who characterise themselves as objective reporters of an alleged totalitarian nature of communism and Marxist–Leninist states, are criticised by their opponents as being anti-communist , even fascist , in their eagerness on continuing to focus on

3136-561: A modification of Western " bourgeois democracy ". As a young communist was told in East Germany, "it's got to look democratic, but we must have everything in our control". Stalin felt that socioeconomic transformation was indispensable to establish Soviet control, reflecting the Marxist–Leninist view that material bases, the distribution of the means of production, shaped social and political relations. The Soviet Union also co-opted

3332-467: A new meaning since the Russian Revolution , as they became equivalent to the ideas of Marxism–Leninism, namely the interpretation of Marxism by Vladimir Lenin and his successors. Endorsing the final objective, namely the creation of a community-owning means of production and providing each of its participants with consumption " according to their needs ", Marxism–Leninism puts forward

3528-419: A potential threat because of the bases underlying Communist power therein. The suppression of dissidence and opposition was considered a central prerequisite to retain power, though the enormous expense at which the population in certain countries were kept under secret surveillance may not have been rational. Following a totalitarian initial phase, a post-totalitarian period followed the death of Stalin in which

3724-408: A public relations campaign against the western policy change and communists attempted to disrupt the elections of 1948 preceding large losses therein, while 300,000 Berliners demonstrated and urged the international airlift to continue. In May 1949, Stalin lifted the blockade, permitting the resumption of Western shipments to Berlin. After disagreements between Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito and

3920-650: A reinforcement of proletarian revolution in Europe. 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. In the early 1910s, Lenin remained highly unpopular and was so unpopular amongst international socialist movement that by 1914 it considered censoring him. Unlike

4116-901: 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 congress in July 1917, to 66%, at the fifth congress in 1918. As promised to the Russian peoples in October 1917, the Bolsheviks quit Russia's participation in

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4312-510: A unified Soviet command structure. Beginning in 1964, Romania took a more independent course. While it did not repudiate either Comecon or the Warsaw Pact, it ceased to play a significant role in either. Nicolae Ceaușescu 's assumption of leadership one year later pushed Romania even further in the direction of separateness. Albania, which had become increasingly isolated under Stalinist leader Enver Hoxha following de-Stalinization , undergoing an Albanian–Soviet split in 1961, withdrew from

4508-453: A version of Korean ultranationalism , which eventually developed after losing its original Marxist–Leninist elements. According to North Korea: A Country Study by Robert L. Worden, Marxism–Leninism was abandoned immediately after the start of de-Stalinisation in the Soviet Union and has been totally replaced by Juche since at least 1974. Daniel Schwekendiek wrote that what made North Korean Marxism–Leninism distinct from that of China and

4704-564: A world of democracy and peace". While meeting with Stalin and Roosevelt in Tehran in 1943, Churchill stated that Britain was vitally interested in restoring Poland as a politically independent country. Britain did not press the matter for fear that it would become a source of inter-allied friction. In February 1945, at the conference at Yalta , Stalin demanded a Soviet sphere of political influence in Central Europe. Stalin eventually

4900-532: 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. Academic Sovietology after World War II and during the Cold War was dominated by the "totalitarian model" of the Soviet Union, stressing the absolute nature of Stalin's power. The "revisionist school" beginning in

5096-535: Is a communist ideology that became the largest faction of the 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. It was developed in Russia by Joseph Stalin and drew on elements of Bolshevism , Leninism , Marxism , and the works of Karl Kautsky . It was the state ideology of

5292-458: 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. 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

5488-526: Is derived from Marxism–Leninism, although its evolution is disputed. Marxist–Leninist states are commonly referred to as " communist states " by Western academics. Marxism–Leninism was developed from Bolshevism by Joseph Stalin in the 1920s based on his understanding and synthesis of orthodox Marxism and Leninism . Marxism–Leninism holds that a two-stage communist revolution is needed to replace capitalism . A vanguard party , organized through democratic centralism , would seize power on behalf of

5684-456: 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 state ideology of the People's Republic of China as well as

5880-491: Is replaced by a socialist encirclement". In 1939, the USSR entered into the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany that contained a secret protocol that divided Romania, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Finland into German and Soviet spheres of influence. Eastern Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Bessarabia in northern Romania were recognized as parts of the Soviet sphere of influence . Lithuania

6076-421: Is so great that we cannot, at one stroke, restore full-scale factory, state, socialist production." 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

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6272-518: Is superior to Stalin only in one respect, namely, in being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite, and more attentive to comrades." Upon his death on 21 January 1924, Lenin's political testament was read aloud to the Central Committee, who chose to ignore Lenin's ordered removal of Stalin as General Secretary because enough members believed Stalin had been politically rehabilitated in 1923. Consequent to personally spiteful disputes about

6468-517: 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. In the 1925–1927 period, Stalin dissolved the troika and disowned the 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

6664-648: The 1936 Soviet Constitution . 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 . The formulation of the Soviet version of dialectical and historical materialism in the 1930s by Stalin and his associates, such as in Stalin's text Dialectical and Historical Materialism , became

6860-403: The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine causing many Ukrainians to flee the country and Russian aerial bombing campaigns, could not hold an event in the city. In addition to LGBT rights, the march also focused on supporting Ukraine and calling for peace. A recurring demand of the parade is the recognition of same-sex unions in Poland . Communist bloc The Eastern Bloc , also known as

7056-611: 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

7252-701: 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,

7448-469: The COVID-19 pandemic , the 2020 edition of the parade was called off. It rebooted on 19 June 2021, and again, the mayor Rafał Trzaskowski participated in the event, granting the parade city hall patronage. Although no accurate number of participants was officially announced, selected media stated that there were "thousands" present at the event. In 2022, the march was held alongside KyivPride , which, due to

7644-549: 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. 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

7840-519: The Comecon ( East Germany , Poland , Czechoslovakia , Hungary , Romania , Bulgaria , and Albania ). In Asia , the Eastern Bloc comprised Mongolia , Vietnam , Laos , Kampuchea , North Korea , South Yemen , Syria , and China . In the Americas , the countries aligned with the Soviet Union included Cuba from 1961 and for limited periods Nicaragua and Grenada . The term Eastern Bloc

8036-538: The Comecon in accordance with Stalin's desire to enforce Soviet domination of the lesser states of Central Europe and to mollify some states that had expressed interest in the Marshall Plan , and which were now, increasingly, cut off from their traditional markets and suppliers in Western Europe. The Comecon's role became ambiguous because Stalin preferred more direct links with other party chiefs than

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8232-792: The Communist Bloc ( Combloc ), the Socialist Bloc , and the Soviet Bloc , was the collective term for an unofficial coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe , Asia , Africa , and Latin America that were aligned with the Soviet Union and existed during the Cold War (1947–1991). These states followed the ideology of Marxism–Leninism , in opposition to the capitalist Western Bloc . The Eastern Bloc

8428-467: 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

8624-610: The Ogaden War in 1977. Although not Marxist–Leninist , leadership of Ba'athist Syria officially regarded the country as part of the Socialist Bloc and established a close economic, military alliance with the Soviet Union. Many states were accused by the Western Bloc of being in the Eastern Bloc when they were part of the Non-Aligned Movement . The most limited definition of the Eastern Bloc would only include

8820-512: The Politburo . In 1929, Stalin politically controlled the party and the Soviet Union by way of deception and administrative acumen. 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. Such Stalinism also subordinated

9016-643: 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. Strategically, the Wehrmacht 's extensive and effective attack threatened

9212-851: 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 to the Russian Civil War by the armies of seventeen countries, featuring Great Britain, France, Italy, the United States and Imperial Japan. Elsewhere,

9408-705: 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

9604-526: The Sino-Soviet split (1956–1966) and the two countries broke their international relations (diplomatic, political, cultural and economic). China's Great Leap Forward , an idealistic massive reform project, resulted in an estimated 15 to 55 million deaths between 1959 and 1961, mostly from starvation. In Eastern Asia, the Cold War produced the Korean War (1950–1953), the first proxy war between

9800-589: The Soviet Union , Soviet satellite states in the Eastern Bloc , and various countries in the Non-Aligned Movement and Third World during the Cold War , as well as the Communist International after Bolshevization . Today, Marxism–Leninism is the ideology of the ruling parties of China , Cuba , Laos and Vietnam (all one-party socialist republics ), as well as many other communist parties . The state ideology of North Korea

9996-646: The Soviets occupied the territories . In June 1941, Germany broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact by invading the Soviet Union . From the time of this invasion to 1944, the areas annexed by the Soviet Union were part of Germany's Ostland (except for the Moldavian SSR ). Thereafter, the Soviet Union began to push German forces westward through a series of battles on the Eastern Front . In

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10192-654: The 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 , the gentry and the bourgeoisie . These reforms resolved neither the illiteracy , the poverty , nor malnutrition of the proletarian majority of Imperial Russia. In Swiss exile, Lenin developed Marx's philosophy and extrapolated decolonisation by colonial revolt as

10388-452: The Third World socialist regimes, have been variously described as "bureaucratic-authoritarian systems", and China's socio-economic structure has been referred to as "nationalistic state capitalism". 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 . Marxist–Leninist states have been marked by

10584-469: The Tito–Stalin split , the Sino-Soviet split , and the Sino-Albanian split . The socio-economic nature of Marxist–Leninist 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 . The Eastern Bloc, including Marxist–Leninist states in Central and Eastern Europe as well as

10780-421: The Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, 23 August 1939) and to jointly invade and partition Poland , by way of which Nazi Germany started the Second World War (1 September 1939). 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

10976-404: The Warsaw Pact was formed partly in response to NATO 's inclusion of West Germany and partly because the Soviets needed an excuse to retain Red Army units in Hungary. For 35 years, the Pact perpetuated the Stalinist concept of Soviet national security based on imperial expansion and control over satellite regimes in Eastern Europe. This Soviet formalization of their security relationships in

11172-449: The Western Front (4 August 1914 – 11 November 1918), Imperial Germany impelled the withdrawal of Imperial Russia from the war's 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. In March 1917, the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II led to the Russian Provisional Government (March–July 1917), who then proclaimed

11368-546: The absolute monarchy of the Tsar of Russia . 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. 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. The failure of

11564-492: 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 . 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

11760-558: The permanent revolution to differentiate themselves from Stalin's justification and implementation of socialism in one country . 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 . In that vein, Mao Zedong Thought , Mao Zedong 's updating and adaptation of Marxism–Leninism to Chinese conditions in which revolutionary praxis

11956-429: The proletariat and establish a one-party socialist state, called the dictatorship of the proletariat . The state would control the means of production , suppress opposition , counter-revolution , and the bourgeoisie , and promote Soviet collectivism , to pave the way for an eventual communist society that would be classless and stateless . After the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, Marxism–Leninism became

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12152-610: The "totalitarian model", as outlined by political scientist Carl Joachim Friedrich , which stated that the Soviet Union and other Marxist–Leninist states were totalitarian systems, with the personality cult, and almost unlimited powers of the "great leader", such as Stalin. It was considered to be outdated by the 1980s and for the post-Stalinist era. Some academics, such as Stéphane Courtois ( The Black Book of Communism ), Steven Rosefielde ( Red Holocaust ), and Rudolph Rummel ( Death by Government ), wrote of mass, excess deaths under Marxist–Leninist regimes. These authors defined

12348-425: The 1948 Tito–Stalin split . In 1922, the Russian SFSR , the Ukrainian SSR , the Byelorussian SSR and the Transcaucasian SFSR approved the Treaty of Creation of the USSR and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, forming the Soviet Union . Soviet leader Joseph Stalin , who viewed the Soviet Union as a "socialist island", stated that the Soviet Union must see that "the present capitalist encirclement

12544-499: The 1960s focused on relatively autonomous institutions which might influence policy at the higher level. 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." These "revisionist school" historians challenged

12740-551: 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 Albania 's rejection of China's Realpolitik of Sino–American rapprochement, specifically the 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

12936-432: The Bloc were instructed to foster intra-leadership conflict and to transmit information against each other. This accompanied a continuous stream of accusations of "nationalistic deviations", "insufficient appreciation of the USSR's role", links with Tito and "espionage for Yugoslavia". This resulted in the persecution of many major party cadres, including those in East Germany. The first country to experience this approach

13132-411: 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 . The Cultural revolution in the Soviet Union focused on restructuring culture and society. During the 1930s, the rapid industrialisation of the country accelerated

13328-442: The Bolshevik government had achieved economic production levels equal to Russia's production levels in 1913. Initial Bolshevik economic policies from 1917 to 1918 were cautious, with limited nationalisations of the means of production which had been private property of the Russian aristocracy during the Tsarist monarchy. Lenin was immediately committed to avoid antagonising the peasantry by making efforts to coax them away from

13524-447: 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. The principal obstacles to Russian economic development and modernisation were great material poverty and

13720-400: 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. The vanguardism of proactive, pragmatic commitment to achieving revolution was the Bolsheviks' advantage in out-manoeuvring

13916-411: 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 ; 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

14112-547: The Cold War, Marxism–Leninist countries like the Soviet Union and its allies were one of the major forces in international relations . With the death of Stalin and the ensuing de-Stalinisation, Marxism–Leninism underwent several revisions and adaptations such as Guevarism , Ho Chi Minh Thought , Hoxhaism , Maoism , socialism with Chinese characteristics , and Titoism . More recently Nepalese communist parties have adopted People's Multiparty Democracy . This also caused several splits between Marxist–Leninist states, resulting in

14308-467: The Cold War. These academics include Mark Aarons , Noam Chomsky , Jodi Dean , Kristen Ghodsee , Seumas Milne , and Michael Parenti . Ghodsee, Nathan J. Robinson , 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. Although Marxism–Leninism

14504-485: The Comecon's indirect sophistication; it played no significant role in the 1950s in economic planning. Initially, the Comecon served as cover for the Soviet taking of materials and equipment from the rest of the Eastern Bloc, but the balance changed when the Soviets became net subsidizers of the rest of the Bloc by the 1970s via an exchange of low cost raw materials in return for shoddily manufactured finished goods. In 1955,

14700-597: 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

14896-460: 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". This was criticised as being the development of vanguardism as a form of hierarchical party–elite that controlled society. Within five years of

15092-638: 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. 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

15288-417: 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

15484-551: The Eastern Bloc reflected Moscow's basic security policy principle that continued presence in East Central Europe was a foundation of its defense against the West. Through its institutional structures, the Pact also compensated in part for the absence of Joseph Stalin's personal leadership since his death in 1953. The Pact consolidated the other Bloc members' armies in which Soviet officers and security agents served under

15680-408: The Eastern Bloc, despite attempts by authorities to jam the airways. Under the state atheism of many Eastern Bloc nations, religion was actively suppressed. Since some of these states tied their ethnic heritage to their national churches, both the peoples and their churches were targeted by the Soviets. In 1949, the Soviet Union , Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia , Hungary, Poland, and Romania founded

15876-863: The Eastern European countries into its sphere of influence by making reference to some cultural commonalities. Moscow-trained cadres were put into crucial power positions to fulfill orders regarding sociopolitical transformation. Elimination of the bourgeoisie 's social and financial power by expropriation of landed and industrial property was accorded absolute priority. These measures were publicly billed as "reforms" rather than socioeconomic transformations. Except for initially in Czechoslovakia, activities by political parties had to adhere to "Bloc politics", with parties eventually having to accept membership in an "antifascist bloc" obliging them to act only by mutual "consensus". The bloc system permitted

16072-623: The European Parliament . 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 Marxist–Leninist states and drawn comparisons with what they see as atrocities that were perpetrated by capitalist countries , particularly during

16268-575: The European socialists had failed the working classes for preferring patriotic war to proletarian internationalism . To debunk patriotism and national chauvinism , Lenin explained in the essay Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917) that capitalist economic expansion leads to colonial imperialism which is then regulated with nationalist wars such as the Great War among the empires of Europe. To relieve strategic pressures from

16464-500: 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). 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

16660-634: 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

16856-596: The February Revolution exiled Bolsheviks, Mensheviks , Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists such as the Black Guards from Russia. 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. The 1908–1917 period

17052-815: The Geneva Convention of 1951. Most Soviets allowed to leave during this time period were ethnic Jews permitted to emigrate to Israel after a series of embarrassing defections in 1970 caused the Soviets to open very limited ethnic emigrations. The fall of the Iron Curtain was accompanied by a massive rise in European East-West migration. Famous Eastern Bloc defectors included Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva , who denounced Stalin after her 1967 defection. Marxism%E2%80%93Leninism Marxism–Leninism ( Russian : Марксизм-Ленинизм , romanized :  Marksizm-Leninizm )

17248-626: The Great Patriotic War (1941–1945), the Soviet Union was a military superpower with a say in determining the geopolitical order of the world. Apart from the failed Third Period policy in the early 1930s, Marxist–Leninists played an important role in anti-fascist resistance movements , 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),

17444-689: 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 soviets . 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

17640-831: The Nazi's lasted until the Schutzstaffel and the Einsatzgruppen began their 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

17836-720: The Polish rejection of the Plan with a huge 5-year trade agreement, including $ 450 million in credit, 200,000 tons of grain, heavy machinery and factories. In July 1947, Stalin ordered these countries to pull out of the Paris Conference on the European Recovery Programme, which has been described as "the moment of truth" in the post- World War II division of Europe. Thereafter, Stalin sought stronger control over other Eastern Bloc countries, abandoning

18032-564: 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 Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation (16 April–2 May 1945). On concluding

18228-610: 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

18424-433: The Socialist Revolutionaries, allowing a peasant takeover of nobles ' estates while no immediate nationalisations were enacted on peasants' property. 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,

18620-504: The Soviet Russians learned the technology and the techniques required to operate and administrate industries. Importantly, Lenin declared that the development of socialism would not be able to be pursued in the manner originally thought by Marxists. 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. At

18816-526: 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 Grand Alliance , a common front against the Axis Powers (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan ). In the continental European countries occupied by

19012-568: The Soviet Union , 1924–1930), Nikolai Bukharin ( General Secretary of the Comintern , 1926–1929; Editor-in-Chief of Pravda , 1918–1929), and Mikhail Tomsky (Chairman of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions in the 1920s). 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

19208-506: 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. The party's ranks grew in numbers, with the party modifying its organisation to include more trade unions and factories. 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. In

19404-407: The Soviet Union promote the spread of communist revolution abroad. 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. To politically isolate and oust Trotsky from the party, Stalin expediently advocated socialism in one country, a policy to which he was indifferent. In 1925,

19600-612: The Soviet Union purged native fascist collaborators and these in collaboration with the Axis Powers from the Eastern European countries occupied by the Axis Powers and installed native Marxist–Leninist governments. Upon Allied victory concluding the Second World War (1939–1945), the members of the Grand Alliance resumed their expediently suppressed, pre-war geopolitical rivalries and ideological tensions which disunity broke their anti-fascist wartime alliance through

19796-617: The Soviet Union regarding Greece and Albania , a Tito–Stalin split occurred, followed by Yugoslavia being expelled from the Cominform in June 1948 and a brief failed Soviet putsch in Belgrade. The split created two separate communist forces in Europe. A vehement campaign against Titoism was immediately started in the Eastern Bloc, describing agents of both the West and Tito in all places as engaging in subversive activity. Stalin ordered

19992-478: The Soviet Union to exercise domestic control indirectly. Crucial departments such as those responsible for personnel, general police, secret police and youth were strictly Communist run. Moscow cadres distinguished "progressive forces" from "reactionary elements" and rendered both powerless. Such procedures were repeated until Communists had gained unlimited power and only politicians who were unconditionally supportive of Soviet policy remained. In June 1947, after

20188-503: The Soviet Union was that it incorporated national feelings and macro-historical elements in the socialist ideology, opting for its "own style of socialism". 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. In the other four existing Marxist–Leninist socialist states , namely China, Cuba , Laos , and Vietnam ,

20384-647: The Soviet Union. In 1948, circumstance and cultural personality aggravated the matter into the 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

20580-521: The Soviet communists to fight throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, creating agreements with France to challenge Germany. 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. In 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany agreed to

20776-435: 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. The Marxist–Leninist economic régime modernised Russia from the illiterate, peasant society characteristic of monarchy to the literate , socialist society of educated farmers and industrial workers. Industrialisation led to

20972-448: The Soviets had refused to negotiate a potential lightening of restrictions on German development, the United States announced the Marshall Plan , a comprehensive program of American assistance to all European countries wanting to participate, including the Soviet Union and those of Eastern Europe. The Soviets rejected the Plan and took a hard-line position against the United States and non-communist European nations. However, Czechoslovakia

21168-810: The Third World. 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 East Germany . 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 leftists . The events that precipitated

21364-741: The Warsaw Pact in 1968 following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia . In 1917, Russia restricted emigration by instituting passport controls and forbidding the exit of belligerent nationals. In 1922, after the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR , both the Ukrainian SSR and the Russian SFSR issued general rules for travel that foreclosed virtually all departures, making legal emigration impossible. Border controls thereafter strengthened such that, by 1928, even illegal departure

21560-437: The Warsaw Pact states and the Mongolian People's Republic as former satellite states most dominated by the Soviet Union. Cuba 's defiance of complete Soviet control was noteworthy enough that Cuba was sometimes excluded as a satellite state altogether, as it sometimes intervened in other Third World countries even when the Soviet Union opposed this. Post-1991 usage of the term "Eastern Bloc" may be more limited in referring to

21756-407: The West and Tito. Despite the initial institutional design of communism implemented by Joseph Stalin in the Eastern Bloc, subsequent development varied across countries. In satellite states, after peace treaties were initially concluded, opposition was essentially liquidated, fundamental steps towards socialism were enforced, and Kremlin leaders sought to strengthen control therein. Right from

21952-629: 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

22148-587: The aftermath of World War II on the Soviet-Finnish border , the parties signed another peace treaty ceding to the Soviet Union in 1944, followed by a Soviet annexation of roughly the same eastern Finnish territories as those of the prior interim peace treaty as part of the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic . From 1943 to 1945, several conferences regarding Post-War Europe occurred that, in part, addressed

22344-520: The ban has been declared discriminatory and illegal by the European Court of Human Rights ' Bączkowski v. Poland ruling. That month, the 2007 parade gathered about 4000 attendees. The 2008 march attracted "several thousands" again, and the 2009, "over 2,000". In 2010 the event was not held, as Warsaw hosted the international EuroPride event, drawing a crowd of around 8,000. This event was organized privately and required an entrance fee, which

22540-455: The beginning, Stalin directed systems that rejected Western institutional characteristics of market economies , capitalist parliamentary democracy (dubbed "bourgeois democracy" in Soviet parlance) and the rule of law subduing discretional intervention by the state. The resulting states aspired to total control of a political center backed by an extensive and active repressive apparatus, and a central role of Marxist–Leninist ideology. However,

22736-565: 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

22932-454: The centres of revolutionary action were too far apart for proper political coordination. To generate revolutionary momentum from the Tsarist army killings on 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

23128-479: The collectivisation of agriculture. It achieved 23.6% of collectivisation within two years (1930) and 98.0% of collectivisation within thirteen years (1941). 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

23324-791: 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,

23520-489: The concept of totalitarianism into the anti-communist Western Bloc and the Marxist–Leninist Eastern Bloc . 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 wars in

23716-595: The construction of socialism in one country, the NKVD established the Gulag system of forced-labour camps for regular criminals and political dissidents, for culturally insubordinate artists and politically incorrect intellectuals and for homosexual people and religious anti-communists . 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

23912-774: The continual and permanent development of Marxism–Leninism, with ideological adaptation to material conditions. 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%. On 6 January 1918, the Draft Decree on the Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly was issued by the Central Executive Committee of

24108-470: The conversion of the Cominform into an instrument to monitor and control the internal affairs of other Eastern Bloc parties. He also briefly considered converting the Cominform into an instrument for sentencing high-ranking deviators, but dropped the idea as impractical. Instead, a move to weaken communist party leaders through conflict was started. Soviet cadres in communist party and state positions in

24304-462: The core of the system, with their names becoming synonymous with raw power and the threat of violent retribution should an individual become active against the State. Several state police and secret police organizations enforced communist party rule, including the following: The press in the communist period was an organ of the state, completely reliant on and subservient to the communist party. Before

24500-594: The country's population who had accepted total obedience. Those who secured membership in this selective group received considerable rewards, such as access to special lower priced shops with a greater selection of high-quality domestic and/or foreign goods ( confections , alcohol , cigars , cameras , televisions , and the like), special schools, holiday facilities, homes, high-quality domestic and/or foreign-made furniture, works of art, pensions, permission to travel abroad, and official cars with distinct license plates so that police and others could identify these members from

24696-543: The country). By 1939, with the exception of Stalin himself, none of the original Bolsheviks of the October Revolution of 1917 remained in the party. Unquestioning loyalty to Stalin was expected by the regime of all citizens. Stalin exercised extensive personal control over the party and unleashed an unprecedented level of violence to eliminate any potential threat to his regime. While Stalin exercised major control over political initiatives, their implementation

24892-409: 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. That implicit accusation of ideological deviationism licensed Stalin to accuse Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky of plotting against the party and the appearance of impropriety then compelled

25088-518: The development of a technical intelligentsia who would propel the industrial development of Russia to self-sufficiency. 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 party and that he be replaced with "some other person who

25284-561: 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

25480-817: 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. To challenge Nazi Germany 's bid for European empire and hegemony, Stalin promoted anti-fascist front organisations to encourage European socialists and democrats to join

25676-436: The end of the Cold War: the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (from 1967), the People's Republic of the Congo (from 1969), the People's Republic of Benin , the People's Republic of Angola and People's Republic of Mozambique from 1975, the People's Revolutionary Government of Grenada from 1979 to 1983, the Derg / People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia from 1974, and the Somali Democratic Republic from 1969 until

25872-457: 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. 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

26068-444: The event, the Russian peoples created an economy of barter and black market to counter the Bolshevik government's voiding of the monetary economy . In 1921, the New Economic Policy restored some private enterprise to animate the Russian economy. 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 until

26264-405: The focus on the upper levels of society and use of concepts such as totalitarianism which have obscured the reality of the system. 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 , several academics say that Marxism–Leninism in practice was a form of state capitalism. In

26460-441: The form of government under which they will live". The parties also agreed to help those countries form interim governments "pledged to the earliest possible establishment through free elections" and "facilitate where necessary the holding of such elections". At the beginning of the July–August 1945 Potsdam Conference after Germany's unconditional surrender, Stalin repeated previous promises to Churchill that he would refrain from

26656-503: The former believing Soviet leader Stalin to be a "devil"-like tyrant leading a vile system. When warned of potential domination by a Stalin dictatorship over part of Europe, Roosevelt responded with a statement summarizing his rationale for relations with Stalin: "I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of a man. ... I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for

26852-470: The future structure of the "Polish region". Soviet authorities immediately started a campaign of sovietization of the newly Soviet-annexed areas . Soviet authorities collectivized agriculture, and nationalized and redistributed private and state-owned Polish property. Initial Soviet occupations of the Baltic countries had occurred in mid-June 1940, when Soviet NKVD troops raided border posts in Lithuania , Estonia and Latvia , followed by

27048-400: The ideological basis of communist parties around the world which sympathised with China. 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. Following the Sino-Albanian split of

27244-489: The ideology of the post-Stalin Soviet Union. 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 . 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 . Juche has been described by Michael Seth as

27440-428: 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 . 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

27636-456: 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 enemies of the state . To provide manpower (manual, intellectual and technical) to realise

27832-490: The interests (political, national and ideological) of Asian and European communist parties to the geopolitical interests of the Soviet Union. In the 1928–1932 period of the 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 Tsarist social order of monarchy. As Old Bolshevik revolutionaries, Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky recommended amelioration of

28028-544: 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". According to Haynes and Klehr, "revisionists" are more numerous and dominate academic institutions and learned journals. A suggested alternative formulation

28224-486: 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. 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

28420-416: 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

28616-419: The late 1980s, Eastern Bloc radio and television organizations were state-owned, while print media was usually owned by political organizations, mostly by the local communist party. Youth newspapers and magazines were owned by youth organizations affiliated with communist parties. The control of the media was exercised directly by the communist party itself, and by state censorship, which was also controlled by

28812-432: 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 Bolshevik party to assume command of the October Revolution in 1917. 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

29008-416: The liquidation of state administrations and replacement by Soviet cadres. Elections for parliament and other offices were held with single candidates listed and the official results fabricated, purporting pro-Soviet candidates' approval by 92.8 percent of the voters in Estonia, 97.6 percent in Latvia, and 99.2 percent in Lithuania. The fraudulently installed "people's assemblies" immediately declared each of

29204-406: 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

29400-416: The official Soviet interpretation of Marxism , 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. In 1938, Stalin's official textbook History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) popularised Marxism–Leninism . The internationalism of Marxism–Leninism

29596-428: The parade is meant to highlight not only the LGBT movement, but the rights issues of all minorities. Though efforts toward an LGBT parade in Poland were made at least as early as 1998, Poland's first successful parade, in Warsaw, was organized in 2001 through the efforts of gay rights activist Szymon Niemiec . The second and third parades were held in 2002 and 2003. That year there were some 300 marchers. The 2002 parade

29792-446: The parties entered into an interim peace treaty granting the Soviet Union a portion of the eastern region of Karelia (10% of Finnish territory), and the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic was established by merging the ceded territories with the KASSR . After a June 1940 Soviet Ultimatum demanding Bessarabia, Bukovina , and the Hertsa region from Romania, the Soviets entered these areas, Romania caved to Soviet demands and

29988-525: The party. Media served as an important form of control over information and society. The dissemination and portrayal of knowledge were considered by authorities to be vital to communism's survival by stifling alternative concepts and critiques. Several state Communist Party newspapers were published, including: The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) served as the central agency for collection and distribution of internal and international news for all Soviet newspapers, radio and television stations. It

30184-420: 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. Communist ideologies and ideas have acquired

30380-565: 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 monarchs of Russia. 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

30576-510: 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 and Members of

30772-517: The potential Soviet annexation and control of countries in Central Europe. There were various Allied plans for state order in Central Europe for post-war. While Joseph Stalin tried to get as many states under Soviet control as possible, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill preferred a Central European Danube Confederation to counter these countries against Germany and Russia. Churchill's Soviet policy regarding Central Europe differed vastly from that of American President Franklin D. Roosevelt , with

30968-413: The power of the local Communist elites. The port city of Trieste was a particular focus after the Second World War. Until the break between Tito and Stalin, the Western powers and the Eastern bloc faced each other uncompromisingly. The neutral buffer state Free Territory of Trieste , founded in 1947 with the United Nations, was split up and dissolved in 1954 and 1975, also because of the détente between

31164-432: 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. To thwart Trotsky's likely election to head the party, Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev formed

31360-401: The primary method of Communist rule shifted from mass terror to selective repression, along with ideological and sociopolitical strategies of legitimation and the securing of loyalty. Juries were replaced by a tribunal of professional judges and two lay assessors that were dependable party actors. The police deterred and contained opposition to party directives. The political police served as

31556-400: The principles of socialist realism and Russian traditions that Stalin admired were allowed to continue. Foreign policy in the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1941 resulted in substantial changes in the Soviet Union's approach to its foreign policy. In 1933, the Marxist–Leninist geopolitical perspective was that the Soviet Union was surrounded by capitalist and anti-communist enemies. As a result,

31752-417: The prior appearance of democratic institutions. When it appeared that, in spite of heavy pressure, non-communist parties might receive in excess of 40% of the vote in the August 1947 Hungarian elections , repressions were instituted to liquidate any independent political forces. In that same month, annihilation of the opposition in Bulgaria began on the basis of continuing instructions by Soviet cadres. At

31948-408: The recognition of the class struggle as a dominating principle of a social change and development. In addition, workers (the proletariat ) were to carry out the mission of reconstruction of the society. 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 ,

32144-430: The resignations of the Old Bolsheviks from government and from the Politburo. Stalin then completed his political purging of the party by exiling Trotsky from the Soviet Union in 1929. 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. Political developments in

32340-432: 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 revisionists . Although

32536-505: The secret police NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) to rise above the law and the 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

32732-479: The sharp 1953 increase was fear of potential further Sovietization with the increasingly paranoid actions of Joseph Stalin in late 1952 and early 1953. 226,000 had fled in just the first six months of 1953. With the closing of the Inner German border officially in 1952, the Berlin city sector borders remained considerably more accessible than the rest of the border because of their administration by all four occupying powers. Accordingly, it effectively comprised

32928-506: 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. A key difference between Maoism and other forms of Marxism–Leninism is that peasants should be the bulwark of the revolutionary energy, which is led by the working class. Three common Maoist values are revolutionary populism , pragmatism, and dialectics . According to Rachel Walker, "Marxism–Leninism"

33124-399: The states forming the Warsaw Pact (1955–1991) and Mongolia (1924–1991), which are no longer communist states. Sometimes they are more generally referred to as "the countries of Eastern Europe under communism", excluding Mongolia, but including Yugoslavia and Albania which had both split with the Soviet Union by the 1960s. Even though Yugoslavia was a socialist country, it was not

33320-413: The substitution of autonomous law. Initially, communist parties were small in all countries except Czechoslovakia, such that there existed an acute shortage of politically "trustworthy" persons for administration, police, and other professions. Thus, "politically unreliable" non-communists initially had to fill such roles. Those not obedient to communist authorities were ousted, while Moscow cadres started

33516-430: 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

33712-413: 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' collaboration with

33908-446: The three corresponding countries to be "Soviet Socialist Republics" and requested their "admission into Stalin 's Soviet Union". This formally resulted in the Soviet Union's annexation of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in August 1940. The international community condemned this annexation of the three Baltic countries and deemed it illegal. In 1939, the Soviet Union unsuccessfully attempted an invasion of Finland , subsequent to which

34104-413: The time, orthodox Marxists claimed that Russia was ripe for the development of capitalism, not yet for socialism. 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

34300-442: The vestiges of democratic institutions were never entirely destroyed, resulting in the façade of Western style institutions such as parliaments, which effectively just rubber-stamped decisions made by rulers, and constitutions, to which adherence by authorities was limited or non-existent. Parliaments were still elected, but their meetings occurred only a few days per year, only to legitimize politburo decisions, and so little attention

34496-559: The world. With that, Stalin's application of Marxism–Leninism to the situation of the Soviet Union became Stalinism , the official state ideology until his death in 1953. 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. As

34692-477: Was Albania , where leader Enver Hoxha immediately changed course from favoring Yugoslavia to opposing it. In Poland , leader Władysław Gomułka , who had previously made pro-Yugoslav statements, was deposed as party secretary-general in early September 1948 and subsequently jailed. In Bulgaria , when it appeared that Traicho Kostov, who was not a Moscow cadre, was next in line for leadership, in June 1949, Stalin ordered Kostov's arrest, followed soon thereafter by

34888-421: Was added in a second secret protocol in September 1939. The Soviet Union had invaded the portions of eastern Poland assigned to it by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact two weeks after the German invasion of western Poland, followed by co-ordination with German forces in Poland. During the Occupation of East Poland by the Soviet Union , the Soviets liquidated the Polish state, and a German-Soviet meeting addressed

35084-437: Was caused, in part, by early local elections of October 1946 in which the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) was rejected in favor of the Social Democratic Party, which had gained two and a half times more votes than the SED. The United States, Britain, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several other countries began a massive "Berlin airlift", supplying West Berlin with food and other supplies. The Soviets mounted

35280-421: Was convinced by Churchill and Roosevelt not to dismember Germany. Stalin stated that the Soviet Union would keep the territory of eastern Poland they had already taken via invasion in 1939 with some exceptions , and wanted a pro-Soviet Polish government in power in what would remain of Poland. After resistance by Churchill and Roosevelt, Stalin promised a re-organization of the current pro-Soviet government on

35476-483: 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. Lenin's leadership transformed

35672-408: Was eager to accept the US aid; the Polish government had a similar attitude, and this was of great concern to the Soviets. In one of the clearest signs of Soviet control over the region up to that point, the Czechoslovakian foreign minister, Jan Masaryk , was summoned to Moscow and berated by Stalin for considering joining the Marshall Plan. Polish Prime minister Józef Cyrankiewicz was rewarded for

35868-403: Was effectively halted in the early 1950s, with the Soviet approach to controlling national movement emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern Bloc. However, in East Germany , taking advantage of the Inner German border between occupied zones, hundreds of thousands fled to West Germany, with figures totaling 197,000 in 1950, 165,000 in 1951, 182,000 in 1952 and 331,000 in 1953. One reason for

36064-444: Was effectively impossible. This later included internal passport controls , which when combined with individual city Propiska ("place of residence") permits, and internal freedom of movement restrictions often called the 101st kilometre , greatly restricted mobility within even small areas of the Soviet Union. After the creation of the Eastern Bloc, emigration out of the newly occupied countries, except under limited circumstances,

36260-515: Was estimated to have at least 1500 attendees, and the 2003 event attracted about 3000. In 2004 and 2005, officials denied permission for the parades, citing the likelihood of counter-demonstrations, interference with religious or national holidays, lack of a permit, and other reasons. The parades were vocally opposed by conservative Law and Justice party's Lech Kaczyński (at the time mayor of Warsaw and later president of Poland) who said that allowing an official gay pride event in Warsaw would promote

36456-454: Was expressed in supporting revolutions in other countries, initially through the Communist International and then through the concept of socialist-leaning countries 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 and rapid industrialisation , political centralisation, and repression. During

36652-421: Was frequently infiltrated by Soviet intelligence and security agencies, such as the NKVD and GRU . TASS had affiliates in 14 Soviet republics, including the Lithuanian SSR , Latvian SSR , Estonian SSR , Moldavian SSR . Ukrainian SSR and Byelorussian SSR . Western countries invested heavily in powerful transmitters which enabled services such as the BBC , VOA and Radio Free Europe (RFE) to be heard in

36848-440: Was hailed to be a historical necessity by Marxist–Leninists. Moreover, the introduction of the proletarian dictatorship was advocated and classes deemed hostile were to be repressed. In the 1920s, it was first defined and formulated by Joseph Stalin based on his understanding of orthodox Marxism and Leninism . In 1934, Karl Radek suggested the formulation Marxism–Leninism–Stalinism in an article in Pravda to stress

37044-560: Was in the control of localities, often with local leaders interpreting the policies in a way that served themselves best. 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. 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. Stalin allowed

37240-436: Was often called the " Second World ", whereas the term " First World " referred to the Western Bloc and " Third World " referred to the non-aligned countries that were mainly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America but notably also included former pre-1948 Soviet ally Yugoslavia , which was located in Europe. In Western Europe , the term Eastern Bloc generally referred to the USSR and Central and Eastern European countries in

37436-416: Was often used interchangeably with the term Second World . This broadest usage of the term would include not only Maoist China and Cambodia , but also short-lived Soviet satellites such as the Second East Turkestan Republic (1944–1949), the People's Republic of Azerbaijan (1945–1946) and the Republic of Mahabad (1946), as well as the Marxist–Leninist states straddling the Second and Third Worlds before

37632-415: 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. This political defeat was aggravated by 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

37828-460: Was paid to them that some of those serving were actually dead, and officials would openly state that they would seat members who had lost elections. The first or General Secretary of the central committee in each communist party was the most powerful figure in each regime. The party over which the politburo held sway was not a mass party but, conforming with Leninist tradition, a smaller selective party of between three and fourteen percent of

38024-525: 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. 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

38220-476: Was repressed, especially minority religious groups. 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. Art and culture became strictly regulated under

38416-406: Was the cause of controversy. The parades have been organized annually since, and attendance has grown substantially over the years, from about 4000 to 6000 attendees in 2011, 18,000 in 2015, to about 45,000 attendees in the 2018 parade. On 8 June 2019, around 50,000 marched in the event. Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski participated in the event twice as well as granted the festival city patronate. Due to

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