1.
Stalinist architecture
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Stalinist architecture is associated with the socialist realism school of art and architecture. As part of the Soviet policy of rationalization of the country, each was divided into districts, with allotments based on the citys geography. Projects would be designed for whole districts, visibly transforming a citys architectural image, the interaction of the state with the architects would prove to be one of the features of this time. The same building could be declared a formalist blasphemy and then receive the greatest praise the next year, as happened to Ivan Zholtovsky, the Vysotki or Stalinskie Vysotki, high-rises are a group of skyscrapers in Moscow designed in the Stalinist style. The English-language nickname for them is the Seven Sisters and they were built officially from 1947 to 1953 in an elaborate combination of Russian Baroque and Gothic styles and the technology used in building American skyscrapers. In terms of methods, most of the structures, underneath the wet-stucco walls, are simple brick masonry. Exceptions were Andrei Burovs medium-sized concrete block houses and large buildings like the Seven Sisters which necessitated the use of concrete. The masonry naturally dictated narrow windows, thus leaving a large area to be decorated. Fireproof terra cotta finishes were introduced during the early 1950s, though this was used outside of Moscow. Most of the roofing was traditional wooden trusses covered with metallic sheets, about 1948, construction technology improved – at least in Moscow – as faster and cheaper processes become available. Houses also became safer by eliminating wooden ceilings and partitions, ideologically they belong to mass housing, an intermediate phase before Khrushchevs standardized buildings known as Khrushchyovka. Stalinist architecture does not equate to everything built during Stalin’s era and it relied on labor-intensive and time-consuming masonry, and could not be scaled to the needs of mass construction. This inefficiency largely ended Stalinist architecture and resulted in construction methods which began while Stalin was still alive. Although Stalin rejected Constructivism, completion of constructivist buildings extended through the 1930s, industrial construction, endorsed by Albert Kahn and later supervised by Victor Vesnin, was influenced by modernist ideas. It was not as important to Stalins urban plans, so most industrial buildings are not part of the Stalinist category, even the first stage of the Moscow Metro, completed during 1935, was not scrutinized by Stalin, and so included substantial constructivist influence. Before 1917, the Russian architectural scene was divided between Russky Modern, and Neoclassical Revival and these people would eventually become Stalinisms architectural elders and produce the best examples of the period. Another school that began after the Revolution is now known as Constructivism, some of the Constructivists were young professionals who had established themselves before 1917, while others had just completed their professional education or didnt have any. They associated themselves with groups of artists, compensating for lack of experience with public exposure
2.
Stalinism (album)
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Stalinism is a compilation album by Japanese hardcore punk group The Stalin released on January 21,1987. It was released outside of a label on January 21,1987. It was digitally remastered and re-released in 2005, edit board released after The Stalin dissolved. After the re-release, the original became hard to come by and it became a reprint exactly expected for the fan because there was it was possible to do sound source of the thing to which it listened only in this album, too. All lyrics written by Michiro Endo, all music composed by Endo, Kaneko, Inui, Sugiyama
3.
Anti-revisionism
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In the communist lexicon, anti-revisionism is opposition to attempts to revise, modify, or abandon the fundamentals of revolutionary theory and practice. In this view, reformism within communism is rejected as representing dangerous concessions to communisms adversaries, because different political trends trace the historical roots of revisionism to different eras and leaders, there is significant disagreement today as to what constitutes anti-revisionism. Therefore, modern groups which describe themselves as anti-revisionist fall into several categories, in addition, other groups uphold various less well-known historical leaders, such as Enver Hoxha. Historically, anti-revisionists presented a critique of the official Communist Parties from the left for having abandoned orthodox Marxism–Leninism, the terminological disagreement can be confusing because different versions of a left-right political spectrum are used. Anti-revisionists consider themselves the ultimate leftists on a spectrum from communism on the left to imperialist capitalism on the right, but Stalinism is often labeled rightist within the communist spectrum and left communism leftist. In the wake of Khrushchevs speech to the 20th Congress of the C. P. S. U, in the 1970s the anti-revisionist movement expanded and diversified to encompass those communists who rejected a pro-Soviet orientation for one aligned either with Chinese or Albanian positions. Self-proclaimed anti-revisionists firmly oppose the reforms initiated in Communist countries by leaders like Nikita Khrushchev in the Soviet Union and they generally refer to such reforms and states as state capitalist and social-imperialist. A short time later, anti-revisionist groups were divided by the Sino-Albanian split. Many such organizations may call themselves Maoist, Marxist–Leninist or even just simply revolutionary communist, however, many if not most Hoxhaists and Maoists are critically supportive of North Korea on grounds of Anti-imperialism. Anti-revisionists aligned with Enver Hoxha and the line of the Albanian party of labor argue that Mao Zedong thought is itself a form of revisionism, Hoxhaists also argue that the theory of New Democracy and Peoples War were revisionist and anti-scientific. The Hoxhaist camp came into existence during the Sino-Albanian split. S
4.
Popular front
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A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, usually made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as social-democratic, Popular fronts are larger in scope than united fronts. During this time in France, the front populaire referred to the alliance of political parties aimed at resisting Fascism, not all coalitions who use the term popular front meet the definition for popular fronts, and not all popular fronts use the term popular front in their name. The same applies to united fronts, the Popular Fronts thus formed proved to be successful in forming the government in France, and Spain, and also China. It was not a success elsewhere. The Popular Front policy of the Comintern was introduced in 1934, the new policy was signalled in a Pravda article of May 1934, which commented favourably on socialist-Communist collaboration. In June 1934, Léon Blums Socialist Party signed a pact of united action with the French Communist Party, in May 1935, France and the Soviet Union signed a defensive alliance and in August 1935, the 7th World Congress of the Comintern officially endorsed the Popular Front strategy. In the elections of May 1936, the Popular Front won a majority of parliamentary seats, in Italy, the Comintern advised an alliance between the Italian Communist Party and the Italian Socialist Party, but this was rejected by the Socialists. The CPUSA also offered support to Franklin Roosevelts New Deal in this period, the Popular Front period in the USA saw the CP taking a very patriotic and populist line, later called Browderism. Many Communist party members quit the party in disgust at this compromise between Hitler and Stalin, leon Trotsky and his far-left supporters roundly criticised the Popular Front strategy. Trotsky believed that only united fronts could ultimately be progressive, and this view is now common to most Trotskyist groups. Left communist groups also oppose popular fronts, but they came to oppose united fronts as well, in a book written in 1977, the Eurocommunist leader Santiago Carrillo offered a positive assessment of the Popular Front. For example, East Germany was ruled by a National Front of all anti-fascist parties, at legislative elections, voters were presented with a single list of candidates from all parties. In practice, however, only the Communist Party had any real power, by ensuring that Communists dominated the candidate lists, it effectively predetermined the composition of the legislature. All parties in the front had to accept the role of the Communist Party as a condition of being allowed to exist. By the 1950s, the non-Communist parties had pushed out their more courageous members and had taken over by fellow travelers willing to do the Communists bidding. The Peoples Republic of Chinas United Front is perhaps the best known example of a popular front in modern times. In the Republics of the Soviet Union, between around 1988 and 1992, the term Popular Front had quite a different meaning and it referred to movements led by members of the liberal-minded intelligentsia, in some republics small and peripheral, in others broad-based and influential
5.
Collective farming
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Collective farming and communal farming are various types of agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise. This type of collective is often an agricultural cooperative in which member-owners engage jointly in farming activities, the process by which farmland is aggregated is called collectivization. In some countries, there have been state-run and cooperative-run variants, for example, the Soviet Union had both kolkhozy and sovkhozy, often denoted in English as collective farms and state farms, respectively. In general, collective farming is contrasted with family farming and with arrangements in which land was owned by landlords or aristocrats. Notable examples of collective farming include the kolkhozy that dominated Soviet agriculture between 1930 and 1991 and the Israeli kibbutzim, both are collective farms based on common ownership of resources and on pooling of labour and income in accordance with the theoretical principles of cooperative organizations. They differ radically, however, in the application of the cooperative principles relative to freedom of choice, a small group of farming or herding families living together on a jointly-managed piece of land is surely one of the most common living arrangements in all of human history. This has co-existed with, and competed with, more forms of ownership. Private ownership came to predominate in much of the Western world, the process by which Western Europes communal land became private is a fundamental question behind views of property, is it the legacy of historical injustices and crimes. Karl Marx believed that what he called primitive communism was ended by exploitative means he called primitive accumulation, by contrast Libertarian thinkers say that by the homestead principle, whoever is first to work on the land is the rightful owner. A calpulli consisted of a number of extended families with a presumed common ancestor. Each calpulli owned the land and granted the individual families the right to farm parts of it, the Huron had an essentially communal system of land ownership. The French Catholic missionary Gabriel Sagard described the fundamentals, the Huron had as much land as they need. As a result, the Huron could give families their own land, any Huron was free to clear the land and farm on the basis of usufruct. He maintained possession of the land as long as he continued to actively cultivate, once he abandoned the land, it reverted to communal ownership, and anyone could take it up for themselves. The Iroquois had a communal system of land distribution. The tribe owned all lands but gave out tracts to the different clans for further distribution among households for cultivation, the land would be redistributed among the households every few years, and a clan could request a redistribution of tracts when the Clan Mothers Council gathered. Those clans that abused their allocated land or otherwise did not take care of it would be warned, land property was really only the concern of the women, since it was the womens job to cultivate food and not the mens. The Clan Mothers Council also reserved certain areas of land to be worked by the women of all the different clans, food from such lands, called kěndiǔgwǎge hodiyěntho, would be used at festivals and large council gatherings
6.
Stalin's cult of personality
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Joseph Stalins cult of personality became a prominent part of Soviet culture in December 1929, after a lavish celebration for Stalins 50th birthday. For the rest of Stalins rule, the Soviet press presented Stalin as an all-powerful, all-knowing leader, from 1936 the Soviet journalism started to refer to Joseph Stalin as the Father of Nations. The Soviet press constantly praised Stalin, describing him as Great, Beloved, Bold, Wise, Inspirer and it portrayed him as a caring yet strong father figure, with the Soviet populace as his children. Interactions between Stalin and children became a key element of the personality cult, Stalin often engaged in publicized gift giving exchanges with Soviet children from a range of different ethnic backgrounds. Beginning in 1935, the phrase, Thank You Dear Comrade Stalin for a Happy Childhood, appeared above doorways at nurseries, orphanages, and schools, children also chanted this slogan at festivals. The cult of personality also adopted the Christian traditions of procession and devotion to icons through the use of Stalinist parades and effigies, by reapplying various aspects of religion to the cult of personality, the press hoped to shift devotion away from the church and towards Stalin. Speeches described the dictator as Our Best Collective Farm Worker, Our Shockworker, Our Best of Best, however, these sorts of accounts declined after World War II, Stalin drew back from public life, and the press instead began to focus on remote contact. Another prominent part of Stalins image in the media was his close association with Vladimir Lenin. Stalin fiercely defended Lenins infallibility in public, and in doing so Stalin implied that, as a follower of Leninism. Before 1932, most Soviet propaganda posters showed Lenin and Stalin together, however, eventually the two figures merged in the Soviet press, Stalin became the embodiment of Lenin. Stalin became the focus of literature, poetry, music, paintings, an example was A. V. Avidenkos Hymn to Stalin, Thank you, Stalin. Thank you because I am joyful, Thank you because I am well. No matter how old I become, I shall never forget how we received Stalin two days ago, everything belongs to thee, chief of our great country. And when the woman I love presents me with a child the first word it shall utter will be, numerous pictures and statues of Stalin adorned public places. Statues of Stalin depicted him at a height and build approximating the very tall Tsar Alexander III, stalin-themed art appeared privately, as well, starting in the early 1930s, many private homes included Stalin rooms dedicated to the leader and featuring his portrait. The advent of the cult also led to a craze, numerous towns. The Stalin Prize and Stalin Peace Prize were also named in his honor, the cult reached new levels during World War II, with Stalins name included in the new Soviet national anthem. Stalin and his glorifiers rewrote Soviet history to provide the leader a more significant role in the October Revolution of 1917, according to this revised history, Stalin, not Leon Trotsky, had been Lenins second-in-command during the October Revolution
7.
Russian nationalism
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Russian nationalism is a form of nationalism that asserts that Russians are a nation and promotes their cultural unity. Russian nationalism first rose in the 18th century and is related to Pan-Slavism. The Russian motto Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality was coined by Count Sergey Uvarov, three components of Uvarovs triad were, Orthodoxy—Orthodox Christianity and protection of the Russian Orthodox Church. Autocracy—unconditional loyalty to the House of Romanov in return for paternalist protection for all social estates, Nationality - recognition of the state-founding role on Russian nationality. The Slavophile movement became popular in 19th-century Russia, slavophiles opposed influences of Western Europe in Russia and were determined to protect Russian culture and traditions. Aleksey Khomyakov, Ivan Kireevsky, and Konstantin Aksakov are credited with co-founding the movement, a notable folk revival in Russian art was loosely related to Slavophilia. Many works concerning Russian history, mythology and fairy tales appeared, according to Tutchev, a notable Russian poet of 19th century, Pan-Slavism, an ideal of unity of all Slavic Orthodox Christian nations, gained popularity in the mid- to late 19th century. Among its major ideologists were Nikolai Danilevsky, the final goal was Constantinople, the Russian Empire still considered itself the Third Rome and saw its duty as conquering the Second Rome. Pan-Slavism also played a key role in Russias entry into World War I, in the closing years of the 19th century, Russia was trying to catch up with Western Europes Industrial Revolution. The already large gap between the wealth of the elite and that of the poor had grown, causing patriotic enthusiasm to decline. Revolutionary activities intensified, culminating in the 1905 Russian Revolution, the revolution led to the emergence of new nationalist and rightist organizations and parties, Russian Assembly, Union of the Russian People, Union of Archangel Michael and others. Their motto was Russia for Russians and these parties remained monarchist and anti-Semitic, they were organised by wealthy, powerful aristocrats such as Vladimir Purishkevich and Nikolai Yevgenyevich Markov. World War I revived the spirit and enthusiasm. However, as the war effort on the eastern front failed, the Bolshevik revolutionaries who seized power in 1917 were nominally antinationalists and antipatriots. The newborn Communist republic under Vladimir Lenin proclaimed internationalism as its official ideology using the Russian language—which was also the language of their party, since Russian patriotism served as a legitimizing prop of old order, Bolshevik leaders were anxious to suppress its manifestations and ensure its eventual extinction. They officially discouraged Russian nationalism and remnants of Imperial patriotism, such as the wearing of military awards received before Civil War, some their followers were unlike minded, in non-Russian territories Bolshevik power was often regarded as renewed Russian imperialism during 1919 to 1921. After 1923 a policy of nativization, which provided government support for non-Russian culture, romantic Russian nationalist themes appeared in art, such as the historical epic films by Sergei Eizenshtein and Vsevolod Pudovkin, as well as Sergei Sergeyev-Tsenskys patriotic novels. The creation of an international Communist state under control of the workers was perceived by some as accomplishment of Russian nationalistic dreams, the ecclesiastical schism of the 17th century revealed that the muscovite tsardom is not the third Rome
8.
Soviet socialist patriotism
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Soviet socialist patriotism refers to the socialist patriotism involving cultural attachment of the Soviet people to the Soviet Union as their homeland. It has been referred to as Soviet nationalism, under the outlook of international communism that was especially strong at the time, Lenin separated patriotism into what he defined as proletarian, socialist patriotism from bourgeois nationalism. Lenin also sought to balance the representation of leadership of the country by promoting non-Russian officials in the Communist Party to counter the large presence of Russians in the Party. However, even at this period the Soviet government appealed at times to Russian nationalism when it needed support - especially on the Soviet borderlands in the Soviet Unions early years. The National Question was never as well resolved in the Soviet era as idealism wished or propaganda claimed, the failure of the world revolution and true proletarian internationalism in the early 1920s was a severe test of Marxist theory that in fact shattered some aspects of it. This crisis drove Bukharin, Stalin, and associates to the new theory of Socialism in One Country, Stalin emphasized a centralist Soviet socialist patriotism that spoke of a Soviet people and identified Russians as being the elder brothers of the Soviet people. The war was described by the Soviet government as the Great Patriotic War, after the war, however, the use of Russian nationalism dramatically decreased and emphasis returned again to Marxist–Leninist ideology. But Moscow was forced to accept a degree of national communism in Yugoslavia, nikita Khrushchev moved the USSR governments policies away from Stalins reliance on Russian nationalism. Khrushchev promoted the notion of the people of the Soviet Union as being a supranational Soviet People that became state policy after 1961, at the same time, Soviet education emphasized an internationalist orientation. The union as a one, which had always been a false pretense to smaller or larger degrees over the decades
9.
Joseph Stalin
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Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. Holding the post of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he was effectively the dictator of the state. Stalin was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 in order to manage the Bolshevik Revolution, alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Sokolnikov, and Bubnov. Among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who took part in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and he managed to consolidate power following the 1924 death of Vladimir Lenin by suppressing Lenins criticisms and expanding the functions of his role, all the while eliminating any opposition. He remained General Secretary until the post was abolished in 1952, the economic changes coincided with the imprisonment of millions of people in Gulag labour camps. The initial upheaval in agriculture disrupted food production and contributed to the catastrophic Soviet famine of 1932–33, major figures in the Communist Party and government, and many Red Army high commanders, were arrested and shot after being convicted of treason in show trials. Stalins invasion of Bukovina in 1940 violated the pact, as it went beyond the Soviet sphere of influence agreed with the Axis, Germany ended the pact when Hitler launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Despite heavy human and territorial losses, Soviet forces managed to halt the Nazi incursion after the decisive Battles of Moscow, after defeating the Axis powers on the Eastern Front, the Red Army captured Berlin in May 1945, effectively ending the war in Europe for the Allies. The Soviet Union subsequently emerged as one of two recognized world superpowers, the other being the United States, Communist governments loyal to the Soviet Union were established in most countries freed from German occupation by the Red Army, which later constituted the Eastern Bloc. Stalin also had relations with Mao Zedong in China and Kim Il-sung in North Korea. On February 9,1946, Stalin delivered a public speech in which he explained the fundamental incompatibility of communism and capitalism. He stressed that the system needed war for raw materials. The Second World War was but the latest in a chain of conflicts which could be broken only when the economy made the transformation into communism. Stalin led the Soviet Union through its post-war reconstruction phase, which saw a significant rise in tension with the Western world that would later be known as the Cold War, Stalin remains a controversial figure today, with many regarding him as a tyrant. However, popular opinion within the Russian Federation is mixed, the exact number of deaths caused by Stalins regime is still a subject of debate, but it is widely agreed to be in the order of millions. Joseph Stalin was born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, the Russian-language version of his birth name is Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Ioseb was born on 18 December 1878 in the town of Gori, Georgia and his father was Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, while his mother was Ekaterine Keke Geladze, a housemaid. As a child, Ioseb was plagued with health issues
10.
Mao Zedong
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His Marxist–Leninist theories, military strategies, and political policies are collectively known as Maoism or Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Mao adopted Marxism–Leninism while working at Peking University and became a member of the Communist Party of China. On October 1,1949, Mao proclaimed the foundation of the Peoples Republic of China, in the following years Mao solidified his control through land reform campaigns against landlords, and perceived enemies of the state he termed as counter-revolutionaries. In 1957, he launched the Great Leap Forward campaign that aimed to rapidly transform Chinas economy from an economy to an industrial one. The campaign contributed to a famine, whose death toll is estimated at between 15 and 45 million. In 1972, Mao welcomed American President Richard Nixon in Beijing, signalling a policy of opening China, Mao suffered a series of heart attacks in 1976, and died in September, aged 82. He was succeeded as Paramount leader by Hua Guofeng, who was sidelined and replaced by Deng. A controversial figure, Mao is regarded as one of the most important individuals in modern world history, Mao Zedong was born on December 26,1893 in Shaoshan village, Hunan Province, China. His father, Mao Yichang, was an impoverished peasant who had become one of the wealthiest farmers in Shaoshan. Growing up in rural Hunan, Mao Zedong described his father as a stern disciplinarian, Maos mother, Wen Qimei, was a devout Buddhist who tried to temper her husbands strict attitude. Zedong too became a Buddhist, but abandoned this faith in his mid-teenage years, at age 8, Mao was sent to Shaoshan Primary School. At age 13, Mao finished primary education, and his father united him in a marriage to the 17-year-old Luo Yigu. Mao refused to recognise her as his wife, becoming a critic of arranged marriage. Luo was locally disgraced and died in 1910, interested in history, Mao was inspired by the military prowess and nationalistic fervour of George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte. The famine spread to Shaoshan, where starving peasants seized his fathers grain and he disapproved of their actions as morally wrong, but claimed sympathy for their situation. At age 16, Mao moved to a primary school in nearby Dongshan. In 1911, Mao began middle school in Changsha, Revolutionary sentiment was strong in the city, where there was widespread animosity towards Emperor Puyis absolute monarchy and many were advocating republicanism. The republicans figurehead was Sun Yat-sen, an American-educated Christian who led the Tongmenghui society, in Changsha, Mao was influenced by Suns newspaper, The Peoples Independence, and called for Sun to become president in a school essay
11.
Valko Chervenkov
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Valko Velev Chervenkov was a Bulgarian communist politician. He served as leader of the Communist Party between 1950 and 1954, and Prime Minister between 1950 and 1956 and his rule was marked by the consolidation of the Stalin model, rapid industrialisation, collectivisation and large-scale persecution of political opponents. Chervenkov was born in Zlatitsa, Bulgaria and he became a member of the Communist Party in 1919 and participated in communist youth group activities and newspaper editing. He took part in the failed 1923 September Uprising and was sentenced to death, in 1925 Chervenkov fled to the Soviet Union. He attended the Marx-Lenin school in Moscow and eventually became its director and he became a supporter of the governing style of Joseph Stalin and was known for his high wit and knowledge of Marxism–Leninism. He was recruited as an agent in the NKVD under the alias Spartak, in 1941, Chervenkov became the director of a radio station which sent anti-nazi and pro-communist messages to the Bulgarian people. In 1944 Chervenkov returned to Bulgaria on a mission for his brother-in-law, Chervenkov became a member of the government which took office soon after the end of World War II in 1945 which quickly came to be controlled by Communists. He became minister of culture in 1947, and became deputy minister in 1949. Shortly after becoming deputy minister, Bulgarian leader Georgi Dimitrov died. Chervenkov became general secretary of the party, and Vasil Kolarov took Dimitrovs other post of prime minister, Kolarov himself died in 1950, and Chervenkov fused the two most powerful offices in Bulgaria once again, with full Soviet approval. Chervenkovs policies closely resembled those of the Soviet Union at the time, in 1950, a collectivization campaign was launched. By early 1951, Chervenkov had expelled one in five party members, including high officials. Out of 460,000 members,100,000 were expelled from the party by 1953, although Chervenkovs personality cult model was similar to that of Stalin, he personally accepted it only as a necessity of the current political situation and strongly opposed any extremities. By 1953, Bulgaria had cut ties with the West and 90% of its exports and imports involved Soviet partnership, Chervenkovs cabinet used intimidation and supply discrimination to increase collectivization rates. Between 1950 and 1953, state-owned arable land increased from 12% to 61%, even before the death of Stalin, Chervenkov had already begun moving away from the Stalinist line. The official approval of Dimitar Dimovs novel Tobacco marked a slight loosening of Party control over cultural activities, in April 1956, following Khrushchevs de-Stalinisation, the Bulgarian Communist Party denounced Stalinism. Between 1962 and 1969, his membership in the Party was suspended, in 1926 Chervenkov married Georgi Dimitrovs youngest sister, Elena. They had two children - Irina and Vladimir
12.
Enver Hoxha
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Enver Halil Hoxha was the communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of Labour of Albania. He was chairman of the Democratic Front of Albania and commander-in-chief of the forces from 1944 until his death. He served as the 22nd Prime Minister of Albania from 1944 to 1954 and at times served as foreign minister. His rule was characterized by the use of Stalinist methods to destroy associates who threatened his power. Hoxhas government was characterized by his firm adherence to anti-revisionist Marxism–Leninism from the mid-1970s onwards. After his break with Maoism in the 1976–78 period, numerous Maoist parties around the world declared themselves Hoxhaist, the International Conference of Marxist–Leninist Parties and Organizations is the best known association of these parties today. Hoxha was born in Gjirokastër, a city in southern Albania that has home to many prominent families. He was the son of Halil Hoxha, a Muslim Tosk cloth merchant who travelled widely across Europe and the United States, and Gjylihan Hoxha. The Hoxha family was attached to the Bektashi tradition, fourteen years before Enver set off for France to study, at age 16, Hoxha helped found and became secretary of the Students Society of Gjirokastër, which protested against the monarchist government of Zog I. After the government closed the Society, he moved to Korçë, there he learned French history, literature and philosophy, and read the Communist Manifesto for the first time. In 1930, Hoxha went to study at the University of Montpellier in France on a scholarship given to him by the Queen Mother for the faculty of natural sciences. He attended the lessons and the conferences of the Association of Workers organised by the French Communist Party, after a year, lacking interest in biology, and after not having passed any university exams, he left Montpellier to go to Paris hoping to continue his studies. He attended philosophy classes at Sorbonne, but, again, did not sit for any exam, in Paris, it is said that he collaborated with LHumanité, writing articles on the situation in Albania under the pseudonym Lulo Malësori. He also got involved in the Albanian Communist Group under the tutelage of Llazar Fundo and he dropped out once more, and from 1934 to 1936 he was a secretary at the Albanian consulate in Brussels, attached to the personnel office of the Queen Mother. He was dismissed after the consul discovered that his employee kept Marxist materials and he returned to Albania in 1936 and taught grammar school in the French Lyceum of Korçë. His extensive education left him fluent in French with a knowledge of Italian, Croatian, English. As a leader, he would often reference Le Monde and the International Herald Tribune, on 7 April 1939, Albania was invaded by Fascist Italy. The Italians established a government in Albania under Mustafa Merlika-Kruja
13.
Kim Il-sung
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Kim Il-sung was the supreme leader of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, commonly referred to as North Korea, for 46 years, from its establishment in 1948 until his death in 1994. He held the posts of Prime Minister from 1948 to 1972 and he was also the leader of the Workers Party of Korea from 1949 to 1994. Coming to power after the overthrow of Japanese rule in 1945, he authorized the invasion of South Korea in 1950, a cease-fire in the Korean War was signed on 27 July 1953. Under his leadership, North Korea became a workers state with a publicly owned planned economy. It had close political and economic relations with the Soviet Union, by the 1960s and 1970s, North Korea enjoyed a relatively high standard of living, outperforming the South, which was riddled with political instability and economic crises. Despite this, the country still received massive funds, subsidies, during this period, the DPRK also remained critical of capitalism and the United States, seizing the American ship USS Pueblo in 1968. A cult of personality around Kim Il-sung came to domestic politics. His birthday is a holiday in North Korea and is called the Day of the Sun. Controversy surrounds Kims life before the founding of North Korea, with some sources labeling him an impostor, several sources indicate that the name Kim Il-sung had previously been used by a prominent early leader of the Korean resistance, Kim Kyung-cheon. The Soviet officer Grigory Mekler, who worked with Kim during the Soviet occupation, however, historian Andrei Lankov has argued that this is unlikely to be true. Several witnesses knew Kim before and after his time in the Soviet Union, including his superior, Zhou Baozhong, historian Bruce Cumings pointed out that Japanese officers from the Kwantung Army have attested to his fame as a resistance figure. Historians generally accept that, while Kims exploits were exaggerated by the personality cult that was built around him, Kims family is said to have originated from Jeonju, North Jeolla Province. His great-grandfather, Kim Ung-u, settled in Mangyong-dae in 1860, Kim is reported to have been born in the small village of Mangyungbong near Pyongyang on 15 April 1912. Born to Kim Hyŏng-jik and Kang Pan-sŏk, who gave him the name Kim Sŏng-ju, according to Kim, his family was not very poor, but was always a step away from poverty. According to the version, Kim’s family participated in anti-Japanese activities. Like most Korean families, they resented the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula, another view seems to be that his family settled in Manchuria, as many Koreans had at the time to escape famine. Nonetheless, Kims parents, especially Kims mother Kang Ban Suk and their exact involvement — whether their cause was missionary, nationalist, or both — is unclear nevertheless. Still, Japanese repression of opposition was brutal, resulting in the arrest and this repression forced many Korean families to flee Korea and settle in Manchuria
14.
Walter Ulbricht
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Walter Ernst Paul Ulbricht was a German Communist politician. Ulbricht played a role in the creation of the Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany. As the First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party 1950 to 1971, from President Wilhelm Piecks death in 1960, he was also the East German head of state until his own death in 1973. He followed Stalins guidelines very closely, and made sure everyone else in East Germany did so as well. Ulbricht was born in Leipzig, Saxony, to Pauline Ida and Ernst August Ulbricht and he spent eight years in primary school. After leaving school, he trained to be a joiner, both his parents worked actively for the Social Democratic Party, which Walter joined in 1912. Ulbricht served in World War I from 1915 to 1917 in Galicia on the Eastern Front and he deserted in 1918, as he had opposed the war from the beginning. Imprisoned in Charleroi, in 1918 he was released as part of the collapse of Imperial Germany, in 1917 he became a member of the Independent Social Democratic Party after it split off from the Social Democratic Party over support of Germanys participation in World War I. During the German Revolution, he became a member of the soviet of his army corps. Along with the bulk of the USPD, he joined the KPD in 1920 and he rose fast in the ranks of the KPD, becoming a member of the Central Committee in 1923. Ulbricht attended the International Lenin School of the Comintern in Moscow in 1924/1925, the electors subsequently voted him into the regional parliament of Saxony in 1926. He became a Member of the Reichstag for South Westphalia from 1928 to 1933 and served as KPD chairman in Berlin, in the years before the 1933 Nazi election to power, paramilitary wings of Marxist and extreme nationalist parties provoked massive riots connected with demonstrations. Besides the Berlin Police, the KPDs arch-enemies were street-fighters affiliated with the Nazi Party, the Monarchist German National Peoples Party, and radical nationalist parties. The Social Democratic Party of Germany, which dominated local and national politics from 1918-1931, for this reason, the Comintern ordered the KPD to cooperate with the Nazis against the SPD. At an event arranged by the Nazi Party in January 1931, Ulbricht was allowed by Joseph Goebbels, subsequently, Goebbels delivered his own speech. The attempt at a friendly discussion turned hostile, and a struggle between Nazis and Communists began, police officers divided them, both sides had tried to use this event for their election propaganda. The Nazi Party attained power in Germany in January 1933, and very quickly began a purge of Communist, following the arrest of the KPDs leader, Ernst Thälmann, Ulbricht campaigned to be Thälmanns replacement as head of the Party. Many competitors for the leadership were killed in the Soviet Union because of Ulbricht, Ulbricht lived in exile in Paris and Prague from 1933 to 1937
15.
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
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The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, abbreviated in English as CPSU, was the founding and ruling political party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The party was founded in 1912 by the Bolsheviks, a group led by Vladimir Lenin which seized power in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917. The party was dissolved on 29 August 1991 on Soviet territory soon after a failed coup détat and was abolished on 6 November 1991 on Russian territory. The highest body within the CPSU was the party Congress, which convened every five years, when the Congress was not in session, the Central Committee was the highest body. Because the Central Committee met twice a year, most day-to-day duties and responsibilities were vested in the Politburo, the Secretariat, and the Orgburo. The party leader was the head of government and held the office of either General Secretary, Premier or head of state, or some of the three offices concurrently—but never all three at the same time. The CPSU, according to its party statute, adhered to Marxism–Leninism, a based on the writings of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx. The party pursued state socialism, under which all industries were nationalized, a number of causes contributed to CPSUs loss of control and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Some historians have written that Gorbachevs policy of glasnost was the root cause, Gorbachev maintained that perestroika without glasnost was doomed to failure anyway. Others have blamed the stagnation and subsequent loss of faith by the general populace in communist ideology. The Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the worlds first constitutionally socialist state, was established by the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the October Revolution. Immediately after the Revolution, the new, Lenin-led government implemented socialist reforms, including the transfer of estates, in this context, in 1918, RSDLP became Russian Communist Party and remained so until 1997. Lenin supported world revolution he sought peace with the Central Powers. The treaty was voided after the Allied victory in World War I, in 1921, Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy, a system of state capitalism that started the process of industrialization and recovery from the Civil War. On 30 December 1922, the Russian SFSR joined former territories of the Russian Empire in the Soviet Union, on 9 March 1923, Lenin suffered a stroke, which incapacitated him and effectively ended his role in government. He died on 21 January 1924 and was succeeded by Joseph Stalin, after emerging victorious from a power struggle with Trotsky, Stalin obtained full control of the party and Stalinism was installed as the only ideology of the party. The partys official name was All-Union Communist Party in 1925, Stalins political purge greatly affected the partys configuration, as many party members were executed or sentenced for slave labour. Happening during the timespan of the Great Purge, fascism had ascened to power in Italy, seeing this as a potential threat, the Party actively sought to form collective security alliances with Anti-fascist western powers such as France and Britain
16.
Communist Party of the Russian Federation
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The Communist Party of the Russian Federation is a communist and Marxist–Leninist political party in Russia. The party is viewed as the immediate successor of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It is the second largest political party in the Russian Federation, the youth organisation of the party is the Leninist Young Communist League. The party is administered by the Central Committee, as of 2015, the party has 570,000 members. The partys stated goal is to establish a new, modernised form of socialism in Russia, Zyuganov had been a harsh critic of Alexander Yakovlev, the so-called godfather of glasnost, on the CPSU Central Committee. In order to oppose Yeltsin, Zyuganov organized a popular-patriotic bloc of nationalist organizations to support his candidacy and it went on to support Zyuganov in the 2000 presidential election. The NPSR was meant to form the basis of a two-party system, the party suffered a sharp decline in the 2003 legislative election, going from 113 seats to 52. Zyuganov called the 2003 elections a revolting spectacle, and accused the Kremlin of setting up a Potemkin party, Rodina, the CPRF was endorsed by Sergey Baburins Peoples Union for the 2007 Russian parliamentary elections. The party played only a role in the protests. Party rallies on December 18,2011 in protest of election irregularities in Moscow and Saint Petersburg were attended by only a few thousand, mostly elderly, the party has also recently called for Russia to formally recognize Donetsk Peoples Republic and the Luhansk Peoples Republic. The partys current program was adopted in 2008, where the CPRF declared that it is the political organization that consistently upholds the rights of the workers. According to the program, the goal of the party is to build in Russia a renewed socialism, socialism of the 21st century. The program of the Communist Party declared that the party is guided by Marxism–Leninism, based on the experience and achievements of domestic and world science, according to its program, the CPRF considers it necessary to reform the country in three phases. In the first phase, it is needed to achieve power through representation by a coalition led by the CPRF. In this case, however, small producers will remain, and, moreover, will be organized to protect them from robbery by big business, bureaucrats and it is planned to reform the management of enterprises through the creation of councils at various levels. The party also plans to transform Russia into a Soviet republic, in the second stage the role of councils and trade unions will increase even more. The economy will be made a transition to a socialist form of economic activity, however. Finally, the phase is to build socialism
17.
Party of Labour of Albania
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The Party of Labour of Albania was the vanguard party of Albania during the communist period as well as the only legal political party. It was founded on November 8,1941, as the Communist Party of Albania, in 1991, the party was succeeded by the Socialist Party of Albania. For most of its existence, the party was dominated by its First Secretary, Enver Hoxha, in the 1920s, Albania was the only Balkan country without a Communist party. The first Albanian communists emerged from the followers of Albanian clergyman and politician Fan S. Noli, once in Moscow, they formed the National Revolutionary Committee and became affiliated to the Comintern. In August 1928, the first Albanian Communist Party was formed in the Soviet Union, the most prominent figure of the party was Ali Kelmendi who left Albania in 1936, to fight in the Spanish Civil War. He was later regarded as the leader of a group of Albanian Communists in France. However, no unified organization existed in Albania until 1941, following the German attack on Russia, Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito under Comintern directives sent two Yugoslav delegates Miladin Popović and Dušan Mugoša to Albania. These two helped unite the Albanian communist groups in 1941, after intensive work, the Albanian Communist Party was formed on November 8,1941 by the two Yugoslav delegates with Enver Hoxha from the Korça branch as its leader. The PKSh was the dominant element of the National Liberation Movement, the LNC drove out the German occupiers on 29 November 1944. From that day onward, Albania was a full-fledged Communist state, in every other Eastern European country, the Communists were at least nominally part of a coalition government for a few years before seizing power at the helm of out-and-out Communist dictatorships. King Zog was barred from returning to Albania, though the monarchy was not formally abolished until 1946. Under Hoxha, the party became the most rigidly anti-revisionist party in the Soviet bloc, the party even went as far as to engineer an Albanian version of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. When it became apparent that Maos successors were moving away from his legacy in 1978, Hoxha led the party and state more or less without resistance until his death in 1985. His successor, Ramiz Alia, was forced to initiate reforms in order to revive the countrys stagnant economy. However, in late 1989, various elements of society began to speak out against the still in place. The execution of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu led Alia to fear hed be next, in response, he allowed Albanians to travel abroad, ended the regimes longstanding policy of state atheism, and slightly loosened government control of the economy. However, these only served to buy Alia more time. Finally, bowing to the inevitable, on 11 December 1990, Alia announced that the PPSh had abandoned power, the PPSh won the Constitutional Assembly elections of 1991
18.
Communist Party of Indonesia
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The Communist Party of Indonesia is a communist party in Indonesia that existed in throughout the mid-20th century. It was the largest non-ruling communist party in the prior to being eradicated in 1965. The Dutch members of the ISDV introduced Marxist ideas to educated Indonesians looking for ways to oppose colonial rule, in October 1915, ISDV began a publication in Dutch, Het Vrije Woord. The ISDV did not demand independence at the time of its formation, at this point ISDV had around 100 members, out of whom only three were Indonesian. However, it moved into a radical and anticapitalist direction. ISDV under Sneevliet became increasingly incompatible with the SDAP leadership in the Netherlands, in 1917 the reformist section of ISDV broke away, and formed their own Indies Social Democratic Party. In 1917 ISDV launched its own first publication in Indonesian, Soeara Merdeka, Sneevliets ISDV saw the legacy of the October Revolution as the path to follow in Indonesia. The group made inroads amongst Dutch sailors and soldiers stationed in the colony, red Guards were formed, and within three months they numbered 3,000. In late 1917 soldier and sailors revolted in the Surabaya naval base of the archipelago, the colonial authorities suppressed the Surabaya soviets and the ISDV. Dutch leaders of ISDV were sent back to the Netherlands, including Sneevliet, the leaders of the soldiers uprising were given sentences of 40 years in prison. Meanwhile, the ISDV established a bloc within the anti-colonialist Sarekat Islam organization, many SI members like from Surabaya, Semaun and from Solo Darsono were attracted by Sneevliets ideas. As a result of Sneevliets bloc within strategy, many SI members were persuaded to establish the more revolutionary Marxist-dominated Sarekat Rakjat, ISDV continued working in a clandestine manner. It launched another publication, Soeara Rakyat, after the involuntary departure of several Dutch cadres, in combination with the work inside the Sarekat Islam, the membership had moved from Dutch majority to Indonesian majority. By 1919 it only had 25 Dutch members, out of a total of less than 400, at the congress of ISDV on 23 May 1920 in Semarang, it took the name Perserikatan Komunis di Hindia. Semaun was the party chairman and Darsono vice-chairman, the secretary, treasurer and three of the five committee members were Dutch. PKH was the first Asian communist party to become a section of the Communist International, henk Sneevliet represented the party at the second congress of the Communist International 1921. In the period leading up to the Sarekat Islams sixth congress in 1921, members became aware of Sneevliets strategy, agus Salim, the organizations secretary, introduced a motion banning SI members from holding dual membership of other parties. Despite opposition from Tan Malaka and Semaun, the motion passed and this failed, Tan Malaka was arrested and given a choice between internal or external exile
19.
Communist Party of Romania
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The Romanian Communist Party was a communist party in Romania. Successor to the wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave ideological endorsement to communist revolution. The PCR was a minor and illegal grouping for much of the interwar period, during the 1930s, most of its activists were imprisoned or took refuge in the Soviet Union, which led to the creation of separate and competing factions until the 1950s. The Communist Party emerged as an actor on the Romanian political scene in August 1944. With support from Soviet occupation forces, the PCR was able to force King Michael I into exile, from then until 1989, it was for all intents and purposes the only legally permitted party in the country. In 1947, the Communist Party absorbed much of the Social Democratic Party, in the early 1950s, the PCRs dominant wing around Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, with support from Joseph Stalin, defeated all the other factions and achieved full control over the party and country. After 1953, the Romanian Communists gradually theorized a national path to Communism, at the same time, however, the party did not join its Warsaw Pact brethren in de-Stalinization. The PCRs nationalist and national communist stance was continued under the leadership of Nicolae Ceaușescu, following an episode of liberalization in the late 1960s, Ceauşescu again adopted a hard line, and imposed the July Theses, consolidating virtually all power in his hands. Over the years, the PCR massively and artificially increased in size, from the 1960s onward, it had a reputation for being somewhat more independent of the Soviet Union than its brethren in the Warsaw Pact. However, at the time it became one of the most hardline parties in the Soviet bloc. It collapsed in 1989 in the wake of the Romanian Revolution, the PCR coordinated several organizations during its existence, including the Union of Communist Youth, and organized training for its cadres at the Ștefan Gheorghiu Academy. In addition to Scînteia, its platform and main newspaper between 1931 and 1989, the Communist Party issued several local and national publications at various points in its history. The party renamed itself the Socialist-Communist Party and, soon after, government crackdown and competition with other socialist groups brought a drastic reduction in its membership—from the ca. The early Communist Party had little influence in Romania, interwar Romania had a minority population of 30%, and it was largely from this section that the party drew its membership—a large percentage of it was Jews, Hungarians and Bulgarians. Actual or perceived ethnic discrimination against these minorities added to the appeal of revolutionary ideas in their midst, Constantin Argetoianu, the Minister of the Interior in the Alexandru Averescu, Take Ionescu, and Ion I. C. Consequently, he stated his belief that communism is over in Romania, the PCdR was thus unable to send representatives to the Comintern, and was virtually replaced abroad by a delegation of various activists who had fled to the Soviet Union at various intervals. In 1925, the question of Romanias borders as posed by the Comintern led to protests by Cristescu and, eventually, through regained Comintern control, the interior wing began organizing itself as a more efficient conspiratorial network. The Communists did, nevertheless, attempt to reach consensus with other groupings on several occasions, in 1934, Petre Constantinescu-Iași and other PCdR supporters created Amicii URSS, a pro-Soviet group reaching out to intellectuals, itself banned later in the same year
20.
Communist Party of New Zealand
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The Communist Party of New Zealand was a Communist political party in New Zealand which existed from March 1921 until the early 1990s. During the period of the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s, the CPNZ sided with the Chinese government headed by Mao Tse-tung, the party splintered into a multiplicity of tiny political parties after 1966 and no longer exists as an independent group. As the 20th Century dawned, New Zealand was recognised by adherents of International Socialism around the globe as a sort of laboratory test case of social democratic government in practice, one June 1901 pamphlet put to print by J. A. While the country was declared no Utopia, New Zealand nevertheless was said to have no real want, an extensive system of public works were in existence, governed by the principle of fair work and fair pay. More than 200 employment bureaus dotted the country, connecting every willing worker with a job, sweatshops were banned, as was systematic home manufacturing, with mandatory labeling of all products made outside of factories. Wages were generally high and the 48-hour week said to be a local maximum, the presence of tramps had been eliminated through town allotments of small homesteads to poor workers, granted through easily affordable perpetual leases. The power of eminent domain had been assumed by the New Zealand parliament in 1896, State finance had been accomplished by a tax on land values and the establishment of a progressive income tax. The national government itself owned and operated the railways, telegraph and telephone systems, schools, Workers compensation insurance to protect against injury was required by law, and low cost life insurance had been provided by the state since 1869. Old age pensions were provided to all New Zealanders 65 years of age or older who had been resident in the country for at least 25 years. With the eruption of World War I in 1914, New Zealand sent soldiers to Allied campaigns in Turkey, Palestine, of these, about 18,000 were killed in battle and another 41,000 felled by wounds or disease — a casualty rate approaching 60%. Conscription was introduced in 1916, with the stream of volunteer enthusiasts exhausted, as casualties continued to mount into 1917, public war-weariness set in, fueling political discontent. A revolutionary socialist movement began to emerge, there were isolated reflections of international radical tendencies present in New Zealand from shortly after the turn of the 20th Century. All of these tendencies would contribute adherents to the pioneer New Zealand communist movement, particularly worthy of note were a small network of Marxist study circles were formed during the wartime years, concentrated mainly in the small mining communities of the South Island. These were successfully smuggled back to New Zealand, with the Lenin tract immediately put into print in yet another new edition, suffering attenuation but surviving the war, this Wellington organization would constitute the main component of the new Communist Party of New Zealand. By 1921 sentiment had begun to build for the establishment of a communist political party along those lines advocated by the fledglin Communist International, a preparatory conference was called for Easter weekend, 26–27 March 1921, in Wellington. Of the origins of the Communist Party, historian Kerry Taylor writes, No direct record of the event survives — the minutes have long since been lost and no reports appeared in the media at the time. E. J. Dyer of the city was elected as the first secretary of the new organization. The CPNZ participated in elections for the first time in 1923, unable to take over the newspaper of the New Zealand Federation of Labour, the Maoriland Worker, in 1924 the CPNZ established its own official publication, The Communist, published in Auckland
21.
National Bolshevik Party
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The National Bolshevik Party operated from 1994 as a Russian political party with a political program of National Bolshevism. The NBP became a prominent member of The Other Russia coalition of opposition parties, Russian courts banned the organization, it never officially registered as a political party. In 2010, its leader, Eduard Limonov, founded a new political party, there have been smaller NBP groups in other countries. The NBP often used direct-action stunts, mostly against prominent political figures and its official publication, the newspaper Limonka, derived its name from the party leaders surname and from the idiomatic Russian word for a grenade. The main editor of Limonka for many years was Alexei Vyacheslavovich Tsvetkov, the NBP historically defended Stalinism, although later on the party said it did not wish to re-create that system. The NBP was highly critical of the Putin government and argued that state institutions such as the bureaucracy, the police, the NBP had denied links to fascism, stating that all forms of antisemitism, xenophobia, and racism were against the principles of the party. In 1992, Eduard Limonov founded the National Bolshevik Front as an amalgamation of six minor groups, aleksandr Dugin was amongst the earliest members, and was instrumental in convincing Limonov to enter politics. The party first attracted attention in 1992 when two members were arrested for possessing grenades, the incident gave the NBP publicity for a boycott campaign they were organizing against Western goods. In 1992, the NBF joined the National Salvation Front coalition, when others within the coalition began to speak out against the NBF, it withdrew from the alliance. Following the aborted alliance, the NBP attempted to reach a new deal with Russian National Unity in 1999, in 2001, Limonov was arrested with NBP members on charges of illegal purchasing of weapons. In 2003, Limonov was released from Lefortovo Prison, on 2 August 2004, NBP members occupied the Ministry of Health in Moscow in order to protest the cancellation of social benefits. This was followed by an attempt at occupying Putins office in December of the same year — an attempt that resulted in 30 arrests. The NBP was banned by a Russian lower court in June 2005, in November 2005, however, the Russian Supreme Court upheld a ban on the party on the grounds that the NBP called itself a political party without being registered as such. In August 2006, an anti-Limonovist faction of the NBP that was more right-wing, anti-liberal, anti-leftist, anti-Kasparov, on 7 November 2006, police detained 27 NBP members after an office break-in on the eve of the celebration of the October Revolution. In 2007, the NBP took part in a Dissenters March, in 2009, NBP members took part in Strategy-31, a series of civic protests in support of the right to peaceful assembly. In July 2010, NBP members founded a new political party, the NBP continued to organize, however, and in May 2011, NBP activists attacked the Embassy of Serbia in Moscow in solidarity with Ratko Mladić. Several small groups, often made up of Russian immigrants, named National Bolshevik Party have existed in countries across Europe, in Belarus, a Pentecostal church in Minsk was vandalised in 2006, with the NBP emblem drawn on its walls. The NBP was not officially registered in the country and this followed a similar incident at the Latvian embassy in the city the previous year
22.
All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (1991)
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The All-Union Communist Party Bolsheviks is a Marxist-Leninist and anti-revisionist political party operating in Russia and other former Soviet states. It was founded in November 1991, and led by Nina Andreyeva, the AUCPB has its origins in the Bolshevik Platform of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It is also a critic of the Russian church and religion in general demanding the separation of church. It is also a critic of Vladimirs Putin regime and it published a newspaper called Edinstvo, Bolshevik, Bolshevik Kavkaza, Bolshevik Stavropolja, Bolshevik Osetii, Vpered, Serp i Molot, Golos Stalingrada, Raboche-Krestjanskaja pravda. Its youth section is the All-Union Young Guard Bolsheviks, All-Union Communist Party All-Union Communist Party Bolsheviks official site
23.
Stalin and antisemitism
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Communist leader Joseph Stalin publicly denounced antisemitism. At the same time, instances of antisemitism on Stalins part have been witnessed by contemporaries, although active in the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, he did not attend a party congress until 1905. Although Jews were active among both the Social Democratic Bolshevik and the Menshevik factions, Jews were more prominent among the Mensheviks, statistics showed that the majority of the Menshevik faction consists of Jews—and this of course without counting the Bundists—after which came Georgians and then Russians. On the other hand, the majority of the Bolshevik faction consists of Russians, after which come Jews—not counting of course the Poles and Letts—and then Georgians. The quotefurther continues, Lenin is outraged that God sent him such comrades as the Mensheviks, what kind of people are they, really. Martov, Dan, Axelrod — circumcised Jews, do Georgian workers really not know that the Jewish people are cowardly and no good for fighting. The Council of Peoples Commissars adopted a 1918 decree condemning all antisemitism and calling on the workers, Lenin continued to speak out against antisemitism. As Peoples Commissar for Nationalities, Stalin was the member responsible for minority affairs. In 1922, Stalin was elected the first-ever General Secretary of the party—a post not yet regarded as the highest in the Soviet government, Lenin began to criticize Stalin shortly thereafter. In his December 1922 letters, the ailing Lenin criticized Stalin, at first collaborating with Jewish and half-Jewish Politburo members Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev against Jewish arch-rival Leon Trotsky, Stalin succeeded in marginalizing Trotsky. By 1929, Stalin had also effectively marginalized Zinoviev and Kamenev as well, the intransigent Trotsky was forced into exile. Nevertheless, following Lenins death in early 1924, another large campaign against antisemitism was again conducted in 1927–1930. Anti-semitism, as a form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism. Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the people as being a false path that leads them off the right road. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U. S. S. R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast with the center in Birobidzhan in the Russian Far East was to become a Soviet Zion. Yiddish, rather than reactionary Hebrew, would be the national language, despite a massive domestic and international state propaganda campaign, the Jewish population there never reached 30%
24.
Great Purge
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The Great Purge or the Great Terror was a campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union which occurred from 1936 to 1938. In Russian historiography, the period of the most intense purge, 1937–1938, is called Yezhovshchina, after Nikolai Yezhov and it has been estimated between 600,000 and 3 million people died at the hands of the Soviet government during the Purge. In the Western world, Robert Conquests 1968 book The Great Terror popularized that phrase, Conquests title was in turn an allusion to the period called the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. The term repression was used to describe the prosecution of people considered counter-revolutionaries and enemies of the people by the leadership of the Soviet Union. The purge was motivated by the desire to remove dissenters from the Communist Party, most public attention was focused on the purge of the leadership of the Communist Party, as well as of government bureaucrats and leaders of the armed forces, most of whom were Party members. The campaigns also affected many other categories of the society, intelligentsia, peasants and especially those branded as too rich for a peasant, a series of NKVD operations affected a number of national minorities, accused of being fifth column communities. Due legal process, as defined by Soviet law in force at the time, was largely replaced with summary proceedings by NKVD troikas. Hundreds of thousands of victims were accused of political crimes, they were quickly executed by shooting. Many died at the labor camps of starvation, disease, exposure. Other methods of dispatching victims were used on an experimental basis, one secret policeman, for example, gassed people to death in batches in the back of a specially adapted airtight van. The campaigns were carried out according to the line, and often by direct orders. The threat of war heightened Stalins perception of marginal and politically suspect populations as the source of an uprising in case of invasion. He began to plan for the elimination of such potential recruits for a mythical fifth column of wreckers, terrorists. The term purge in Soviet political slang was an abbreviation of the purge of the Party ranks. In 1933, for example, the Party expelled some 400,000 people, but from 1936 until 1953, the term changed its meaning, because being expelled from the Party came to mean almost certain arrest, imprisonment, and often execution. Stalins opponents on both sides of the political spectrum chided him as undemocratic and lax on bureaucratic corruption and these tendencies may have accumulated substantial support among the working class by attacking the privileges and luxuries the state offered to its high-paid elite. The Ryutin Affair seemed to vindicate Stalins suspicions and he enforced a ban on party factions and banned those party members who had opposed him, effectively ending democratic centralism. In the new form of Party organization, the Politburo, and this required the elimination of all Marxists with different views, especially those among the prestigious old guard of revolutionaries
25.
Totalitarianism
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Totalitarianism is a political system in which the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible. A distinctive feature of totalitarian governments is an ideology, a set of ideas that gives meaning. The concept of totalitarianism was first developed in the 1920s by the Weimar German jurist, and later Nazi academic, Carl Schmitt, Schmitt used the term, Totalstaat, in his influential work on the legal basis of an all-powerful state, The Concept of the Political. The concept became prominent in Western political discourse as a concept that highlights similarities between Fascist states and the Soviet Union, the term was later assigned a positive meaning in the writings of Giovanni Gentile, Italy’s most prominent philosopher and leading theorist of fascism. He used the term “totalitario” to refer to the structure and goals of the new state, according to Benito Mussolini, this system politicizes everything spiritual and human, Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. Churchill was then a backbencher MP representing the Epping constituency, in a radio address two weeks later Churchill again employed the term, this time applying the concept to a Communist or a Nazi tyranny. And went on to say Democracy is not an end but a means to the conquest of the new state, when the time comes, either parliament submits or we will eliminate it. G. Wells, Henry Miller or twopenny color postcards, every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. During a 1945 lecture series entitled The Soviet Impact on the Western World, only the blind and incurable could ignore the trend towards totalitarianism, said Carr. Isabel Paterson, in The God of the Machine, used the term in connection with the Soviet Union, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt argued that Nazi and State communist regimes were new forms of government, and not merely updated versions of the old tyrannies. According to Arendt, the source of the appeal of totalitarian regimes is their ideology, which provides a comforting, single answer to the mysteries of the past, present. For Nazism, all history is the history of race struggle, once that premise is accepted, all actions of the state can be justified by appeal to Nature or the Law of History, justifying their establishment of authoritarian state apparatus. In addition to Arendt, many scholars from a variety of academic backgrounds, each one of these describes totalitarianism in slightly different ways. Is only concerned with power and as long as that is not contested it gives society a certain degree of liberty. Authoritarianism does not attempt to change the world and human nature, in contrast, a totalitarian regime attempts to control virtually all aspects of the social life, including the economy, education, art, science, private life, and morals of citizens. The officially proclaimed ideology penetrates into the deepest reaches of societal structure and it also mobilizes the whole population in pursuit of its goals. Friedrich and Brzezinski argue that a system has the following six, mutually supportive, defining characteristics. Single mass party, typically led by a dictator, system of terror, using such instruments as violence and secret police
26.
Neo-Stalinism
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Neo-Stalinism overlaps significantly with Neo-Sovietism and Soviet nostalgia. There are two definitions of the term neo-Stalinism, Political geographer Denis J. B. Shaw considers the Soviet Union as neo-Stalinist until the post-1985 period of transition to capitalism. For this reason, their policy deserves the label neo-Stalinist rather than -Stalinist. as a time of unity, strong rule, some socialist groups like the Trotskyist Alliance for Workers Liberty describe modern China as neo-Stalinist. Islam Karimovs non-communist authoritarian regime in Uzbekistan has also widely described as neo-Stalinist. In February 1956, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced the cult of personality that surrounded his predecessor, Joseph Stalin, Khrushchev gave his infamous four-hour speech, On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, condemning the Stalin regime. American broadcasts into Europe during the late 1950s described a struggle between the old Stalinists and the neo-Stalinist Khrushchev. In October 1964, Khrushchev was replaced by Leonid Brezhnev, who remained in office until his death in November 1982, during his reign, Stalins controversies were de-emphasized. Brezhnev described the Chinese political line as neo-Stalinist, american political scientist Seweryn Bialer has described Soviet policy as turning towards neo-Stalinism after Brezhnevs death. After Mikhail Gorbachev took over in March 1985, he introduced the policy of glasnost in public discussions – in order to liberalize the Soviet system, within six years, the Soviet Union fell apart. Still, Gorbachev admitted in 2000, that Even now in Russia we have the same problem. It isnt so easy to give up the inheritance we received from Stalinism and Neo-Stalinism, when people were turned into cogs in the wheel, gorbachevs domestic policies have been described as neo-Stalinist by some Western sources. The regime of Nicolai Ceausescu was also classified by Historians and Political Scientists as Neo-Stalinist and this emerging criticism of the Soviet past serves a number of important goals of the leadership, including re-engagement with the West. To this end, the Kremlin recently approved new history textbooks critical of the Soviet past as well as a significant program that memorializes the victims of Soviet repressions. According to the Levada polling centre, Stalins popularity marks have tripled among Russians in the last 20 years, according to Andrew Osborn, statues of Stalin have begun to reappear and a museum in his honor has been opened in Volgograd. She claims it justifies Stalins terror as an instrument of development, at a memorial for Stalins victims, Putin said that while Russians should keep alive the memory of tragedies of the past, we should focus on all that is best in the country. Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the foreign committee of Russias lower house of parliament called the resolution nothing. Only eight out of 385 assembly members voted against the resolution, on 4 December 2008, the Saint Petersburg offices of the Memorial society were raided by the police. Figes condemned the raid, accusing the Russian authorities of trying to rehabilitate the Stalinist regime
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Maoism
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Mao Zedong Thought, or Maoism, is a political theory derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong. Its followers are known as Maoists, the modern Chinese intellectual tradition of the turn of the twentieth century is defined by two central concepts, iconoclasm and nationalism. It was this association of conservatism and Confucianism which lent to the nature of Chinese intellectual thought during the first decades of the twentieth century. Chinese iconoclasm was expressed most clearly and vociferously by Chen Duxiu during the New Culture Movement which occurred between 1915 and 1919, vital to understanding Chinese nationalist sentiments of the time is the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed in 1919. The negative reaction culminated in the May 4th Incident which occurred on day in 1919. The May 4th Incident and Movement which followed, catalyzed the political awakening of a society which had long seemed inert, yet another international event would have a large impact on not only Mao but also the Chinese intelligentsia, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Although the revolution did elicit interest among Chinese intellectuals, socialist revolution in China was not considered an option until after the May 4th Incident. Afterwards, To become a Marxist was one way for a Chinese intellectual to both the traditions of the Chinese past and Western domination of the Chinese present. During the period following the Long March, Mao and the Communist Party of China were headquartered in Yanan. During this period Mao clearly established himself as a Marxist theoretician, the rudimentary philosophical base of Chinese Communist ideology is laid down in Maos numerous dialectical treatises and was conveyed to newly recruited party members. This period truly established ideological independence from Moscow for Mao and the CPC, the Initial Marxist Period from 1920–1926, Marxist thinking employs imminent socioeconomic explanations, Maos reasons were declarations of his enthusiasm. Mao did not believe education alone would bring about the transition from capitalism to communism because of three main reasons and these reasons do not provide socioeconomic explanations, which usually form the core of Marxist ideology. The Formative Maoist Period from 1927–1935, In this period, Mao avoided all theoretical implications in his literature and his writings in this period failed to elaborate what he meant by the Marxist method of political and class analysis. Prior to this period, Mao was concerned with the dichotomy between knowledge and action, now, he was more concerned with the dichotomy between revolutionary ideology and counter-revolutionary objective conditions. There was more correlation drawn between China and the Soviet model, the Mature Maoist Period from 1935–1940, Intellectually, this was Maos most fruitful time. The shift of orientation was apparent in his pamphlet Strategic Problems of Chinas Revolutionary War and this pamphlet tried to provide a theoretical veneer for his concern with revolutionary practice. Mao started to separate from the Soviet model since it was not automatically applicable to China, Chinas unique set of historical circumstances demanded a correspondingly unique application of Marxist theory, an application that would have to diverge from the Soviet approach. The Civil-War Period from 1940-1949, Unlike the Mature period, this period was intellectually barren, Mao focused more on revolutionary practice and paid less attention to Marxist theory
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Patriotism
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Patriotism is an attachment to a homeland. This attachment can be viewed in terms of different features relating to ones own homeland, including ethnic and it encompasses a set of concepts closely related to those of nationalism. An excess of patriotism in the defense of a nation is called chauvinism, the abstract noun patriotism appears in the early 18th century. The general notion of virtue and group dedication has been attested in culture globally throughout the historical period. For the Enlightenment thinkers of 18th-century Europe, loyalty to the state was considered in contrast to loyalty to the Church. It was argued that clerics should not be allowed to teach in schools since their patrie was heaven. One of the most influential proponents of this notion of patriotism was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Enlightenment thinkers also criticized what they saw as the excess of patriotism, in 1774, Samuel Johnson published The Patriot, a critique of what he viewed as false patriotism. On the evening of 7 April 1775, he made the famous statement, however, there is no direct evidence to contradict the widely held belief that Johnsons famous remark was a criticism of patriotism itself. Patriotism is the will of the members of a country to support the country, Patriotism may be strengthened by adherence to a national religion. This is the opposite of the separation of church and state demanded by the Enlightenment thinkers who saw patriotism and faith as similar and opposed forces. Michael Billig and Jean Bethke Elshtain have both argued that the difference between patriotism and faith is difficult to discern and relies largely on the attitude of the one doing the labelling. Wellman calls this position patriotist rather than nationalist to single out the members of territorial, political units rather than cultural groups, marxists have taken various stances regarding patriotism. On one hand, Karl Marx famously stated that The working men have no country, the same view is promoted by present-day Trotskyists such as Alan Woods, who is in favour of tearing down all frontiers and creating a socialist world commonwealth. On the other hand, Stalinists and Maoists are usually in favour of socialist patriotism based on the theory of socialism in one country. Several surveys have tried to measure patriotism for various reasons, such as the Correlates of War project which found some correlation between war propensity and patriotism, the results from different studies are time dependent. For example, patriotism in Germany before World War I ranked at or near the top, since 1981, the World Values Survey explores peoples national values and beliefs and refer to the average answer for high income residents of a country to the question Are you proud to be. Charles Blatberg, From Pluralist to Patriotic Politics, Putting Practice First, craig Calhoun, Is it Time to Be Postnational. in Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Minority Rights, Stephen May, Tariq Modood and Judith Squires
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Anti-Stalinist left
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Associates and followers of Leon Trotsky were organised in the Left Opposition within the Communist parties before they were purged in the Moscow Trials in the 1930s. Subsequently, his followers formed the Fourth International in opposition to the Stalinist Third International, Trotsky saw the Stalinist states as deformed workers states, where a political structure gave most workers very little power in decision making. Less orthodox Trotskyists and other critics of Stalin have seen it as a new form of class state, the communist left was initially enthusiastic about the Bolshevik revolution, but lines of tension between the communist left and the leadership of the Communist International opened up very soon. Left communists such as Sylvia Pankhurst and Rosa Luxemburg were among the first left-wing critics of Bolshevism, Left communists see communism as something that can only be achieved by the proletariat itself, and not through the dictatorship of a vanguard party acting on its behalf. A reformist communism, and a branch of Maoism, however it is criticised by traditional Maoists. In order to encourage and promote the advancement of the productivity by creating competition and innovation, but at the same time, private ownership is allowed and encouraged in industries of finished goods and services. According to the Dengism theory, private owners in those industries are not bourgeois, because as Marx teaches, bourgeois owns land and raw materials. Therefore, in a Dengist country, private owners are called minyinqiyejia. The Peoples Republic of China was the first country which adopted this belief and it boosted its economy and achieved the China Miracle. It has increased the Chinese GDP growth rate to over 8% per year for 30 years, due to the influence of Dengism, Vietnam and Laos have also adopted this belief, which allowed Laos to increase its real GDP growth rate to 8. 3%. Cuba is also starting to embrace this idea, dengists also take a very strong position against any form of personality cults which appeared in the Soviet Union during Stalins rule and the current North Korea. However, the relations between the anarchists and the Bolsheviks soured in Soviet Russia, anarchists and Stalinist Communists were also in armed conflict during the Spanish civil war. Anarchists are critical of the statist, totalitarian nature of Stalinism, a significant current of the democratic socialist movement has defined itself in opposition to Stalinism. This includes George Orwell, H. N. Brailsford, Fenner Brockway, there were also a number of anti-Stalinist socialists in France, including writers such as Simone Weil and Albert Camus as well as the group around Marceau Pivert. In America, the New York Intellectuals around the journals Partisan Review, another major split in the international Communist movement was that between Stalin and the Right Opposition. In several countries parallel Communist parties were formed that either were rejected by the Comintern or distanced themselves from it and their criticism did in some ways become similar to positions raised by the Trotskyists, but as a tendency they were far less coherent. The Right Opposition developed contacts with groups that did not fit into either the international Social democracy or Comintern. This tendency largely died out at the time of the Second World War, in other cases dissident Marxist trends developed outside of the established Communist movement, such as the Anushlian Marxists in India
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Red fascism
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Red fascism refers to certain communist regimes as similar to fascism. Red fascism is commonly used pejoratively to describe Stalinism, nonetheless, ideological similarities between Stalinist and fascist governments have been noted. Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick, in Beyond Totalitarianism, Stalinism and Nazism Compared, noted close ideological similarities between Stalinism and Nazism. ”Benito Mussolini positively reviewed Stalinism as having transformed Soviet Bolshevism into a Slavic fascism. Despite ideological differences, Adolf Hitler admired Stalin and his politics, a number of socialists in America held similar views about the transformation of communism into a species of Red fascism. One such leader, Norman Thomas, who ran for U. S, many leftists over time became disillusioned and estranged by the Soviet Union, and condemned it for its rigid authoritarianism. Otto Rühle further professed in 1939 that “Russia was the example for fascism, whether party ‘communists’ like it or not, the fact remains that the state order and rule in Russia are indistinguishable from those in Italy and Germany. One may speak of a red, black, or brown ‘soviet state’, as well as of red, black or brown fascism
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Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
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Industrialisation
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As industrial workers incomes rise, markets for consumer goods and services of all kinds tend to expand and provide a further stimulus to industrial investment and economic growth. Later commentators have called this the First Industrial Revolution, the invention of the assembly line gave this phase a boost. Coal mines, steelworks, and textile factories replaced homes as the place of work, by the end of the 20th century, East Asia had become one of the most recently industrialised regions of the world. The BRICS states are undergoing the process of industrialisation, there is considerable literature on the factors facilitating industrial modernisation and enterprise development. The concentration of labour into factories has increased urbanisation and the size of settlements, to serve, workers have to either leave their families or bring them along in order to work in the towns and cities where these industries are found. The family structure changes with industrialisation, the sociologist Talcott Parsons noted that in pre-industrial societies there is an extended family structure spanning many generations who probably remained in the same location for generations. In industrialised societies the nuclear family, consisting of parents and their growing children. Families and children reaching adulthood are more mobile and tend to relocate to where jobs exist, extended family bonds become more tenuous. Currently the international development community endorses development policies like water purification or primary education and Co-Operation amongst third world communities, the relationships among economic growth, employment, and poverty reduction are complex. Higher productivity is argued to be leading to lower employment, division of labour Newly industrialised country Idea of Progress Chandler Jr. Alfred D. The Visible Hand, The Management Revolution in American Business, belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Hewitt, T. Johnson, H. and Wield, D. industrialisation and Development, Oxford University Press, hobsbawm, Eric, The Age of Revolution. Kemp, Tom Historical Patterns of Industrialisation, Longman, London, ISBN 0-582-09547-6 Kiely, R industrialisation and Development, A comparative analysis, UCL Press, London. The Unbound Prometheus, Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present, Cambridge, New York, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge. Pomeranz, Ken The Great Divergence, China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy by Tilly, industrialization as an Historical Process, European History Online, Mainz, Institute of European History,2010, retrieved,29 February 2011
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Cult of personality
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Sociologist Max Weber developed a tripartite classification of authority, the cult of personality holds parallels with what Weber defined as charismatic authority. A cult of personality is similar to divinization, except that it is established by media and propaganda usually by the state. The term cult of personality probably appeared in English around 1800–1850, along with the French, at first it had no political connotations but was instead closely related to the Romantic cult of genius. The political use of the phrase came first in a letter from Karl Marx to German political worker, Wilhelm Blos,10 November 1877, robert Service notes that a more accurate translation of the Russian культ личности is the cult of the individual. Throughout history, monarchs and other heads of state were almost always held in enormous reverence, through the principle of the divine right of kings, in medieval Europe for example, rulers were said to hold office by the will of God. Ancient Egypt, Japan, the Inca, the Aztecs, Tibet, Siam, the spread of democratic and secular ideas in Europe and North America in the 18th and 19th centuries made it increasingly difficult for monarchs to preserve this aura. It was from these circumstances in the 20th century that the personality cults arose. Often these cults are a form of political religion, personality cults were first described in relation to Totalitarianism regimes that sought to alter or transform society according to radical ideas. Not all dictatorships foster personality cults, while not all personality cults are practiced in dictatorships, for example, during the Cambodian Khmer Rouge regime, images of dictator Pol Pot were rarely seen in public, and his identity was under dispute abroad until after his fall from power. The same applied to numerous Eastern European communist regimes following World War II
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