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This article is about a form of government in which the state operates under the control of Communist parties. For information regarding communism as a form of society, as an ideology advocating that form of society, or as a popular movement, see the main Communism article.

Communist state is a term used by many political scientists to describe a form of government in which the state operates under a one-party system and declares its allegiance to the principles of Marxism-Leninism. Communist states may have several legal political parties, but a single party (usually calling itself the Communist Party) is constitutionally guaranteed a dominant role in government. As a result of this, the institutions of the state and of the Communist Party become intimately entwined.

In multi-party systems, the branches of government (executive, legislative and judicial) operate independently of any political party, with each party competing for a right to control the government for a specific period of time. In Communist states, on the other hand, the institutions of the state and those of the Communist Party depend on each other to function effectively.

What separates Communist states from other one-party systems is the fact that ruling authorities in a Communist state claim to base all their actions on Marxist-Leninist ideology. The state and the Communist Party claim to act in accordance with the wishes of the working class; they claim to have implemented a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat; and they claim to be moving towards the gradual abolition of the state and the implementation of stateless communism. These claims have been strongly disputed by opponents of the historical Communist states, including both anti-communists and communists who do not subscribe to Marxism-Leninism.

Usage of the term

The term Communist state originated in the West during the Cold War. It was invented to describe the form of government adopted by several countries in Eastern Europe and East Asia who followed the political model of the Soviet Union. These countries were ruled by parties which typically used the name "Communist Party of ". Since the line between Party and State became very blurred in those countries, it seemed logical to name them "Communist states", by analogy with the Communist Parties that ruled them.

Not every country ruled by a Communist Party is defined as a Communist state. As noted above, the term "Communist state" has been created and used by Western political science to refer to a specific kind of one-party state. There have been instances where Communist Parties won elections and governed in the context of multi-party democracies, without seeking to establish a one-party state. Examples include the Republic of Moldova and the Indian province of Kerala. Such countries do not fall under the definition of a "Communist state" that is used in this article.

In addition, Communist states never used that term to describe themselves. Marxists define "communism" as a form of society that abolishes private property, social classes, and the state itself. But no Communist Party-run government ever abolished social classes or the state, and private property was restricted but never fully eliminated. Therefore, since Communist Parties claimed to follow Marxism-Leninism (which is a variant of Marxism), they could not and did not call their countries "communist". Rather, they claimed that their countries were socialist (Marxists define "socialism" as an intermediate stage between capitalism and communism). Communist Parties declared that achieving communism was their final goal, which they hoped to reach at some point in the future.

Not all Marxists supported the Communist states. Beginning in the 1930s, significant numbers of Marxists (including some Marxist-Leninists) have argued that most Communist states did not actually adhere to Marxism-Leninism but rather to a perversion of it that was heavily influenced by Stalinism. This critique is based on the view that the Communist states were not democratic and did not represent the interests of the working class. All Marxists agree that democracy (the rule of the people) is a key element of both socialism and communism - though they may disagree on the particular form that this democracy should take. If the Communist states were not democratic, then they lacked a mandate from the people; as such, Marxist critics argue that Communist states did not represent the interests of the working class, and those states were therefore not socialist or communist.

Relations between State and Party

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All Communist states are based on the system of government that was developed in the Soviet Union during its first decade of existence. The General Secretary of the Communist Party was the de facto leader of the government, even when he did not hold a state office like president or prime minister. Instead, such state offices were usually held by party members answerable to or controlled by the General Secretary. They were given these offices as a reward for their long years of service to the party. On other occasions, having governed as General Secretary, the party leader might assume a state office in addition. For example, Mikhail Gorbachev initially did not hold the presidency of the Soviet Union, that office being given as an honor to a former Soviet Foreign Minister. However, Gorbachev ultimately chose to assume the presidency, running the party and the official state institutions simultaneously.

The degree of this party-state relationship fluctuates both within a state and between different Communist states. In the contemporary People's Republic of China, for example, a degree of separation has developed between state and party, while a number of very small rival parties have appeared on the fringe. Nevertheless, the degree of Communist Party control over state institutions, and the ability of party figures outside state offices to influence the functioning of the state, is far more extensive than in any multiparty system.

The merger of party and state was never an official part of the system of government that existed in Communist states. Officially, the state was independent from the party, and the institutions of the state had sole authority to govern the country. The constitutions of Communist states usually provided for democratic elections and the rule of law. However, they usually also provided a privileged role to the Communist Party, for instance requiring that all candidates for state office be approved by the party. Since the party had the authority to determine who would be able to run for office, it had in effect the power to appoint people to all state offices. As a result, one's standing within the party became more important than one's standing within the state hierarchy. A powerful member of the Communist Party could appoint himself, or anyone else, to the office of his choice.

History of Communist states

The history of Communist states is closely entangled with the history of the communist movement in general. Since the power structures that define a Communist state largely consist of informal control by the Communist Party over state institutions, it is sometimes difficult to determine which countries ruled by Communist Parties fall under the category of Communist states and which do not. In the case of short-lived revolutionary communist governments, where power structures were highly unstable, it is impossible to determine whether they would have eventually evolved into Communist states or something else entirely.

What follows is a short history of Communist states, bearing in mind the above disclaimers.

The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, which would lated become the Soviet Union, was created in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The new Communist government faced internal crises caused by Russia's heavy involvement in the First World War, and soon also found itself fighting the Russian Civil War. The Russian Communists (also called Bolsheviks) advocated a system of government known as soviet democracy, based on workers' councils (called soviets in Russian). The principle of soviet democracy was that the local workers' soviets would elect representatives that would go on to form regional soviets, which would in turn elect representatives that would form higher soviets, and so on up to a Supreme Soviet, the highest legislative body of the entire country.

Later, during the Russian Civil War, non-Bolshevik political parties - including socialist ones - were banned one by one on charges of sabotage, attempted assassination of Bolshevik leaders and cooperation with the enemy. Critics of the Bolsheviks argue that they intended to ban opposition parties all along and were merely looking for excuses to do so, while supporters argue that this measure was made necessary by wartime conditions and that the charges brought against the various opposition parties were genuine (citing, for example, the attempt on Vladimir Lenin's life by Fanya Kaplan on August 30, 1918, and the successful assassination of Moisei Uritsky the same day). What is certain is that the Bolsheviks were the only political party left standing by the end of the Civil War, and their leader, Vladimir Lenin, died shortly thereafter.

Following Lenin's death, the young Soviet Union entered an uncertain period when its future - and the form of government it would ultimately embrace - hung in the balance. There was considerable difference of opinion within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union regarding the question of what to do next. Several dissenting political factions developed in the 1920s, including the Left Opposition, the Right Opposition and the Workers' Opposition. A constitution of the Soviet Union was adopted in 1924. It incorporated the principle of soviet democracy and also guaranteed various rights and freedoms to the people of the Soviet Union. At this time, relations between the state and the Communist Party were in a state of flux; the Communist Party had already begun to dominate the state, but the party itself consisted of many rival factions, which kept each other in check.

In the late 1920s, the faction led by Joseph Stalin managed to achieve supremacy over the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Dissent was gradually suppressed and freedom of speech was abolished. Stalin's opponents (including arch-rival Leon Trotsky) were exiled and/or expelled from the party; many were later killed in the Great Purge of the 1930s. Under Stalin's leadership, the Communist Party developed into a single, monolithic power bloc. Since there were no rival parties and no opposing factions within the Communist Party at this time, Stalin also came to exert full control over the Soviet state. Thus the party and the state became inseparable; all later Communist states would follow this model.

After the Soviet Union, most other Communist states were established in the aftermath of World War II in Eastern Europe, either in countries which were liberated from the Nazis by the Soviet Red Army, or in countries where Communist-led partisans succeeded in driving out the Nazis and taking power themselves. The Red Army arranged for the establishment of Communist governments in Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania, which became Soviet client states. Communist partisans established Communist governments which were initially pro-Soviet in Albania and Yugoslavia (but these eventually grew hostile towards the Soviet Union). In East Asia, the Red Army joined the war against Imperial Japan and established a Communist state in North Korea.

With Soviet military aid, Mao Zedong's Communist Party of China emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil War and established the People's Republic of China in 1949. The First Indochina War led to the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in northern Vietnam in 1954. Later, the Vietnam War ended with the defeat of South Vietnam by the North Vietnamese Army and the establishment of a unified Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1975. The broader Indochina conflict also saw Communist states established in Laos and Cambodia in 1975, though the latter government (known as Democratic Kampuchea) was toppled in a Vietnamese invasion and denounced by Vietnam and its Communist allies.

In 1959, the Cuban Revolution eventually led to the first Communist state being established in the Western Hemisphere, the Republic of Cuba.

A civil war led to the establishment of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen in southern Yemen in 1969.

For several years, Communist states also existed in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Benin, Somalia and the Republic of the Congo.

Although all Communist states followed the same model of government, relations between them were not always friendly. There was marked hostility between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union from 1948 to 1956, and the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s caused a permanent rift between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China (the two countries eventually found themselves on the brink of war). There have been several wars or military conflicts between Communist states: the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the Prague spring, the Sino-Soviet border conflict, the Ogaden War, the Cambodian-Vietnamese War and the Sino-Vietnamese War.

By the early 1980s, Communist states accounted for nearly one third of the world's population in 25 nations (due largely to the size of the Soviet Union and China).

However, due to internal economic problems, foreign entanglements, and pressures for reform, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union itself were growing increasingly unstable. In the late 1980s, pro-westerners in Eastern Europe rose up against their governments, and in 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed.

As of 2006, there are five Communist states in the world: China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam. Despite a common form of government, they possess certain distinct characteristics, both politically and economically.

Criticism and advocacy

Communist states have been a source of controversy for decades, and their policies have generated lengthy and heated debates. Perhaps more than any other 20th century governments, Communist states have had a very polarizing effect on observers, drawing enthusiastic support as well as vehement criticism. Supporters and opponents have argued over the performance of Communist states on such issues as economic development, human rights, foreign policy, scientific progress and environmental degradation.

Advocates of Communist states often praise them for having leaped ahead of contemporary capitalist countries in certain areas, for example by offering guaranteed employment, health care and housing to their citizens. Critics typically condemn Communist states by the same criteria, claiming that all lag far behind the industrialized West in terms of economic development and living standards.

Central economic planning has in certain instances produced dramatic advances, and many Communist states with planned economies maintained consistently higher rates of economic growth than industrialized Western capitalist countries. For example, the economy of the Soviet Union grew by a factor of 10 from 1928 to 1985, and GNP per capita grew more than fivefold. However, the Soviet Union later experienced a severe economic downturn in the 1970s and 80s, which contributed to its collapse.

Both critics and supporters of Communist states often make comparisons between particular Communist and capitalist countries, with the intention of showing that one side was superior to the other. Critics prefer to compare East and West Germany; supporters prefer to compare Cuba to Jamaica or Central America. All such comparisons are open to challenge, both on the comparability of the states involved and the statistic being used for comparison. No two countries are identical; the western parts of Germany were more developed and industrialized than the eastern parts long before the Cold War and the creation of two separate German states, and Cuba was likewise more developed than many of its Central American neighbors before the Cuban revolution.

In general, critics of Communist states argue that they remained behind the industrialized West in terms of economic development for most of their existence, while advocates argue that growth rates were higher in Communist states than in capitalist countries, so they would have eventually caught up to the West if those growth rates had been maintained. Some reject all comparisons altogether, noting that the Communist states started out with economies that were much less developed to begin with.

Communist states often practice censorship of dissent. The level of censorship varies widely between different states and historical periods, but it nearly always exists to a greater or lesser degree. Most Communist states employ an extensive network of civilian informants - sometimes composed of volunteers, sometimes forcibly recruited - to collect intelligence for the government and report cases of dissent. The Communist states themselves, as well as their advocates, often argue that censorship and similar restrictions are unfortunate but necessary, as defensive measures against capitalist subversion funded by foreign powers. Critics argue that censorship violates fundamental human rights and that the Communist states' fear of subversion has no grounds in reality.

Restrictions on emigration from Communist states received extensive publicity. The Berlin wall was one of the most famous examples of this, but North Korea still imposes a total ban on emigration (reported on PBS's program Frontline) and Cuba's restrictions are routinely criticized by the Cuban-American community. However, of all Communist states, only Albania and North Korea ever imposed a blanket ban on emigration. Legal emigration was always possible from other Communist states, though often difficult. Some of these states relaxed emigration laws significantly from the 1960s onwards. Advocates of Communist states argue that restrictions on emigration from those states were no more intense than such restrictions that had been imposed by capitalist (or otherwise non-Communist) countries in the past. For example, most European capitalist countries heavily restricted emigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Critics of Communist states argue that regardless of what happened in the past, Communist states still placed higher barriers on emigration than capitalist countries in the same time period.

The most severe accusations made against Communist states is that they were allegedly responsible for millions of deaths. The vast majority of these deaths are held to have occurred under the regimes of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong in China. As such, most critics focus on those two regimes in particular, though others have claimed that all Communist states were responsible for some numbers of unjust deaths.

Most Communist states held the death penalty as a legal form of punishment for most of their existence, with a few exceptions (e.g. the Soviet Union abolished it from 1947 to 1950). Critics argue that many, perhaps most, of the convicted prisoners executed by Communist states were not criminals, but political dissidents. Stalin's Great Purge in the late 1930s (roughly 1936-38) is given as the most prominent example of this.

A number of Communist states also held forced labour as a legal form of punishment for certain periods of time, and, again, critics argue that the majority of those sentenced to forced labour camps - such as the Gulag - were sent there for political rather than criminal reasons. Some of the Gulag camps were located in very harsh environments, such as Siberia, which resulted in the death of a significant fraction of their inmates before they could complete their prison terms. The Gulag was shut down in 1960.

Advocates of Communist states argue that the number of unjust deaths has been exaggerated, that these deaths were justified in order to save the respective Communist states from internal or external threats (e.g. to facilitate the Soviet victory against Nazi Germany in World War II), and/or that capitalists and anti-communists can be held responsible for just as many deaths. Critics maintain that nothing can justify loss of life.

The Communist states were founded on a policy of militant anti-imperialism. Lenin believed imperialism to be "the highest stage of capitalism" and, in 1917, he declared the unconditional right of self-determination and secession for the national minorities of Russia. Later, during the Cold War, Communist states gave military assistance and in some cases intervened directly on behalf of national liberation movements that were fighting for independence from colonial empires, particularly in Asia and Africa.

However, critics have accused the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China of being imperialistic themselves, and have therefore concluded that their foreign policy was hypocritical (sometimes imperialist and sometimes anti-imperialist, depending on their interests in a given situation). Specifically, such critics accuse the Soviet Union of forcibly conquering the newly independent nations of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War. Stalin conquered the Baltic states in World War II and created satellite states in Eastern Europe. China conquered Tibet. Soviet forces intervened on 3 occasions against anti-Soviet uprisings or governments in other countries: the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the Prague Spring, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviets and Chinese, as well as their allies, claimed that these were all instances of liberation rather than conquest.

Communist states often engaged in rapid industrialization, and in some cases this has lead to environmental disasters. The most cited example is the great shrinking of the Aral Sea in today's Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, which is believed to have been caused by the diversion of the waters of its two affluent rivers for cotton production. In 1988 only 20% of the sewage in the Soviet Union was treated properly. Established health standards for air pollution were exceeded by ten times or more in 103 cities in 1988. In Eastern Europe, air pollution is cited as the cause of forest die-back, damage to buildings and cultural heritage, and a rise in the occurrence of lung cancer. All of the aforementioned examples of environmental degradation are similar to what occurred in Western capitalist countries during the height of their drive to industrialize, in the 19th century. Advocates of Communist states claim that, on the whole, the environmental record of these states was the same or better than the record of Western capitalism during its industrialization period. Critics claim that Communist states caused much more environmental damage than capitalism.

Finally, there is a specific Marxist criticism of Communist states, which holds that the "Communist states" of the 20th century grossly violated communist principles, and were therefore only partially communist at best or completely un-communist at worst. This is an argument made by many dissident communists, as well as other revolutionary socialists. It is based on the observation that Communist states were often hypocritical - that their policies were, in practice, completely different from their official claims. The Communist states claimed to be democratic (sometimes going as far as to insert "democratic" into their country names, as in the case of the German Democratic Republic), but they are widely regarded as having been de facto dictatorships. The Communist states claimed to uphold the interests of the working class, but they banned independent trade unions and often suppressed working class dissent. As noted above, Communist states claimed to be anti-imperialist but sometimes engaged in actions that are seen as imperialistic; their constitutions also guaranteed many human rights, but these were often violated in practice. All of this has led many communists and socialists to believe that the Communist states cannot be called socialist or communist in practice.

List of current Communist states

The following countries are one-party states where the ruling party (or coalition) declares its allegiance to Marxism-Leninism. As such, they fall under the definition of Communist states. However, they are not the only countries in the world that currently have a Communist government. There are some liberal democracies, such as the Republic of Moldova, where Communist Parties have won democratic elections and are currently running a democratic government. They do not fall under this article's definition of Communist states because they have not merged the Communist Party with the state.

With the above disclaimer, current Communist states and their ruling parties are:

• People's Republic of China (since 1949); Communist Party of China
• Republic of Cuba (Cuban Revolution in 1959, socialist state declared in 1961); Communist Party of Cuba
• Lao People's Democratic Republic (since 1975); Lao People's Revolutionary Party
• Democratic People's Republic of Korea (since 1948); Korean Workers' Party
• Socialist Republic of Vietnam (since 1976); Communist Party of Vietnam

While these countries share a similar system of government, they have adopted very different economic policies over the past 15 years.

See also: List of Communist parties

Defunct Communist states

This is a list of defunct Communist states and their ruling parties (where applicable):

Note: Following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, there was a revolutionary wave throughout Europe. Communist revolutions, uprisings or attempted uprisings took place in many European countries. However, Russian Communists, engaged in the Russian Civil War, were unable to provide any significant support to communist movements outside Russia. Eventually, in the first decades after the Russian revolution, only five revolutions outside Russia were able to take power, and these for short periods of time. They resulted in the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic in 1918, the Munich Soviet Republic from April to May 3 1919, the Slovak Soviet Republic in 1919, the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, and the Persian Soviet Socialist Republic from 1920 to 1921. All of them were soon defeated by counter-revolutionary forces, and with the defeat of the Red Army in the Polish-Soviet War in 1920, the Russian Communists were forced to abandon any plans of military aid to communist movements in Europe. The short-lived revolutionary governments of the 1918-1921 period cannot be classified as Communist states, because they never had the time to develop a stable system of government. It is impossible to predict how they would have developed if they had survived.

See also: Soviet Republic

See also

Other formal state definitions:

• Confederation
• Constitutional monarchy
• Monarchy
• Republic
• Federal republic
• Federation

• Communism
• Communist states
• Forms of government
• Lists of countries