The history of communism, told from the evidence
From the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 to the party-states that rule today: how communist regimes took power, how they governed, and what it cost the people who lived under them — documented with archival records, survivor testimony and the work of historians.
Latest articles
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The Securitate: Romania's Communist Secret Police
How Romania's Securitate, built under Soviet advisers in 1948, ran arrests without trial, the Pitești tortures, a typewriter registry and plots abroad.
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Cuba's Healthcare: The Showcase and the Evidence
Cuba's doctors and infant mortality figures are the regime's pride. What researchers, UNICEF and Human Rights Watch have found behind them.
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The Stasi: How East Germany Spied on Its Own People
How East Germany's Stasi used 91,000 officers, 189,000 informants, secret prisons and 'quiet terror' to control a nation — and what its files revealed.
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Communist Leaders: A Reference List
The leaders of the world's communist states, from Lenin to Xi Jinping, with their dates and the offices they held, country by country.
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Unhumans (2024): A Book Note
What the 2024 polemic Unhumans argues about communist revolutions and the American left, who endorsed it, and how reviewers on the left and right received it.
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Albania's Cultural Revolution: The First Atheist State
How Enver Hoxha copied Mao's Cultural Revolution, closed all 2,169 of Albania's churches and mosques in 1967, and jailed priests for baptisms.
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- Famines
- Camps and Repression
- Walls, Borders and Flight
- Religion Under Communism
- Censorship and Propaganda
- Planned Economies
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