Further reading
Archives, museums and organizations for readers who want to go deeper. We include voices from across the spectrum — including communist parties themselves — because the best way to judge an argument is to read it first-hand. Inclusion is not endorsement. For the books behind our articles, see the sources listed on each article, and our editorial standards.
Archives and primary sources
Original documents — the best place to check what regimes and their leaders actually said and did.
- Wilson Center Digital Archive — Translated, declassified documents from communist-bloc and other archives, especially on the Cold War.
- Hoover Institution Library & Archives — Major collections on communism, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe at Stanford University.
- Stasi Records Archive — The files of East Germany’s Ministry for State Security, now part of the German Federal Archives.
- Documentation Center of Cambodia — Research and documentation on the Khmer Rouge regime and its victims.
- Marxists Internet Archive — The writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao and others, in their own words.
Museums and memorials
Institutions dedicated to documenting communist rule and remembering its victims.
- Victims of Communism Museum — Online museum of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Washington, D.C.
- Museum of Communism, Prague — Covers life, politics and repression in communist Czechoslovakia.
- Communist Crimes — Online resource documenting crimes committed by communist regimes.
- Global Museum on Communism (archived) — A former online museum, preserved by the Internet Archive.
Human rights research
Organizations documenting abuses under communist governments that are still in power.
- Committee for Human Rights in North Korea — Research on North Korea’s prison camps and human rights record.
Critical commentary
Present-day commentary critical of communist and Marxist ideas.
- New Discourses — Founded by James Lindsay; essays and podcasts on contemporary Marxist-influenced ideas.
- Unhumans (book, 2024) — By Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec; a polemic on communist revolutions and the American left. Read our book note.
Free-market economics
The economic case against central planning.
- Free to Choose Network — Documentaries building on Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose.
- The Works of Milton Friedman — Friedman’s writings and recordings, from the Hoover Institution.
- Mises Institute — Austrian-school economics, including Ludwig von Mises’s critique of socialist calculation.
Left-wing perspectives
Left-wing writers and organizations, listed so readers can see the arguments first-hand.
- Jacobin — Socialist magazine founded in 2010.
- Richard Wolff — Marxian economist, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
- Richard Wolff on YouTube
- Yanis Varoufakis — Economist and former Greek finance minister.
- Southern Poverty Law Center — Left-leaning legal advocacy organization.
Communist and socialist organizations
Present-day communist and socialist groups, in their own words — primary sources on the movement today.
- Communist Party USA — Founded in 1919.
- World Socialist Web Site — Published by the Trotskyist International Committee of the Fourth International.
- Socialist Worker
- New Worker
- Organization of Communist Revolutionaries