https://historyofcommunism.org/ A sourced reference on the history of communist states and movements — their ideology, rulers, famines, camps and victims — built on archival evidence. en Sat, 17 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://historyofcommunism.org/romanian-secret-police-operations/https://historyofcommunism.org/romanian-secret-police-operations/How Romania's Securitate, built under Soviet advisers in 1948, ran arrests without trial, the Pitești tortures, a typewriter registry and plots abroad.Tue, 17 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthEastern EuropeCamps and RepressionCensorship and Propaganda https://historyofcommunism.org/healthcare-development-in-cuba/https://historyofcommunism.org/healthcare-development-in-cuba/Cuba's doctors and infant mortality figures are the regime's pride. What researchers, UNICEF and Human Rights Watch have found behind them.Mon, 02 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthCubaCensorship and PropagandaPlanned Economies https://historyofcommunism.org/east-german-stasi-surveillance-state/https://historyofcommunism.org/east-german-stasi-surveillance-state/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.Sun, 01 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthEastern EuropeCamps and RepressionCensorship and PropagandaDissidents and Resistance https://historyofcommunism.org/list-of-communist-leaders/https://historyofcommunism.org/list-of-communist-leaders/The leaders of the world's communist states, from Lenin to Xi Jinping, with their dates and the offices they held, country by country.Sun, 01 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthCommunist Leaders https://historyofcommunism.org/unhumans-the-secret-history-of-communist-revolutions-and-how-to-crush-them/https://historyofcommunism.org/unhumans-the-secret-history-of-communist-revolutions-and-how-to-crush-them/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.Sun, 01 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthCommunism and the WestIdeology and Theory https://historyofcommunism.org/albanian-cultural-and-ideological-revolution/https://historyofcommunism.org/albanian-cultural-and-ideological-revolution/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.Sat, 30 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthEastern EuropeReligion Under CommunismCamps and Repression https://historyofcommunism.org/repression-and-executions-under-communist-dictatorships/https://historyofcommunism.org/repression-and-executions-under-communist-dictatorships/The documented human cost of communist rule — the Soviet Terror, China's famine, Cambodia's killing fields, North Korea's camps — with the evidence.Sat, 30 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthCamps and RepressionFaminesSoviet UnionPeople's Republic of ChinaCambodia and the Khmer RougeNorth Korea https://historyofcommunism.org/turkmenistans-totalitarian-dictatorship-a-closer-look/https://historyofcommunism.org/turkmenistans-totalitarian-dictatorship-a-closer-look/Turkmenistan's dictatorship was built by its last Communist Party chief. Today it scores 1 out of 100 for freedom and has passed power from father to son.Fri, 29 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthCommunist LeadersSoviet UnionCensorship and PropagandaCamps and Repression https://historyofcommunism.org/chinese-suppression-of-religion/https://historyofcommunism.org/chinese-suppression-of-religion/How the Chinese Communist Party has controlled and punished religion — from the Cultural Revolution to Xinjiang's camps and Xi Jinping's 'sinicization'.Tue, 26 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthPeople's Republic of ChinaReligion Under CommunismCamps and Repression https://historyofcommunism.org/cuban-exit-restrictions/https://historyofcommunism.org/cuban-exit-restrictions/For decades Cubans needed the state's permission to leave their own country. The exit permit ended in 2013 — but passport denials and travel bans did not.Tue, 26 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthCubaWalls, Borders and FlightCamps and Repression https://historyofcommunism.org/cuban-refugee-waves/https://historyofcommunism.org/cuban-refugee-waves/From the first exiles of 1959 to Mariel, the 1994 rafters and the record exodus of 2022–23: how and why millions of Cubans have fled Castro's revolution.Tue, 26 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthCubaWalls, Borders and Flight https://historyofcommunism.org/north-korean-prison-camp-system/https://historyofcommunism.org/north-korean-prison-camp-system/Inside North Korea's kwanliso, where a UN inquiry found hundreds of thousands of political prisoners have died through starvation, forced labour and execution.Tue, 26 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthNorth KoreaCamps and Repression https://historyofcommunism.org/north-korean-property-control/https://historyofcommunism.org/north-korean-property-control/How North Korea's state took the land, the factories and the food supply — and fought the markets that grew up after the famine of the 1990s.Tue, 26 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthNorth KoreaPlanned EconomiesCamps and Repression https://historyofcommunism.org/vietnamese-academic-restrictions/https://historyofcommunism.org/vietnamese-academic-restrictions/From the Nhân Văn–Giai Phẩm purge to re-education camps and jailed lecturers: how Vietnam's Communist Party has policed scholars and writers.Tue, 26 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthVietnam and LaosCensorship and PropagandaCamps and Repression https://historyofcommunism.org/chinese-hundred-flowers-campaign/https://historyofcommunism.org/chinese-hundred-flowers-campaign/In 1957 Mao invited China's intellectuals to criticize the Party, then purged them: about 550,000 branded 'rightists'. He called it an 'overt scheme'.Mon, 25 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthPeople's Republic of ChinaCensorship and PropagandaDissidents and ResistanceCamps and Repression https://historyofcommunism.org/howard-zinns-communist-apologism-a-critical-analysis/https://historyofcommunism.org/howard-zinns-communist-apologism-a-critical-analysis/In 1988 Howard Zinn said the Russian Revolution killed 'about 100 people.' What he said about communism, in context, and what the record shows.Mon, 25 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthCommunism and the WestSoviet UnionIdeology and Theory https://historyofcommunism.org/north-korean-information-control/https://historyofcommunism.org/north-korean-information-control/How North Korea keeps its people from the outside world: one state news source, registered radios and TVs, and prison for watching South Korean dramas.Mon, 25 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthNorth KoreaCensorship and Propaganda https://historyofcommunism.org/chinese-hukou-system/https://historyofcommunism.org/chinese-hukou-system/Since 1958 China's household registration system has bound people to their birthplace, splitting citizens into urban and rural castes.Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthPeople's Republic of ChinaWalls, Borders and FlightPlanned Economies https://historyofcommunism.org/cuban-economic-crisis-after-soviet-collapse/https://historyofcommunism.org/cuban-economic-crisis-after-soviet-collapse/When Soviet support vanished, Cuba's economy shrank by a third and daily calories fell from 2,899 to 1,863: the 'Special Period' of the 1990s.Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthCubaPlanned EconomiesFamines https://historyofcommunism.org/east-german-border-controls/https://historyofcommunism.org/east-german-border-controls/Why East Germany walled in its own people: the flight of 2.7 million, the Berlin Wall, mines and a shoot-to-kill order — and the hundreds who died.Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthEastern EuropeWalls, Borders and FlightCamps and RepressionCold War https://historyofcommunism.org/great-chinese-famine-1959-1961/https://historyofcommunism.org/great-chinese-famine-1959-1961/How Mao's Great Leap Forward — communes, impossible grain targets, procurement and exports — caused the largest famine in history, killing 30–45 million.Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthPeople's Republic of ChinaFaminesPlanned Economies https://historyofcommunism.org/mao-zedong-thought-and-its-evolution/https://historyofcommunism.org/mao-zedong-thought-and-its-evolution/What Mao Zedong Thought taught, what it cost, and how the Communist Party kept it as doctrine while blaming its disasters on Mao's 'errors'.Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthPeople's Republic of ChinaIdeology and TheoryCommunist Leaders https://historyofcommunism.org/romanian-church-persecution/https://historyofcommunism.org/romanian-church-persecution/How Romania's communist regime abolished the Greek-Catholic Church, let its bishops die in prison, jailed priests like Gheorghe Calciu and bulldozed churches.Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthEastern EuropeReligion Under CommunismCamps and Repression https://historyofcommunism.org/romanian-food-rationing-crisis/https://historyofcommunism.org/romanian-food-rationing-crisis/How Ceaușescu's drive to repay Romania's foreign debt brought ration cards, unheated flats and empty shops in the 1980s, until the regime fell in 1989.Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthEastern EuropePlanned Economies https://historyofcommunism.org/soviet-forced-population-transfers/https://historyofcommunism.org/soviet-forced-population-transfers/How Stalin's regime deported 1.8 million 'kulaks' and entire nations — Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Soviet Germans and more — and how many died in exile.Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthSoviet UnionCamps and Repression https://historyofcommunism.org/ukrainian-holodomor-1932-1933/https://historyofcommunism.org/ukrainian-holodomor-1932-1933/How Stalin's grain seizures, village blacklists and a ban on flight turned a famine into the Holodomor, killing about four million people in Soviet Ukraine.Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthSoviet UnionFaminesCamps and Repression https://historyofcommunism.org/yugoslavias-market-socialism/https://historyofcommunism.org/yugoslavias-market-socialism/Tito's self-management promised a middle way between capitalism and Soviet planning. It ended in foreign debt, mass emigration and 2,000% inflation.Mon, 11 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTD. R. AshworthEastern EuropePlanned EconomiesCamps and Repression