Topics
Every article is filed under the countries and themes it covers. Or see all articles by date.
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Soviet Union
The USSR from the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power to its collapse in 1991: the one-party state, the Terror, the Gulag and the planned economy.
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People's Republic of China
Communist China under Mao and his successors: land reform, the Great Leap Forward famine, the Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen and the party-state today.
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Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge
Democratic Kampuchea, 1975–1979: how the Khmer Rouge emptied the cities, abolished money and markets, and killed a large share of the population.
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North Korea
The Kim dynasty's hereditary communist state: its founding, the Korean War, the 1990s famine, the prison camp system and the personality cult.
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Cuba
Castro's Cuba since 1959: the revolution, executions and political prisoners, the exodus by sea, and one-party rule that continues today.
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Eastern Europe
Communist Eastern Europe, 1945–1989: imposed regimes, secret police such as the Stasi and Securitate, the uprisings of 1953, 1956 and 1968, and 1989.
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Vietnam and Laos
Communist rule in Indochina: collectivization, re-education camps after 1975, the boat people, and the one-party states that remain in power.
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Communist Leaders
The men who ran communist states — Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Kims, Castro, Ceaușescu and others: how they took power and how they used it.
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Ideology and Theory
Marx, Lenin and their heirs: what communist ideology promised, how Marxism-Leninism justified the party's monopoly on power, and how theory met practice.
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Famines
Famines under communist rule — Soviet Ukraine and Kazakhstan, the Great Leap Forward, North Korea — their causes, their scale and their cover-ups.
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Camps and Repression
Secret police, show trials, labor camps and mass executions: the machinery of terror that communist regimes used to control their populations.
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Walls, Borders and Flight
Walls, exit permits, internal passports and shoot-to-kill borders: how communist states kept citizens from leaving, and what became of those who fled.
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Religion Under Communism
Campaigns against religion under communist rule: closed churches, imprisoned clergy, state-controlled faiths and the persecution of believers.
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Censorship and Propaganda
How communist states controlled what people could read, hear and say: censorship, propaganda, radio jamming, informers and the cult of the leader.
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Planned Economies
Central planning in practice: collectivization, nationalization, rationing and shortages, and the reforms attempted when the planned economy failed.
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Communism and the West
Communist parties, sympathizers and apologists in Western democracies, and the long debate over how Western intellectuals saw the communist regimes.
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Cold War
The global contest between the communist bloc and the West from 1945 to 1991: proxy wars, espionage, nuclear standoffs and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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Dissidents and Resistance
The people who resisted communist rule — writers, workers, clergy and ordinary citizens, from Solzhenitsyn and Solidarity to Tiananmen Square.