The actions by governments ofcommunist states (Marxist-Leninist states) have been subject to criticism across the political spectrum.^[1] The actions of communist states have been especially criticized byanti-communists andright-wing critics, but also by other socialists such asanarchists,democratic socialists,libertarian socialists,orthodox Marxists, andTrotskyist communists. Communist states have also been challenged by domestic dissent.^[2] According to the critics, the actions and governance ofcommunist parties within these states has often led tototalitarianism,political repression, restrictions ofhuman rights, poor economic performance, and cultural and artistic censorship.^[1][3]

Several authors noted gaps between official policies of equality and economic justice and the reality of the emergence of a new class in communist countries which thrived at the expense of the remaining population. In Central and Eastern Europe, the works ofdissidentsVáclav Havel andAleksandr Solzhenitsyn gained international prominence, as did the works of disillusioned ex-communists such asMilovan Đilas, who condemned thenew class ornomenklatura system that had emerged under communist states.^[4][5][6] Major criticism also comes from theanti-Stalinist left and othersocialists.^{[7][8][9][10]} Its socio-economic nature has been much debated, varyingly being labelled a form ofbureaucratic collectivism,state capitalism,state socialism, or a totally uniquemode of production.^{[11][12][13][14]}

The governments of communist states have been criticized asauthoritarian or totalitarian for suppressing andkilling political dissidents and social classes (so-called "enemies of the people"),religious persecution,ethnic cleansing, forcedcollectivization, and use offorced labor inconcentration camps. Several communist states have also been accused ofgenocidal acts, such as inCambodia,China,Poland andUkraine, although there is scholarly dispute regarding the Holodomor's classification as genocide.^[15] Especially in the West, criticism of communist states has also been grounded incriticism of socialism, by economists such asFriedrich Hayek andMilton Friedman, who argued that thestate ownership andplanned economy characteristic ofSoviet-style communism were responsible foreconomic stagnation andshortage economies, providing few incentives for individuals to improveproductivity and engage inentrepreneurship.^{[16][17][18][19][20]}Anti-Stalinist left and otherleft-wing critics see it as an example of state capitalism^[21][22] and have referred to it as a "red fascism" contrary to left-wing politics.^[23][24][25] Other leftists, includingMarxist–Leninists, criticize them for repressive actions, while recognizing certain advancements such asegalitarian achievements andmodernization under such states.^[26][27] Counter-criticism is diverse, including the view it presents a biased or exaggerated anti-communist narrative. Some academics propose a more nuanced analysis of the governance of communist states.^[28][29]

Excess deaths under communist states have been discussed as part of a critical analysis of the governance of communist states. According toKlas-Göran Karlsson, discussion of the number of victims under communist states has been "extremely extensive and ideologically biased."^[30] Any attempt to estimate a total number of killings by communist states depends greatly on definitions,^[31] ranging from a low of 10–20 million to as high as 148 million.^[32][33] The criticism of some of the estimates are mostly focused on three aspects, namely that (i) the estimates are based on sparse and incomplete data when significant errors are inevitable; (ii) the figures are skewed to higher possible values; and (iii) those dying at war and victims of civil wars,Holodomor and other famines in communist states should not be counted.^{[34][35][36][37][38][39]} Others have argued that, while certain estimates may not be accurate, "quibbling about numbers is unseemly. What matters is that many, many people were killed by communist regimes."^[29] Right-wing commentators argue that these excess deaths and killings are an indictment of communism,^[40][41][42] while opponents of this view, including members of the political left, argue that these killings were aberrations caused by specific authoritarian regimes instead of communism, and point to mass deaths that they claim were caused bycapitalism and anti-communism as a counterpoint to communist killings.^[29][41][43]

This sectiondoes notcite anysources. Please helpimprove this section byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged andremoved.(January 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

After theRussian Revolution,communist party rule was consolidated for the first time inSoviet Russia (later the largest constituent republic of the Soviet Union, formed in December 1922) and criticized immediately domestically and internationally. During the firstRed Scare in the United States, the takeover of Russia by the communistBolsheviks was considered by many a threat tofree markets,religious freedom andliberal democracy. Meanwhile, under the tutelage of theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union, the only party permitted by theSoviet Union constitution, state institutions were intimately entwined with those of the party. By the late 1920s,Joseph Stalin consolidated the regime's control over the country's economy and society through a system ofeconomic planning andfive-year plans.

Between the Russian Revolution and the Second World War, Soviet-style communist rule only spread to one state that was not later incorporated into the Soviet Union. In 1924, communist rule was established in neighboringMongolia, a traditional outpost of Russian influence bordering the Siberian region. However, throughout much of Europe and the Americas criticism of the domestic and foreign policies of the Soviet regime amonganticommunists continued unabated. After the end of World War II, the Soviet Union took control over the territories reached by theRed Army, establishing what later became known as theEastern Bloc. Following theChinese Communist Revolution, the People's Republic of China wasproclaimed in 1949 under the leadership of theChinese Communist Party.^{[citation needed]}

Between theChinese Communist Revolution and the last quarter of the 20th century, communist rule spread throughout East Asia and much of theThird World and newcommunist regimes became the subject of extensive local and international criticism. Criticism of the Soviet Union and Third World communist regimes have been strongly anchored in scholarship ontotalitarianism which asserts that communist parties maintain themselves in power without theconsent of the governed and rule by means ofpolitical repression,secret police,propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, repression of free discussion and criticism,mass surveillance andstate terror. These studies of totalitarianism influenced Western historiography on communism and Soviet history, particularly the work ofRobert Conquest andRichard Pipes onStalinism, theGreat Purge, theGulag and theSoviet famine of 1932–1933.^{[citation needed]}

Criticism ofcommunist regimes including their effects on theeconomic development,human rights,foreign policy, scientific progress andenvironmental degradation of the countries they rule.

Political repression is a topic in many influential works critical of communist rule, including inThe Great Terror and theSoviet famine of 1932–33 inThe Harvest of Sorrow;Richard Pipes' account of the "Red Terror" during theRussian Civil War;Rudolph Rummel's work on "democide";Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's account of Stalin's forced labor camps inThe Gulag Archipelago; andStéphane Courtois' account of executions, forced labor camps and mass starvation in communist regimes as a general category, with particular attention to the Soviet Union underJoseph Stalin and China underMao Zedong.

Soviet-style central planning and state ownership has been another topic of criticism of communist rule. Works by economists such asFriedrich Hayek andMilton Friedman argue that the economic structures associated with communist rule resulted in economic stagnation. Other topics of criticism of communist rule include foreign policies of expansionism, environmental degradation and the suppression of free cultural expression.^{[citation needed]}

Criticism of communist rule has also centered on the censorship of the arts. In the case of the Soviet Union, these criticisms often deal with the preferential treatment afforded tosocialist realism. Other criticisms center on the large-scale cultural experiments of certain communist regimes. In Romania, the historical center of Bucharest was demolished and the whole city was redesigned between 1977 and 1989. In the Soviet Union, hundreds of churches were demolished or converted to secular purposes during the 1920s and 1930s. In China, theCultural Revolution sought to give all artistic expression a 'proletarian' content and destroyed much older material lacking this.^[44] Advocates of these policies promised to create a new culture that would be superior to the old while critics argue that such policies represented an unjustifiable destruction of the cultural heritage of humanity.

There is a well-known literature focusing on the role of the falsification of images in the Soviet Union under Stalin. InThe Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs in Stalin's Russia,David King writes: "So much falsification took place during the Stalin years that it is possible to tell the story of the Soviet era through retouched photographs".^[45] Under Stalin, historical documents were often the subject of revisionism and forgery, intended to change public perception of certain important people and events. The pivotal role played byLeon Trotsky in the Russian Revolution and Civil War was almost entirely erased from official historical records after Trotsky became the leader of a Communist faction that opposed Stalin's rule.

The emphasis on the "hard sciences" of the Soviet Union has been criticized.^[46] There were very fewNobel Prize winners from Communist states.^[47] Soviet research in certain sciences was at times guided by political rather than scientific considerations.Lysenkoism andJaphetic theory were promoted for brief periods of time inbiology andlinguistics respectively, despite having no scientific merit. Research intogenetics was restricted becauseNazi use ofeugenics had prompted the Soviet Union to label genetics a "fascist science".^[48]Suppressed research in the Soviet Union also includedcybernetics,psychology,psychiatry andorganic chemistry.

Soviet technology in many sectors lagged Western technology. Exceptions include areas like theSoviet space program and military technology where occasionally Communist technology was more advanced due to a massive concentration of research resources. According to theCentral Intelligence Agency, much of the technology in the Communist states consisted simply of copies of Western products that had been legally purchased or gained through a massive espionage program. Some even say that stricter Western control of the export of technology through theCoordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls and providing defective technology to Communist agents after the discovery of theFarewell Dossier contributed to the fall of Communism.^[49][50][51]

Both critics and supporters of communist rule often make comparisons between the economic development of countries under communist rule and non-communist countries, with the intention of certain economic structures are superior to the other. All such comparisons are open to challenge, both on the comparability of the states involved and the statistics being used for comparison. No two countries are identical, which makes comparisons regarding later economic development difficult; Western Europe was more developed and industrialized than Eastern Europe long before the Cold War; World War II damaged the economies of some countries more than others; and East Germany had much of its industry dismantled and moved to the Soviet Union for war reparations.^{[citation needed][53]} For example, virtually everyelectrified and/ordouble tracked railroad in East Germany was reduced to a single track non-electrified railroad bySoviet demontage after World War II.

Advocates of Soviet-style economic planning have claimed the system has in certain instances produced dramatic advances, including rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union, especially during the 1930s. Critics of Soviet economic planning, in response, assert that new research shows that the Soviet figures were partly fabricated, especially those showing extremely high growth in the Stalin era. Growth was high in the 1950s and 1960s, in some estimates much higher than during the 1930s, but later declined and according to some estimates became negative in the late 1980s.^[54][55] Beforecollectivization, Russia had been the "breadbasket of Europe". Afterwards, the Soviet Union became a net importer of grain, unable to produce enough food to feed its own population.^[56]

China and Vietnam achieved much higher rates of growth after introducing market reforms such associalism with Chinese characteristics starting in the late 1970s and 1980s, with higher growth rates being accompanied by declining poverty.^[57] The communist states do not compare favorably when looking at nations divided by the Cold War. North Korea versus South Korea; and East Germany versus West Germany. East Germanproductivity relative to West German productivity was around 90 percent in 1936 and around 60–65 percent in 1954. When compared to Western Europe, East German productivity declined from 67 percent in 1950 to 50 percent before the reunification in 1990. All the Eastern European national economies had productivity far below the Western European average.^[58][59][60]

Some countries under communist rule with socialist economies maintained consistently higher rates of economic growth than industrialized Western countries with capitalist economies. From 1928 to 1985, theeconomy of the Soviet Union grew by a factor of 10 andGNPper capita grew more than fivefold. The Soviet economy started out at roughly 25 percent the size of theeconomy of the United States. By 1955, it climbed to 40 percent. In 1965, the Soviet economy reached 50% of the contemporary United States economy and in 1977 it passed the 60 percent threshold. For the first half of the Cold War, most economists were asking when, not if, the Soviet economy would overtake the United States economy. Starting in the 1970s and continuing through the 1980s, growth rates slowed down in the Soviet Union and throughout the socialist bloc.^[61] The reasons for this downturn are still a matter of debate among economists, but one hypothesis is that the socialist planned economies had reached the limits of theextensive growth model they were pursuing and the downturn was at least in part caused by their refusal or inability to switch tointensive growth. Further, it could be argued that since the economies of countries such as Russia were pre-industrial before the socialist revolutions, the high economic growth rate could be attributed toindustrialization. Also while forms of economic growth associated with any economic structure produce some winners and losers, some point out that high growth rates under communist rule were associated with particularly intense suffering and even mass starvation of the peasant population.^{[citation needed]}

Unlike the slow market reforms in China and Vietnam where communist rule continues, the abrupt end to central planning was followed by adepression in many of the states of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe which chose to adopt the so-calledeconomic shock therapy. For example, in the Russian Federation GDP per capita decreased by one-third between 1989 and 1996. As of 2003, all of them have positive economic growth and almost all have a higher GDP/capita than before the transition.^[62] In general, critics of communist rule argue that socialist economies remained behind the industrialized West in terms of economic development for most of their existence while others assert that socialist economies had growth rates that were sometimes higher than many non-socialist economies, 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 generally much less developed to begin with.^[61]

Criticism of communist rule include a focus on environmental disasters. One example is the gradual disappearance of theAral Sea and a similar diminishing of theCaspian Sea because of the diversion of the rivers that fed them. Another is the pollution of the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea and the unique freshwater environment ofLake Baikal. Many of the rivers were polluted and several, like theVistula andOder rivers in Poland, were virtually ecologically dead. Over 70 percent of the surface water in the Soviet Union was polluted. In 1988, only 30 percent of the sewage in the Soviet Union was treated properly. Established health standards forair pollution was exceeded by ten times or more in 103 cities in the Soviet Union in 1988. The air pollution problem was even more severe in Eastern Europe. It caused a rapid growth inlung cancer, forest die-back and damage to buildings and cultural heritages. According to official sources, 58 percent of total agricultural land of the former Soviet Union was affected bysalinization,erosion,acidity, orwaterlogging. Nuclear waste was dumped in theSea of Japan, the Arctic Ocean and in locations in the Far East. It was revealed in 1992 that in the city of Moscow there were 636 radioactive toxic waste sites and 1,500 in Saint Petersburg.^[63][54]

According to the United States Department of Energy, socialist economies also maintained a much higher level ofenergy intensity than either the Western nations or the Third World. This analysis is confirmed by theInstitute of Economic Affairs, with Mikhail Bernstam stating that economies of theEastern Bloc had an energy intensity between twice and three times higher as economies of the West.^[64] Some see the aforementioned examples of environmental degradation are similar to what had occurred in Western capitalist countries during the height of their drive to industrialize in the 19th century.^[65] Others claim that Communist regimes did more damage than average, primarily due to the lack of any popular or political pressure to research environmentally friendly technologies.^[66]

Some ecological problems continue unabated after the fall of the Soviet Union and are still major issues today, which has prompted supporters of former ruling Communist parties to accuse their opponents of holding adouble standard.^[67] Nonetheless, other environmental problems have improved in every studied former Communist state.^[68] However, some researchers argued that part of improvement was largely due to the severe economic downturns in the 1990s that caused many factories to close down.^[69]

A number of communist states also usedforced labour as a legal form of punishment for certain periods of time and again, critics of these policies assert that many prisoners who were sentenced to serve terms of imprisonment in forced labor camps such as theGulag were sent there for political rather than criminal reasons. Some of the Gulag camps were located in very harsh environments, such asSiberia, which resulted in the death of a significant fraction of inmates before they could complete their prison sentences. Officially, the Gulag was shut down in 1960, but it remainedde facto in action for some time afterward.North Korea continues to maintain a network ofprison and labor camps that an estimated 200,000 people are imprisoned in. While the country does not regularly deport its citizens, it maintains a system of internal exile and banishment.^[70]

Many deaths were also caused by involuntarydeportations of entire ethnic groups as part of thepopulation transfer in the Soviet Union. ManyPrisoners of War taken during World War II were not released as the war ended and died in the Gulags. Many German civilians died as a result of atrocities committed by the Soviet army during theevacuation of East Prussia and due to the policy ofethnic cleansing of Germans from the territories they lost due to the war during theexpulsion of Germans after World War II.

In the literature on communist rule, many anticommunists have asserted that communist regimes tend to impose harsh restrictions on thefreedom of movement. These restrictions, they argue, are meant to stem the possibility of mass emigration, which threatens to offer evidence pointing to widespread popular dissatisfaction with their rule.

Between 1950 and 1961, 2.75 million East Germans moved to West Germany. During theHungarian Revolution of 1956 around 200,000 people moved to Austria as the Hungarian-Austrian border temporarily opened. From 1948 to 1953 hundreds of thousands of North Koreans moved to the South, stopped only when emigration was clamped down after theKorean War.

InCuba, 50,000 middle-class Cubans left between 1959 and 1961 after theCuban Revolution and the breakdown of Cuban-American relations. Following a period of repressive measures by the Cuban government in the late 1960s and 1970s, Cuba allowed for mass emigration of dissatisfied citizens, a policy that resulted in theMariel Boatlift of 1980, which led to a drop in emigration rates during the later months. In the 1990s, the economic crisis known as theSpecial Period coupled with the United States' tightening of theembargo led to desperate attempts to leave the island onbalsas (rafts, tires and makeshift vessels).^[71] Many Cubans currently continue attempts to emigrate to the United States In total, according to some estimates, more than 1 million people have left Cuba, around 10% of the population.^[71] Between 1971 and 1998, 547,000 Cubans emigrated to the United States alongside 700,000 neighboring Dominicans, 335,000 Haitians and 485,000 Jamaicans.^[72] Since 1966, immigration to the United States was governed by the 1966Cuban Adjustment Act, a United States law that applies solely to Cubans. The ruling allows any Cuban national, no matter the means of the entry into the United States, to receive agreen card after being in the country a year.^[73] Havana has long argued that the policy has encouraged the illegal exodus, deliberately ignoring and undervaluing the life-threatening hardships endured by refugees.^[74]

After the victory of the communist North in theVietnam War, over 2 million people in former South Vietnamese territory left the country (seeVietnamese boat people) in the 1970s and 1980s. Another large group of refugees left Cambodia and Laos. Restrictions on emigration from states ruled by communist parties received extensive publicity. In the West, theBerlin Wall emerged as a symbol of such restrictions. During the Berlin Wall's existence, sixty thousand people unsuccessfully attempted to emigrate illegally from East Germany and received jail terms for such actions; there were around five thousand successful escapes into West Berlin; and 239 people were killed trying to cross.^[75]Albania andNorth Korea perhaps imposed the most extreme restrictions on emigration. From most other communist regimes, legal emigration was always possible, though often so difficult that attempted emigrants would risk their lives in order to emigrate. Some of these states relaxed emigration laws significantly from the 1960s onwards. Tens of thousands of Soviet citizens emigrated legally every year during the 1970s.^{[76][verification needed]}

Refuseniks were individuals—mostly, but not exclusively,Soviet Jews—who weredenied permission to emigrate, primarily toIsrael, by the authorities of theSoviet Union and other countries of theSoviet Bloc.^[77]

According toKlas-Göran Karlsson, "[i]deologies are systems of ideas, which cannot commit crimes independently. However, individuals, collectives and states that have defined themselves as communist have committed crimes in the name of communist ideology, or without naming communism as the direct source of motivation for their crimes."^[81] Authors such asDaniel Goldhagen,^[82]John Gray,^[83]Richard Pipes^[84] andRudolph Rummel^[85][86] consider the ideology ofcommunism to be a significant, or at least partial, causative factor in the events under communist party rule.^[34][87]The Black Book of Communism claims an association between communism andcriminality, arguing that "Communist regimes [...] turned mass crime into a full-blown system of government"^[88] while adding that this criminality lies at the level of ideology rather than state practice.^[89] On the other hand,Benjamin Valentino does not see a link between communism andmass killing, arguing that killings occur when power is in the hands of one person or a small number of people, when "powerful groups come to believe it is the best available means to accomplish certain radical goals, counter specific types of threats, or solve difficult military problem", or there is a "revolutionary desire to bring about the rapid and radical transformation of society."^[90]

Christopher J. Finlay argues thatMarxism legitimates violence without any clear limiting principle because it rejects moral and ethical norms as constructs of the dominant class and states that "it would be conceivable for revolutionaries to commit atrocious crimes in bringing about a socialist system, with the belief that their crimes will be retroactively absolved by the new system of ethics put in place by theproletariat."^[91] According toRustam Singh,Karl Marx alluded to the possibility of peaceful revolution, but he emphasized the need for violent revolution and "revolutionary terror" after the failedRevolutions of 1848.^[91] According toJacques Sémelin, "communist systems emerging in the twentieth century ended up destroying their own populations, not because they planned to annihilate them as such, but because they aimed to restructure the 'social body' from top to bottom, even if that meant purging it and recarving it to suit their newPromethean politicalimaginaire."^[92]

Daniel Chirot andClark McCauley write that, especially in Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia, a fanatical certainty that socialism could be made to work motivated communist leaders in "the ruthlessdehumanization of their enemies, who could be suppressed because they were 'objectively' and 'historically' wrong. Furthermore, if events did not work out as they were supposed to, then that was becauseclass enemies, foreign spies andsaboteurs, or worst of all, internal traitors were wrecking the plan. Under no circumstances could it be admitted that the vision itself might be unworkable, because that meant capitulation to the forces of reaction."^[93]Michael Mann writes thatcommunist party members were "ideologically driven, believing that in order to create a new socialist society, they must lead in socialist zeal. Killings were often popular, the rank-and-file as keen to exceed killing quotas as production quotas."^[94]

According to Rummel, the killings committed by communist regimes can best be explained as the result of the marriage between absolute power and the absolutist ideology of Marxism.^[95] Rummel states that "communism was like a fanatical religion. It had its revealed text and its chief interpreters. It had its priests and their ritualistic prose with all the answers. It had a heaven, and the proper behavior to reach it. It had its appeal to faith. And it had its crusades against nonbelievers. What made this secular religion so utterly lethal was its seizure of all the state's instruments of force and coercion and their immediate use to destroy or control all independent sources of power, such as the church, the professions, private businesses, schools, and the family."^[96] Rummels writes that Marxist communists saw the construction of theirutopia as "though a war on poverty, exploitation, imperialism and inequality. And for the greater good, as in a real war, people are killed. And, thus, this war for the communist utopia had its necessary enemy casualties, the clergy, bourgeoisie, capitalists, wreckers, counterrevolutionaries, rightists, tyrants, rich, landlords, and noncombatants that unfortunately got caught in the battle. In a war millions may die, but the cause may be well justified, as in the defeat of Hitler and an utterly racist Nazism. And to many communists, the cause of a communist utopia was such as to justify all the deaths."^[95]

Benjamin Valentino writes the following "apparently high levels of political support for murderous regimes and leaders should not automatically be equated with support for mass killing itself. Individuals are capable of supporting violent regimes or leaders while remaining indifferent or even opposed to specific policies that these regimes and carried out." Valentino quotes Vladimir Brovkin as saying that "a vote for the Bolsheviks in 1917 was not a vote for Red Terror or even a vote for a dictatorship of the proletariat."^[97] According to Valentino, such strategies were so violent because they economically dispossess large numbers of people, commenting: "Social transformations of this speed and magnitude have been associated with mass killing for two primary reasons. First, the massive social dislocations produced by such changes have often led toeconomic collapse,epidemics, and, most important, widespread famines. ... The second reason that communist regimes bent on the radical transformation of society have been linked to mass killing is that the revolutionary changes they have pursued have clashed inexorably with the fundamental interests of large segments of their populations. Few people have proved willing to accept such far-reaching sacrifices without intense levels of coercion."^[98]

As an ideology,Marxism–Leninism stresses militant opposition toimperialism. Lenin considered imperialism "the highest stage of capitalism" and in 1917 made declarations of the unconditional right ofself-determination andsecession for the national minorities of Russia. During the Cold War, communist states have been accused of, or criticized for, exercising imperialism by giving military assistance and in some cases intervening directly on behalf of Communist movements that were fighting for control, particularly in Asia and Africa.

Western critics accused the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China of practicing imperialism themselves, and communist condemnations of Western imperialism hypocritical. The attack on and restoration of Moscow's control of countries that had been under the rule of the tsarist empire, but briefly formed newly independent states in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War (including Armenia,Georgia andAzerbaijan), have been condemned as examples of Soviet imperialism.^[99] Similarly, Stalin's forced reassertion of Moscow's rule of theBaltic states in World War II has been condemned as Soviet imperialism. Western critics accused Stalin of creatingsatellite states in Eastern Europe after the end of World War II. Western critics also condemned the intervention of Soviet forces during the1956 Hungarian Revolution, thePrague Spring and thewar in Afghanistan as aggression against popular uprisings. Maoists argued that the Soviet Union had itself become an imperialist power while maintaining a socialist façade (social imperialism). China's reassertion of central control over territories on the frontiers of theQing dynasty, particularly Tibet, has also been condemned as imperialistic by some critics.

Some states under communist rule have been criticized for directly supportingterrorist groups such as thePopular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, theRed Army Faction and theJapanese Red Army.^[100] North Korea has been implicated in terrorist acts such asKorean Air Flight 858.

According to Richard Pipes, the Soviet Union shares some responsibility forWorld War II. Pipes argues that bothAdolf Hitler andBenito Mussolini used the Soviet Union as a model for their own regimes and that Hitler privately considered Stalin a "genius". According to Pipes, Stalin privately hoped that another world war would weaken his foreign enemies and allow him to assert Soviet power internationally. Before Hitler took power, Stalin allowed the testing and production of German weapons that were forbidden by theVersailles Treaty to occur on Soviet territory. Stalin is also accused of weakening German opposition to the Nazis before Hitler's rule began in 1933. During the 1932 German elections, for instance, he forbade the German Communists from collaborating with the Social Democrats. These parties together gained more votes than Hitler and some have later surmised could have prevented him from becoming Chancellor.^[101]

Professor Matthew Krain states that many scholars have pointed torevolutions andcivil wars as providing the opportunity for radical leaders and ideologies to gain power and the preconditions for mass killing by the state.^[102] Professor Nam Kyu Kim writes that exclusionary ideologies are critical to explaining mass killing, but the organizational capabilities and individual characteristics of revolutionary leaders, including their attitudes towards risk and violence, are also important. Besides opening up political opportunities for new leaders to eliminate their political opponents, revolutions bring to power leaders who are more apt to commit large-scale violence against civilians in order to legitimize and strengthen their own power.^[103] Genocide scholarAdam Jones states that theRussian Civil War was very influential on the emergence of leaders like Stalin and accustomed people to "harshness, cruelty, terror."^[104]Martin Malia called the "brutal conditioning" of the two World Wars important to understanding communist violence, although not its source.^[105]

HistorianHelen Rappaport describesNikolay Yezhov, the bureaucrat in charge of the NKVD during theGreat Purge, as a physically diminutive figure of "limited intelligence" and "narrow political understanding. [...] Like other instigators of mass murder throughout history, [he] compensated for his lack of physical stature with a pathological cruelty and the use of brute terror."^[106]Russian andworld history scholar John M. Thompson places personal responsibility directly on Stalin. According to Thompson, "much of what occurred only makes sense if it stemmed in part from the disturbed mentality, pathological cruelty, and extreme paranoia of Stalin himself. Insecure, despite having established a dictatorship over the party and country, hostile and defensive when confronted with criticism of the excesses of collectivization and the sacrifices required by high-tempo industrialization, and deeply suspicious that past, present, and even yet unknown future opponents were plotting against him, Stalin began to act as a person beleaguered. He soon struck back at enemies, real or imaginary."^[107] Professors Pablo Montagnes and Stephane Wolton argue that the purges in the Soviet Union and China can be attributed to the "personalist" leadership of Stalin and Mao, who were incentivized by having both control of the security apparatus used to carry out the purges and control of the appointment of replacements for those purged.^[108] Slovenian philosopherSlavoj Žižek attributes Mao allegedly viewing human life as disposable to Mao's "cosmic perspective" on humanity.^[109]

Manymass killings occurred under 20th-century communist regimes. Death estimates vary widely, depending on the definitions of deaths included. The higher estimates of mass killings account for crimes against civilians by governments, including executions, destruction of population through man-made hunger and deaths during forced deportations, imprisonment and through forced labor. Terms used to define these killings include "mass killing", "democide", "politicide", "classicide", a broad definition of "genocide", "crimes against humanity", "holocaust", and "repression".

Scholars such asStéphane Courtois,Steven Rosefielde,Rudolph Rummel and Benjamin Valentino^[110] have argued that communist regimes were responsible for tens or even hundreds of millions of deaths. These deaths mostly occurred under the rule of Stalin and Mao, therefore these particular periods of communist rule in Soviet Russia and China receive considerable attention inThe Black Book of Communism, although other communist regimes have also caused high number of deaths, not least theKhmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, which is often claimed to have killed more of its citizens than any other in history.^{[85][additional citation(s) needed]} These accounts often divide their death toll estimates into two categories, namely executions of people who had received the death penalty for various charges, or deaths that occurred in prison; and deaths that were not caused directly by the regime, as the people in question were not executed and did not die in prison, but are considered to have died as an indirect result of state or communist party policies. Those scholars argue that most victims of communist rule fell in this category, which is often the subject of considerable controversy.

In most communist states, the death penalty was a legal form of punishment for most of their existence, with a few exceptions. While the Soviet Union formally abolished the death penalty between 1947 and 1950, critics argue that this did nothing to curb executions and acts of genocide.^[111] Critics also argue that many of the convicted prisoners executed by authorities under communist rule were not criminals but political dissidents. Stalin'sGreat Purge in the late 1930s (from roughly 1936–1938) is given as the most prominent example of the hypothesis.^[112] With regard to deaths not caused directly by state or party authorities,The Black Book of Communism points to famine and war as the indirect causes of what they see as deaths for which communist regimes were responsible. In this sense, theSoviet famine of 1932–33 and theGreat Leap Forward are often described as man-made famines. These two events alone killed a majority of the people seen as victims of communist states by estimates such as Courtois'. Courtois also blamesMengistu Haile Mariam's regime for having exacerbated the1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia by imposing unreasonable political and economic burdens on the population.

The authors ofThe Black Book of Communism,Norman Davies, Rummel and others have attempted to give estimates of the total number of deaths for which communist rule of a particular state in a particular period was responsible, or the total for all states under communist rule. The question is complicated by the lack of hard data and by biases inherent in any estimation. The number of people killed under Stalin's rule in the Soviet Union by 1939 has been estimated as 3.5–8 million by Geoffrey Ponton,^[113] 6.6 million by V. V. Tsaplin^[114] and 10–11 million byAlexander Nove.^[115] The number of people killed under Stalin's rule by the time of his death in 1953 has been estimated as 1–3 million byStephen G. Wheatcroft,^[116] 6–9 million byTimothy D. Snyder,^[117] 13–20 million by Rosefielde,^[118] 20 million by Courtois andMartin Malia, 20 to 25 million byAlexander Yakovlev^[119] 43 million by Rummel^[120] and 50 million by Davies.^[121] The number of people killed under Mao's rule in the People's Republic of China has been estimated at 19.5 million by Wang Weizhi,^[122] 27 million by John Heidenrich,^[123] between 38 and 67 million by Kurt Glaser and Stephan Possony,^[124] between 32 and 59 million by Robert L. Walker,^[125] over 50 million by Rosefielde,^[118] 65 million by Cortois and Malia, well over 70 million byJon Halliday andJung Chang inMao: The Unknown Story and 77 million by Rummel.^[126]

The authors ofThe Black Book of Communism have also estimated that 9.3 million people were killed under communist rule in other states: 2 million in North Korea, 2 million in Cambodia, 1.7 million in Africa, 1.5 million in Afghanistan, 1 million in Vietnam, 1 million in Eastern Europe and 150,000 in Latin America. Rummel has estimated that 1.7 million were killed by the government of Vietnam, 1.6 million in North Korea (not counting the 1990s famine), 2 million in Cambodia and 2.5 million in Poland and Yugoslavia.^[127] Valentino estimates that 1 to 2 million were killed in Cambodia, 50,000 to 100,000 in Bulgaria, 80,000 to 100,000 in East Germany, 60,000 to 300,000 in Romania, 400,000 to 1,500,000 in North Korea, and 80,000 to 200,000 in North and South Vietnam.^[128]

Between the authors Wiezhi, Heidenrich, Glaser, Possony, Ponton, Tsaplin and Nove, Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China have an estimated total death rate ranging from 23 million to 109 million.The Black Book of Communism asserts that roughly 94 million died under all communist regimes while Rummel believed around 144.7 million died under six communist regimes. Valentino claims that between 21 and 70 million deaths are attributable to the Communist regimes in the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China andDemocratic Kampuchea alone.^[110]Jasper Becker, author ofHungry Ghosts, claims that if the death tolls from the famines caused by communist regimes in China, the Soviet Union, Cambodia, North Korea, Ethiopia and Mozambique are added together, the figure could be close to 90 million.^[129] These estimates are the three highest numbers of victims blamed on communism by any notable study. However, the totals that include research by Wiezhi, Heidenrich, Glasser, Possony, Ponton, Tsaplin and Nove do not include other periods of time beyond Stalin or Mao's rule, thus it may be possible when including other communist states to reach higher totals. In a 25 January 2006resolution condemning the crimes of communist regimes, theCouncil of Europe cited the 94 million total reached by the authors of theBlack Book of Communism.

Explanations have been offered for the discrepancies in the number of estimated victims of communist regimes:^{[34][35][36][37][38][39]}

• First, all these numbers are estimates derived from incomplete data. Researchers often have to extrapolate and interpret available information in order to arrive at their final numbers.
• Second, different researchers work with different definitions of what it means to be killed by a regime. As noted by several scholars, the vast majority of victims of communist regimes did not die as a result of direct government orders but as an indirect result of state policy. There is no agreement on the question of whether communist regimes should be held responsible for their deaths and if so, to what degree. The low estimates may count only executions and labor camp deaths as instances of killings by communist regimes while the high estimates may be based on the argument that communist regimes were responsible for all deaths resulting from famine or war.
• Some of the writers make special distinction for Stalin and Mao, who all agree are responsible for the most extensive pattern of severe crimes against humanity, but they include little to no statistics on losses of life after their rule.
• Another reason is sources available at the time of writing. More recent researchers have access to many of the official archives of communist regimes in East Europe and Soviet Union. However, many of archives in Russia for the period after Stalin's death are still closed.^[130]
• Finally, this is a highly politically charged field, with nearly all researchers having been accused of a pro-communist or anti-communist bias at one time or another.^[29]

According to historianJ. Arch Getty, over half of the 100 million deaths which are attributed to communism were due to famines.^{[131][132][133]}Stéphane Courtois posits that many communist regimes caused famines in their efforts to forcibly collectivize agriculture and systematically used it as a weapon by controlling the food supply and distributing food on a political basis. Courtois states that "in the period after 1918, only Communist countries experienced such famines, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions, of people. And again in the 1980s, two African countries that claimed to beMarxist–Leninist,Ethiopia andMozambique, were the only such countries to suffer these deadly famines."^[134]

ScholarsStephen G. Wheatcroft,R. W. Davies and Mark Tauger reject the idea that theUkrainian famine was an act of genocide that was intentionally inflicted by the Soviet government. Getty posits that the "overwhelming weight of opinion among scholars working in the new archives is that the terrible famine of the 1930s was the result of Stalinist bungling and rigidity rather than some genocidal plan." Wheatcroft argued that the Soviet government's policies during the famine were criminal acts of fraud and manslaughter, though not outright murder or genocide.^{[133][135][136]} In contrast according toSimon Payaslian, the scholarly consensus classifies the Holodomor as a genocide.^[137] Russian novelist and historianAleksandr Solzhenitsyn opined on 2 April 2008 inIzvestia that the 1930s famine in Ukraine was no different from theRussian famine of 1921 as both were caused by the ruthless robbery of peasants by Bolshevik grain procurements.^[138]

Pankaj Mishra questions Mao's direct responsibility for theGreat Chinese Famine, noting that "[a] great many premature deaths also occurred in newly independent nations not ruled by erratic tyrants." Mishra cites Nobel laureateAmartya Sen's research demonstrating that democratic India suffered moreexcess mortality from starvation and disease in the second half of the 20th century than China did. Sen wrote that "India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame."^[139][140]

Benjamin Valentino writes: "Although not all the deaths due to famine in these cases were intentional, communist leaders directed the worst effects of famine against their suspected enemies and used hunger as a weapon to force millions of people to conform to the directives of the state."^[98]Daniel Goldhagen says that in some cases deaths from famine should not be distinguished from mass murder, commenting: "Whenever governments have not alleviated famine conditions, political leaders decided not to say no to mass death – in other words, they said yes." Goldhagen says that instances of this occurred in theMau Mau Rebellion, theGreat Leap Forward, theNigerian Civil War, theEritrean War of Independence, and theWar in Darfur.^[141]Martin Shaw posits that if a leader knew the ultimate result of their policies would be mass death by famine, and they continue to enact them anyway, these deaths can be understood asintentional.^[142]

Historians and journalists, such asSeumas Milne andJon Wiener, have criticized the emphasis oncommunism when assigning blame for famines. In a 2002 article forThe Guardian, Milne mentions "the moral blindness displayed towards the record ofcolonialism", and he writes: "If Lenin and Stalin are regarded as having killed those who died of hunger in the famines of the 1920s and 1930s, then Churchill is certainly responsible for the 4 million deaths in the avoidableBengal famine of 1943." Milne laments that while "there is a much-laudedBlack Book of Communism, [there exists] no such comprehensive indictment of the colonial record."^[143][27] Weiner makes a similar assertion while comparing theHolodomor and the Bengal famine of 1943, stating thatWinston Churchill's role in the Bengal famine "seems similar to Stalin's role in the Ukrainian famine."^[144] HistorianMike Davis, author ofLate Victorian Holocausts, draws comparisons between theGreat Chinese Famine and theIndian famines of the late 19th century, arguing that in both instances the governments which oversaw the response to the famines deliberately chose not to alleviate conditions and as such bear responsibility for the scale of deaths in said famines.^[145]

HistorianMichael Ellman is critical of the fixation on a "uniquely Stalinist evil" when it comes to excess deaths from famines. Ellman posits that mass deaths from famines are not a "uniquely Stalinist evil", commenting that throughoutRussian history, famines, and droughts have been acommon occurrence, including theRussian famine of 1921–1922, which occurred before Stalin came to power. He also states that famines were widespread throughout the world in the 19th and 20th centuries in countries such as India, Ireland, Russia and China. According to Ellman, theG8 "are guilty of mass manslaughter or mass deaths from criminal negligence because of their not taking obvious measures to reduce mass deaths" and Stalin's "behaviour was no worse than that of many rulers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."^[146]

Both anti-communists and communists have criticized thepersonality cults of many communist rulers, especially the cults of Stalin, Mao,Fidel Castro andKim Il Sung. In the case of North Korea, thepersonality cult of Kim Il-sung was associated with inherited leadership, with the succession of Kim's sonKim Jong Il in 1994 and grandsonKim Jong Un in 2011. Cuban communists have also been criticized for planning an inherited leadership, with the succession ofRaúl Castro following his brother's illness in mid-2006.^[147]

Large-scale political repression under communist rule has been the subject of extensive historical research by scholars and activists from a diverse range of perspectives. A number of researchers on this subject are former Eastern bloc communists who become disillusioned with their ruling parties, such asAlexander Yakovlev andDmitri Volkogonov. Similarly,Jung Chang, one of the authors ofMao: The Unknown Story, was aRed Guard in her youth. Others are disillusioned former Western communists, including several of the authors ofThe Black Book of Communism.Robert Conquest, another former communist, became one of the best-known writers on the Soviet Union following the publication of his influential account of the Great Purge inThe Great Terror, which at first was not well received in some left-leaning circles of Western intellectuals. Following the end of the Cold War, much of the research on this topic has focused on state archives previously classified under communist rule.

The level of political repression experienced in states under communist rule varied widely between different countries and historical periods. The most rigid censorship was practiced by the Soviet Union under Stalin (1922–1953), China under Mao during theCultural Revolution (1966–1976) and the communist regime inNorth Korea throughout its rule (1948–present).^[148] Under Stalin's rule, political repression in the Soviet Union included executions of Great Purge victims and peasants deemed "kulaks" by state authorities; theGulag system of forced labor camps; deportations of ethnic minorities; and mass starvations during the Soviet famine of 1932–1933, caused by either government mismanagement, or by some accounts, caused deliberately.The Black Book of Communism also details the mass starvations resulting fromGreat Leap Forward in China and theKilling Fields inCambodia. Although political repression in the Soviet Union was far more extensive and severe in its methods under Stalin's rule than in any other period, authors such asRichard Pipes,Orlando Figes and works such as theBlack Book of Communism argue that a reign of terror began within Russia under the leadership ofVladimir Lenin immediately after theOctober Revolution, and continued by theRed Army and theCheka over the country during theRussian Civil War. It includedsummary executions of hundreds of thousands of "class enemies" by Cheka; the development of the system of labor camps, which would later lay the foundation for the Gulags; and a policy of food requisitioning during the civil war, which was partially responsible for a famine causing three to ten million deaths.^[149]

Alexander Yakovlev's critique of political repression under communist rule focus on the treatment of children, which he numbers in the millions, of alleged political opponents. His accounts stress cases in which children of former imperial officers and peasants were held as hostages and sometimes shot during the civil war. His account of the Second World War highlights cases in which the children of soldiers who had surrendered were the victims of state reprisal. Some children, Yakovlev notes, followed their parents to the Gulags, suffering an especially high mortality rate. According to Yakovlev, in 1954 there were 884,057 "specially resettled" children under the age of sixteen. Others were placed in special orphanages run by the secret police in order to be reeducated, often losing even their names, and were considered socially dangerous as adults.^[150] Other accounts focus on extensive networks of civilianinformants, consisting of either volunteers, or those forcibly recruited. These networks were used to collect intelligence for the government and report cases of dissent.^[151] Many accounts of political repression in the Soviet Union highlight cases in which internal critics were classified as mentally ill (diagnosed with disorders such assluggishly progressing schizophrenia) and incarcerated inmental hospitals).^[152] The fact that workers in the Soviet Union were not allowed to organize independent, non-statetrade union has also been presented as a case of political repression in the Soviet Union.^[153] Various accounts stressing a relationship between political repression and communist rule focus on the suppression of internal uprisings by military force such as theTambov rebellion and theKronstadt rebellion during the Russian Civil War as well as the1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre in China. Ex-communist dissidentMilovan Đilas, among others, focused on the relationship between political repression and the rise of a powerfulnew class of party bureaucrats, called thenomenklatura, that had emerged under communist rule and exploited the rest of the population.^[4][5][6]

HistorianAnne Applebaum asserts that "without exception, theLeninist belief in theone-party state was and is characteristic of every communist regime" and "theBolshevik use of violence was repeated in every communist revolution." Phrases said byVladimir Lenin andCheka founderFelix Dzerzhinsky were deployed all over the world. Applebaum notes that as late as 1976Mengistu Haile Mariam unleashed aRed Terror in Ethiopia.^[154] Lenin is quoted as saying to his colleagues in the Bolshevik government: "If we are not ready to shoot a saboteur andWhite Guardist, what sort of revolution is that?"^[155]

HistorianRobert Conquest stressed that events such as Stalin's purges were not contrary to the principles of Leninism, but rather a natural consequence of the system established by Lenin, who personally ordered the killing of local groups of class enemy hostages.^[156]Alexander Yakovlev, architect ofperestroika andglasnost and later head of the Presidential Commission for the Victims of Political Repression, elaborates on this point, stating: "The truth is that in punitive operations Stalin did not think up anything that was not there under Lenin: executions, hostage taking, concentration camps, and all the rest."^[157] HistorianRobert Gellately concurs, arguing that "[t]o put it another way, Stalin initiated very little that Lenin had not already introduced or previewed."^[158][159]

PhilosopherStephen Hicks ofRockford College ascribes the violence characteristic of 20th-century communist party rule to these collectivist regimes' abandonment of protections ofcivil rights and rejection of the values ofcivil society. Hicks writes that whereas "in practice every liberal capitalist country has a solid record for being humane, for by and large respecting rights and freedoms, and for making it possible for people to put together fruitful and meaningful lives", in communist party rule "practice has time and again proved itself more brutal than the worst dictatorships prior to the twentieth century. Each socialist regime has collapsed into dictatorship and begun killing people on a huge scale."^[160]

AuthorEric D. Weitz says that events such as mass killing in communist states are a natural consequence of the failure of the rule of law, seen commonly during periods of social upheaval in the 20th century. For both communist and non-communist mass killings, "genocides occurred at moments of extreme social crisis, often generated by the very policies of the regimes." According to this view, mass killings are not inevitable but are political decisions.^[161]Soviet and Communist studies scholarSteven Rosefielde writes that communist rulers had to choose between changing course and "terror-command" and more often than not chose the latter.^[162] SociologistMichael Mann argues that a lack of institutionalized authority structures meant that a chaotic mix of both centralized control and party factionalism were factors to the events.^[163]

This sectionneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.(February 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Starting with thefirst five-year plan in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Soviet leaders pursued a strategy of economic development concentrating the country's economic resources onheavy industry anddefense rather than onconsumer goods. This strategy was later adopted in varying degrees by communist leaders in Eastern Europe and the Third World. For many Western critics of communist strategies of economic development, the unavailability of consumer goods common in the West in the Soviet Union was a case in point of how communist rule resulted in lowerstandards of living.^{[citation needed]}

The allegation that communist rule resulted in lower standards of living sharply contrasted with communist arguments boasting of the achievements of the social and cultural programs of the Soviet Union and other communist states. For instance, Soviet leaders boasted of guaranteed employment, subsidized food and clothing, free health care, free child care and free education. Soviet leaders also touted early advances in women's equality, particularly inIslamic areas of Soviet Central Asia.^[164] Eastern European communists often touted high levels of literacy in comparison with many parts of the developing world. A phenomenon calledOstalgie, nostalgia for life under Soviet rule, has been noted amongst former members of Communist countries, now living in Western capitalist states, particularly those who lived in the former East Germany.

The effects of communist rule on living standards have been harshly criticized. Jung Chang stresses that millions died in famines in communist China and North Korea.^[165][166] Some studies conclude that East Germans were shorter than West Germans probably due to differences in factors such as nutrition and medical services.^[167] According to some researchers, life satisfaction increased in East Germany after the reunification.^[168] Critics of Soviet rule charge that the Soviet education system was full ofpropaganda and of low quality. United States government researchers pointed out the fact that the Soviet Union spent far less on health care than Western nations and noted that the quality of Soviet health care was deteriorating in the 1970s and 1980s. In addition, the failure of Soviet pension and welfare programs to provide adequate protection was noted in the West.^[169]

After 1965,life expectancy began to plateau or even decrease, especially for males, in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe while it continued to increase in Western Europe.^{[citation needed]} This divergence between two parts of Europe continued over the course of three decades, leading to a profound gap in the mid-1990s. Life expectancy sharply declined after the change to market economy in most of the states of the former Soviet Union, but may now have started to increase in theBaltic states.^{[citation needed]} In several Eastern European nations, life expectancy started to increase immediately after the fall of communism.^{[citation needed]} The previous decline for males continued for a time in some Eastern European nations, like Romania, before starting to increase.^[170]

InThe Politics of Bad Faith,conservative writerDavid Horowitz^{[unreliable source?]} painted a picture of horrendous living standards in the Soviet Union. Horowitz claimed that in the 1980s rationing of meat and sugar was common in the Soviet Union. Horowitz cited studies suggesting the average intake ofred meat for a Soviet citizen was half of what it had been for a subject of the tsar in 1913, that blacks underapartheid in South Africa owned more cars per capita and that the average welfare mother in the United States received more income in a month than the average Soviet worker could earn in a year. According to Horowitz, the only area of consumption in which the Soviets excelled was the ingestion ofhard liquor. Horowitz also noted that two-thirds of the households had no hot water and a third had no running water at all. Horowitz cited the government newspaperIzvestia,^{[failed verification]} noting a typical working-class family of four was forced to live for eight years in a single eight by eight foot room before marginally better accommodation became available. In his discussion of the Soviet housing shortage, Horowitz stated that the shortage was so acute that at all times 17 percent of Soviet families had to be physically separated for want of adequate space. A third of the hospitals had no running water and the bribery of doctors and nurses to get decent medical attention and even amenities like blankets in Soviet hospitals was not only common, but routine. In his discussion of Soviet education, Horowitz stated that only 15 percent of Soviet youth were able to attend institutions of higher learning compared to 34 percent in the United States.^{[56][unreliable source?]} However, in the initial decades following the dissolution of the USSR, large segments of citizens in many former Communist states say that the standard of living has fallen since the end of the Cold War.^[171][172] with majorities of citizens in the former East Germany and Romania were polled as saying that life was better under Communism.^[173][174] By 2019, 61 percent of citizens of former Communist states said that standards of living were now higher than they had been under Communism, while only 31 percent said that they were worse, with the remaining 8 percent saying that they did not know or that standards of living had not changed.^[175]

In terms of living standards, economistMichael Ellman asserts that in international comparisons state socialist nations compared favorably with capitalist nations in health indicators such as infant mortality and life expectancy.^[176]Amartya Sen's own analysis of international comparisons of life expectancy found that several communist countries made significant gains and commented "one thought that is bound to occur is that communism is good for poverty removal".^[177] Poverty exploded following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, tripling to more than one-third of Russia's population in just three years.^[178] By 1999, around 191 million people in former Eastern Bloc countries and Soviet republics were living on less than $5.50 a day.^[179]

Communist countries, states, areas and local communities have been based on the rule of parties proclaiming a basis inMarxism–Leninism, an ideology which is not supported by all Marxists, communists, and leftists. Many communists disagree with many of the actions undertaken by ruling Communist parties during the 20th century.

Elements of the left opposed to Bolshevik plans before they were put into practice included the revisionist Marxists, such asEduard Bernstein, who denied the necessity of a revolution.Anarchists (who had differed from Marx and his followers since the split in theFirst International), many of theSocialist Revolutionaries and the MarxistMensheviks supported the overthrow of thetsar, but vigorously opposed the seizure of power by Lenin and theBolsheviks.

Criticisms of Communist rule from the left continued after the creation of the Soviet state. The anarchistNestor Makhno led theRevolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine against the Bolsheviks during theRussian Civil War and the Socialist RevolutionaryFanya Kaplan tried to assassinate Lenin.Bertrand Russell visited Russia in 1920 and regarded the Bolsheviks as intelligent, but clueless and planless. In her books about Soviet Russia after the revolution,My Disillusionment in Russia andMy Further Disillusionment in Russia,Emma Goldman condemned the suppression of theKronstadt rebellion as a "massacre". Eventually, theLeft Socialist Revolutionaries broke with the Bolsheviks.

Anti-revisionists (which includes radicalMarxist–Leninist factions,Hoxhaists andMaoists) criticize the rule of the communist states by claiming that they werestate capitalist states ruled byrevisionists.^[180][181] Though the periods and countries defined as state capitalist or revisionist varies among different ideologies and parties, all of them accept that the Soviet Union was socialist during Stalin's time.Maoists view the Soviet Union and most of its satellites as "state capitalist" as a result ofde-Stalinization; some of them also view modern China in this light, believing that the People's Republic of China became state capitalist after Mao's death. Hoxhaists believe that the People's Republic of China was always state capitalist and upholdSocialist Albania as the only socialist state after the Soviet Union under Stalin.^[182]

Left communists claim that the "communist" or "socialist" states or "people's states" were actually state capitalist and thus cannot be called "socialist".^[183][184] Some of the earliest critics ofLeninism were the German-Dutch left communists, includingHerman Gorter,Anton Pannekoek andPaul Mattick. Though most left communists see theOctober Revolution positively, their analysis concludes that by the time of theKronstadt revolt the revolution had degenerated due to various historical factors.^[183]Rosa Luxemburg was another communist who disagreed with Lenin's organizational methods which eventually led to the creation of the Soviet Union.

Amadeo Bordiga wrote about his view of the Soviet Union as a capitalist society. In contrast to those produced by the Trotskyists, Bordiga's writings on the capitalist nature of the Soviet economy also focused on the agrarian sector. Bordiga displayed a kind of theoretical rigidity which was both exasperating and effective in allowing him to see things differently. He wanted to show how capitalist social relations existed in thekolkhoz and in thesovkhoz, one a cooperative farm and the other the straight wage-labor state farm. He emphasized how much of agrarian production depended on the small privately owned plots (he was writing in 1950) and predicted quite accurately the rates at which the Soviet Union would start importing wheat after Russia had been such a large exporter from the 1880s to 1914. In Bordiga's conception, Stalin and later Mao, Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara were "great romantic revolutionaries" in the 19th century sense, i.e. bourgeois revolutionaries. He felt that the Stalinist regimes that came into existence after 1945 were just extending the bourgeois revolution, i.e. the expropriation of thePrussian Junker class by the Red Army through their agrarian policies and through the development of the productive forces.^[185][186]

After the split betweenLeon Trotsky and Stalin,Trotskyists have argued that Stalin transformed the Soviet Union into a bureaucratic and repressive one-party state and that all subsequent Communist states ultimately followed a similar path because they copiedStalinism. There are various terms used by Trotskyists to define such states, such as "degenerated workers' state" and "deformed workers' state", "state capitalist" or "bureaucratic collectivist". While Trotskyists are Leninists, there are other Marxists who reject Leninism entirely, arguing that the Leninist principle ofdemocratic centralism was the source of the Soviet Union's slide away from communism.

In October 2017,Nathan J. Robinson wrote an article titled "How to Be a Socialist without Being an Apologist for the Atrocities of Communist Regimes", arguing that it is "incredibly easy to be both in favor of socialism and against the crimes committed by 20th century communist regimes. All it takes is a consistent, principled opposition to authoritarianism". Robinson further argued that "The history of these [Communist] states shows what is wrong withauthoritarian societies, in which people arenot equal, and shows the fallacy of thinking you can achieve egalitarian ends through authoritarian means."^[10]

Some academics and writers argue thatanti-communist narratives have exaggerated the extent of political repression and censorship in states under communist party rule and drawn comparisons with what they see as atrocities that were perpetrated by capitalist countries, particularly during the Cold War. They includeMark Aarons,^[187]Vincent Bevins,^[188]Noam Chomsky,^[189]Jodi Dean,^[190]Kristen Ghodsee,^[28][29]Seumas Milne^[143][27] andMichael Parenti.^[26]

Parenti argues that communist states experienced greatereconomic development than they would have otherwise, or that their leaders were forced to take harsh measures to defend their countries against theWestern Bloc during theCold War. In addition, Parenti states that communist party rule provided somehuman rights such aseconomic, social and cultural rights not found undercapitalist states such as that everyone is treated equal regardless of education or financial stability; that any citizen can keep a job; or that there is a more efficient and equal distribution of resources.^[26] Professors Paul Greedy and Olivia Ball report that communist parties pressed Western governments to include economic rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.^[191]

ProfessorDavid L. Hoffmann argues that many actions of communist party rule were rooted in the response Western governments gave during World War I and that communist party rule institutionalized them.^[192] While noting "its brutalities and failures", Milne argues that "rapid industrialisation, mass education, job security and huge advances in social and gender equality" are not accounted and the dominant account of communist party rule "gives no sense of how communist regimes renewed themselves after 1956 or why western leaders feared they might overtake the capitalist world well into the 1960s."^[27]

• Criticism of Marxism
• Criticism of socialism
• Authoritarian socialism
• Corruption in Cuba
• Cultural Revolution
• Great Leap Forward
• Holodomor
• Red fascism
• Soviet war crimes
• State socialism
• Victims of Communism Memorial
• Whataboutism

• Applebaum, Anne,Gulag: A History, Broadway Books, 2003, hardcover, 720 pages,ISBN 0767900561
• Applebaum, Anne (foreword) andHollander, Paul (2006) (introduction and editor)From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in Communist States.Intercollegiate Studies Institute.ISBN 1932236783
• Becker, Jasper (1998)Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine. Owl Books.ISBN 0805056688.
• Chang, Jung and Halliday, Jon (2006)Mao: The Unknown Story.Anchor BooksISBN 0679746323
• Anton Ciliga,The Russian enigma, Ink-Links, 1979
• Conquest, Robert (1991)The Great Terror: A Reassessment.Oxford University PressISBN 0195071328.
• Conquest, Robert (1987)The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine.Oxford University Press.ISBN 0195051807.
• Dikötter, Frank (2010).Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–62. Walker & Company.ISBN 0802777686
• Slavenka Drakulic,How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed, W.W. Norton (1992), hardcover,ISBN 0393030768; trade paperback,HarperCollins (1993),ISBN 0060975407 Women of communist Yugoslavia.
• European Parliament resolution of 2 April 2009 onEuropean conscience and totalitarianism
• Gellately, Robert (2007)Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe.Knopf. hardcover,ISBN 1400040051.
• Hamilton-Merritt, Jane (1999)Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942–1992Indiana University Press.ISBN 0253207568.
• Haynes, John Earl &Klehr, Harvey (2003)In Denial: Historians, Communism, & Espionage. Encounter Books.ISBN 1893554724
• Jackson, Karl D. (1992)Cambodia, 1975–1978Princeton University PressISBN 069102541X.
• Johns, Michael (1987), "Seventy Years of Evil: Soviet Crimes from Lenin to Gorbachev",Policy Review,The Heritage Foundation.
• Kakar, M. Hassan (1997)Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979–1982University of California Press.ISBN 0520208935.
• Karlsson, Klas-Göran; Schoenhals, Michael (2008).Crimes against humanity under communist regimes(PDF). Forum for Living History. p. 111.ISBN 978-9197748728. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 24 August 2010.
• Kemp, Simon (2016).Was Communism Doomed?: Human Nature, Psychology and the Communist Economy. Springer.ISBN 978-3-319-32780-8.
• Khlevniuk, Oleg & Kozlov, Vladimir (2004)The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror (Annals of Communism Series)Yale University Press.ISBN 0300092849.
• Melgounov, Sergey Petrovich (1925)The Red Terror in Russia. London & Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd.
• Naimark, Norman M (2010).Stalin's Genocides (Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity).Princeton University Press.ISBN 0691147841
• Natsios, Andrew S. (2002)The Great North Korean Famine. Institute of Peace Press.ISBN 1929223331.
• Nghia M. Vo (2004)The Bamboo Gulag: Political Imprisonment in Communist Vietnam McFarland & CompanyISBN 0786417145.
• Pipes, Richard (2003)Communism: A History.Modern Library ChroniclesISBN 0812968646
• Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (2006)Res. 1481 Need for international condemnation of crimes of totalitarian communist regimes
• Rosefielde, Steven (2009).Red Holocaust.Routledge.ISBN 978-0415777575.
• Rummel, R.J. (1997)Death by Government. Transaction Publishers.ISBN 1560009276.
• Rummel, R.J. (1996)Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917.Transaction PublishersISBN 1560008873.
• Rummel, R.J. & Rummel, Rudolph J. (1999)Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900. Lit VerlagISBN 3825840107.
• Service, Robert (2007)Comrades!: A History of World Communism.Harvard University Press.ISBN 067402530X
• Todorov, Tzvetan & Zaretsky, Robert (1999)Voices from the Gulag: Life and Death in Communist Bulgaria.Pennsylvania State University Press.ISBN 0271019611.
• Totten, Samuel; Jacobs, Steven L. (2002).Pioneers of genocide studies.Transaction Publishers.ISBN 978-0-7658-0151-7.
• Tzouliadis, Tim (2008)The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia. ThePenguin Press, Hardcover,ISBN 1594201684
• Volkogonov, Dmitri Antonovich (Author); Shukman, Harold (Editor, Translator) (1998).Autopsy for an Empire: the Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime.Free Press (Hardcover,ISBN 0684834200); (Paperback,ISBN 0684871122)
• Andrew G. Walder (ed.)Waning of the Communist State: Economic Origins of the Political Decline in China & Hungary (University of California Press, 1995) hardback. (ISBN 0520088514)
• Zheng Yi (1998)Scarlet Memorial: Tales Of Cannibalism In Modern China.Westview Press.ISBN 0813326168

• The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
• Global Museum on Communism
• Museum of Communism
• Foundation for Investigation of Communist Crimes
• Crimes of Soviet Communists
• The Black Book of Communism: Introduction
• Summary of different estimates for total 20th century democide Note that only some of numbers are totals for the Communist states.
• How many did the Communist regimes murder? ByR.J. Rummel

• Anti-communism
• Communist parties
• Communist states
• Marxism–Leninism
• State capitalism

• Webarchive template wayback links
• Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from December 2013
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles needing additional references from January 2025
• All articles needing additional references
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from August 2025
• Articles with unsourced statements from January 2025
• Articles with unsourced statements from July 2021
• All pages needing factual verification
• Wikipedia articles needing factual verification from July 2022
• Articles needing additional references from December 2025
• Articles needing additional references from February 2022
• Articles with unsourced statements from November 2008
• All articles lacking reliable references
• Articles lacking reliable references from February 2022
• All articles with failed verification
• Articles with failed verification from February 2022