History
Communism's history runs on two tracks that this timeline keeps visible: the movement (parties, internationals, schisms) and state power (what ruling communist parties actually did with it). The distance between the two tracks is the subject of the record page; the variants the schisms produced are mapped on the spectrum.
Theory and First International, 1848-1895
Dates and events below are researched against primary and reference sources and are not yet individually matched to quoted passages.[TODO-VERIFY]
- 1848 Marx and Engels publish the Communist Manifesto amid a wave of European revolutions.
- 1864 The International Workingmen's Association (First International) founded in London.
- 1871 The Paris Commune rules Paris for two months; Marx claims it as the first workers' government, and its suppression becomes the movement's founding martyrdom.
- 1872-76 The First International splits between Marxists and anarchists (Bakunin), the first of the movement's many schisms.
- 1883, 1895 Marx dies, then Engels; the Second International (1889) carries the movement into mass electoral politics.
Revolution and the Comintern, 1917-1943
Dates and events below are researched against primary and reference sources and are not yet individually matched to quoted passages.[TODO-VERIFY]
- 1917 The October Revolution: Lenin's Bolsheviks seize power in Russia. The Russian SFSR is the first state ruled by a communist party.
- 1918-21 Civil war, war communism, and the Red Terror; the Cheka becomes the template secret police.
- 1919 The Communist International (Comintern) founded in Moscow to direct world revolution; communist parties split from socialist parties worldwide.
- 1922 The USSR is formally established.
- 1924-29 Lenin dies; Stalin consolidates power and adopts "socialism in one country."
- 1928-38 Five-year plans, forced collectivization from 1929-30, the famine of 1932-33 including the Holodomor, and the Great Purge.
- 1939 The Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact; Germany breaks it by invading in 1941.
- 1943 Stalin dissolves the Comintern as a wartime concession to the Allies.
The bloc and the Cold War, 1945-1989
Dates and events below are researched against primary and reference sources and are not yet individually matched to quoted passages.[TODO-VERIFY]
- 1945-49 Soviet-aligned governments consolidate across Eastern Europe; Yugoslavia breaks with Moscow in 1948.
- 1949 The Chinese Communist Party wins the civil war; the People's Republic of China is founded.
- 1950-53 The Korean War ends in stalemate and a divided peninsula.
- 1956 Khrushchev's Secret Speech denounces Stalin; the Hungarian uprising is crushed the same year.
- 1958-62 China's Great Leap Forward produces the deadliest famine of the twentieth century.
- 1959-75 Revolutions and wars extend communist rule to Cuba (1959), and after long wars to Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia (1975); the Sino-Soviet split divides the movement from about 1960.
- 1968 The Prague Spring is crushed by Warsaw Pact tanks; "socialism with a human face" is answered with the Brezhnev Doctrine.
- 1975-79 The Khmer Rouge rule Democratic Kampuchea; roughly a fifth to a quarter of the population dies. Marxist-Leninist states also multiply across Africa and in Afghanistan (1978).
Collapse and survivors, 1989-present
Dates and events below are researched against primary and reference sources and are not yet individually matched to quoted passages.[TODO-VERIFY]
- 1978 Deng Xiaoping begins reform and opening; China keeps the Leninist party-state and marketizes the economy.
- 1989 The Berlin Wall falls; communist rule ends across Eastern Europe within months, mostly without violence, except in Romania.
- 1991 The USSR dissolves in December. The Comintern-descended world movement effectively ends.
- 1986-92 Vietnam's Doi Moi reforms (from 1986) and the fall of communist governments in Mongolia, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and elsewhere reshape the survivors.
- 2026 Four ruling Marxist-Leninist party-states remain (China, Vietnam, Laos, and Cuba), plus contested North Korea; communist parties also periodically win elections within democracies. See the countries page.