page_title: List of communist ideologies
section_title: Stalinism
hierarchical_section_title: List of communist ideologies / Marxist communism / Stalinism
caption_attribution_description: Joseph Stalin, Secretary-general of the Communist party of Soviet Russia
context_page_description: Communist ideologies notable enough in the history of communism include philosophical, social, political and economic ideologies and movements whose ultimate goal is the establishment of a communist society, a socioeconomic order structured upon the ideas of common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money and the state.
  Self-identified communists hold a variety of views, including libertarian communism, Marxist communism and pre- or non-Marxist, religious communism. While it originates from the works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Marxist communism has developed into many different branches and schools of thought, with the result that there is now no single definitive Marxist theory.
  Different communist schools of thought place a greater emphasis on certain aspects of classical Marxism while rejecting or modifying other aspects. Many communist schools of thought have sought to combine Marxian concepts and non-Marxian concepts which has then led to contradictory conclusions.
context_section_description: Stalinism is the means of governing and related policies implemented from 1927 to 1953 by Stalin. Stalinist policies and ideas that were developed in the Soviet Union included rapid industrialization, the theory of socialism in one country, collectivization of agriculture and subordination of the interests of foreign communist parties to those of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), deemed by Stalinism to be the leading vanguard party of communist revolution at the time.
  As a political term, it has a variety of uses, but most commonly it is used as a pejorative shorthand for Marxism–Leninism by a variety of competing political tendencies such as capitalism and Trotskyism. Although Stalin himself repudiated any qualitatively original contribution to Marxism, the communist movement usually credits him with systematizing and expanding the ideas of Lenin into the ideology of Marxism–Leninism as a distinct body of work. In this sense, Stalinism can be thought of as being roughly equivalent to Marxism–Leninism, although this is not universally agreed upon. At other times, the term is used as a general umbrella term—again pejoratively—to describe a wide variety of political systems and governments, including the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc and Warsaw Pact countries of Europe, Mongolia, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Ethiopia and others. In this sense, it can be seen as being roughly equivalent to actually existing socialism, although sometimes it is used to describe totalitarian governments that are not socialist.
  At any rate, some of the contributions to communist theory that Stalin is particularly known for are the following:
  The theoretical work concerning nationalities as seen in Marxism and the National Question.
  The notion of socialism in one country.
  Marxist theory of linguistics.
  The theory of aggravation of class struggle under socialism, a theoretical base supporting the repression of political opponents as necessary.
caption: Joseph Stalin
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