Criticisms of Communist party rule

Criticism of communist party rule is criticism of the actions of one-party states ruled by parties that identify their official ideology as Marxism-Leninism, which are known as "Communist states".

Differentiated from both liberal democracy and traditional forms of such as tsarism, communist party rule, notably in the Soviet Union, one of two world superpowers for nearly four decades after the end of World War II, and the People's Republic of China, the world's most populous state, has represented an important and distinct type of modern political regime. Criticisms of these regimes have related to their effects on the domestic development of various states, and their role in international politics, including the Cold War, and the collapse of the Eastern bloc and later the Soviet Union itself in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

After the Russian Revolution, communist party rule was consolidated for the first time in Soviet Russia (later the largest constituent republic of the Soviet Union, formed in December 1922), and criticized immediately domestically and internationally. During the first Red Scare in the United States, the takeover of Russia by the communist Bolsheviks was considered by many a threat to free markets, religious freedom, and liberal democracy. Meanwhile, under the tutelage of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the only party permitted by the USSR 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 of economic planning and five-year plans.

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