National communism

National communism refers to the various forms in which communism has been adopted and/or implemented by leaders in different countries. In each independent state, empire, or dependency, the relationship between class and nation had its own particularities. The Russian Bolsheviks might be considered the first "national communists" insofar as Russian Social Democracy was so markedly different from the European Social Democratic parties. The Ukrainian communists Shakhrai and Mazlakh and then Muslim Sultan Galiyev considered the interests of the Bolshevik Russian state at odds with those of their countries. This was followed after 1945 by the Yugoslav communist leader Josip Broz Tito when he attempted to pursue an independent foreign policy.

Communism as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels envisioned it was meant to be very internationalist, as proletarian internationalism was expected to place class conflict well ahead of nationalism as a priority for the working class. Nationalism was seen as a tool that the bourgeoisie used to divide and rule the proletariat (bourgeois nationalism). Whereas the influence of international communism was very strong from the late 19th century through the 1920s, the decades after that, beginning with Socialism in One Country and progressing into the Cold War and the Non-Aligned Movement, made national communism a larger political reality.

During the decade of the 1840s the word "communist" came into general use to describe those who hailed the left wing of the Jacobin Club of the French Revolution as their ideological forefathers. In 1847, the Communist League was founded in London. The League asked Karl Marx and Frederick Engels to draft the Communist Manifesto, which was adopted by the league and published in 1848. The Communist Manifesto included a number of views of the role of the nation in the implementation of the manifesto. The Preamble notes that the Manifesto arose from Europeans from various nations coming together in London to publish their shared views, aims and tendencies. Then chapter one discusses how the rise of the bourgeoisie has led to globalisation and the place of national issues:

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