Portal:Communism

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Hammer and sickle nobg.svg THE COMMUNISM PORTAL Hammer and sickle nobg.svg

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Communism is a political ideology that seeks to establish a future without social class or formalized state structure, and with social organization based upon common ownership of the means of production. It can be classified as a branch of the broader socialist movement. Communism also refers to a variety of political movements which claim the establishment of such a social organization as their ultimate goal.

Early forms of human social organization have been described as "primitive communism". However, communism as a political goal generally is a conjectured form of future social organization which has never been implemented. There is a considerable variety of views among self-identified communists, including Maoism, Trotskyism, council communism, Luxemburgism, and various currents of left communism, which are in addition to more widespread varieties. However, various offshoots of the Soviet and Maoist forms of Marxism–Leninism comprise a particular branch of communism that had been the primary driving force for communism in world politics during most of the 20th century.

Selected article

Pin of the flag of the CPSU
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Russian: Коммунистическая партия Советского Союза, Kommunisticheskaya partiya Sovetskogo Soyuza; short: КПСС, KPSS) was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world. It lost its dominance in the wake of the failed August 1991 coup d'état attempt led by authoritarian hardliners.

It emerged from the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin. The party led the 1917 October Revolution that overthrew the Russian Provisional Government and established the world's first socialist state. Given the central role under the Constitution of the Soviet Union, the party controlled all tiers of government in the Soviet Union and tolerated no opposition. Its organization was subdivided into communist parties of the constituent Soviet republics as well as the mass youth organization, Komsomol. The party was also the driving force of the Third International (Comintern).

The party ceased to exist after the coup d'état attempt in 1991 and was succeeded by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in Russia and the communist parties of the now-independent former Soviet republics.


Selected biography

Ardeshir Ovanessian (born 1905, Rasht, d. 1990) was an Iranian communist leader of Armenian origin. After completing a pharmacist apprenticeship (the profession of his father), he became involved in radical politics. He became involved in the radical Cultural Society of Rasht. Ovanessian became a cadre of the Communist Party of Persia in 1923. In 1925, he was sent to study at KUTV. Upon his return in 1926 he organized a pharmacists' trade union. For the Communist Party Ovanessian played a key role in the organizing of the party in Azerbaijan, making frequent visits to the different towns in the region.

Ovanessian was eventually captured by the police, and would spend eleven years in Qasr prison. In prison, Ovanessian played a major role. He and other jailed communist leaders organized cultural and educational activities for other inmates. In jail, Ovanessian studied French language. Once released in 1941, he became a founding member of the Tudeh Party of Iran. He became a member of the Provisional Central Committee of the party. After his release, he published a self-biographical work of his prison ordeals.


Selected quote

If one understands by “family” a compulsory union based on marriage contract, the blessing of the church[disambiguation needed], property rights, and the single passport, then Bolshevism has destroyed this policed family from the roots up.

If one understands by “family” the unbounded domination of parents over children, and absence of legal rights for the wife, then Bolshevism has, unfortunately, not yet completely destroyed this carry over of society’s old barbarism.

If one understands by “family” ideal monogamy, not in the legal but in the actual sense, then the Bolsheviks could not destroy what never was nor is on earth, barring fortunate exceptions.

There is absolutely no foundation for the statement that the Soviet law on marriage has been an incentive to polygamy and polyandry. Statistics of marriage relations, actual ones are not available, and cannot be. But even without columns of figures one can be sure that the Moscow index numbers of adulteries and shipwrecked marriages are not much different from the corresponding data for New York City, London, or Paris—and who knows?—are perhaps even lower.

Against prostitution there has been a strenuous and fairly successful struggle. This proves that the Soviets have no intention of tolerating that unbridled promiscuity which finds its most destructive and poisonous expression in prostitution.

A long and permanent marriage, based on mutual love and cooperation—that is the ideal standard. To this the influences of the school, of literature, and of public opinion in the Soviets tend. Freed from the chains of police and clergy, later also from those of economic necessity, the tie between man and woman will find its own way, determined by physiology, psychology, and care for the welfare of the race. The Soviet regime is still far from the solution of this as of other basic problems, but it has created serious prerequisites for their solution. In any case the problem of marriage has ceased to be a matter of uncritical tradition and the blind force of circumstance; it has been posed as a task of collective reason.

— Leon Trotsky (1879-1940)
Family Relations Under the Soviets , 1932

Selected picture

Hammer and Sickle - Kerala.jpg
A tableau vivant in a Communist part rally in Fort Cochin, Kerala, India.

Photo credit: David Wilmot [1]

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