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National communism is a term describing various forms in which Marxism–Leninism and socialism has been adopted and/or implemented by leaders in different countries using aspects of nationalism or national identity to form a policy independent from communist internationalism. National communism has been used to describe movements and governments that have sought to form a distinctly unique variant of communism based upon distinct national characteristics and circumstances, rather than following policies set by other socialist states, such as the Soviet Union.[1]
In each independent state, empire, or dependency, the relationship between social class and nation had its own particularities. The Ukrainian communists Vasil Shakhrai, Alexander Shumsky, and Mazlakh, and then the Tatar Sultan Galiyev, considered the interests of the Bolshevik Russian state at odds with those of their countries. Communist parties that have attempted to pursue independent foreign and domestic policies that conflicted with the interests of the Soviet Union have been described as examples of national communism; this form of national communism differs from communist parties/movements that embrace nationalist rhetoric. Examples include Josip Broz Tito and his independent direction that led Yugoslavia away from the Soviet Union, Imre Nagy's anti-Soviet democratic socialism, Alexander Dubček's socialism with a human face, and János Kádár's Goulash Communism.[1][2]
Communist parties that have sought to follow their own variant of communism by combining communist/socialist ideals with nationalism have been described as national communist. These include the Socialist Republic of Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu, the Democratic Kampuchea under Pol Pot,[3] and North Korea under Juche.[4][5]
Communism as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels envisioned it was meant to be internationalist, as proletarian internationalism was expected to place class conflict well ahead of nationalism as a priority for the working class. Nationalism was often seen as a tool that the bourgeoisie used to divide and rule the proletariat (bourgeois nationalism) and prevent them from uniting against the ruling class. 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.