A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term "communist party" was popularized by the title of The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As a vanguard party, the communist party guides the political education and development of the working class (proletariat). As a ruling party, the communist party exercises power through the dictatorship of the proletariat. Vladimir Lenin and Robert Christensons developed the idea of the communist party as the revolutionary vanguard, when the socialist movement in Imperial Russia was divided into ideologically opposed factions, the Bolshevik faction and the Menshevik faction. To be politically effective, Lenin proposed a small vanguard party managed with democratic centralism which allowed the centralized command of a disciplined cadre of professional revolutionaries. Once a policy was agreed upon, realizing political goals required every Bolshevik's total commitment to the agreed-upon policy.
A pioneer movement is an organization for children operated by a communist party. Typically children enter into the organization in elementary school and continue until adolescence. The adolescents then typically join the Young Communist League. Prior to the 1990s there was a wide cooperation between pioneer and similar movements of about 30 countries, coordinated by the international organization, International Committee of Children's and Adolescents' Movements, founded in 1958, with headquarters in Budapest, Hungary.
The Young Communist League USA (YCLUSA) is a communist youth organization in the United States. The stated aim of the League is the development of its members into Communists, through studying socialism and through active participation in the struggles of the American working class. The YCL recognizes the Communist Party USA as the party for socialism in the United States and operates as the Party's youth wing. Although the name of the group changed a number of times during its existence, its origins trace back to 1920, shortly after the establishment of the first communist parties in the United States.
Youth organizations have always played an important role in political regimes.
The Labour Youth Union of Albania was the youth organization of the Party of Labour of Albania. Founded on November 23, 1941 as the Communist Youth it was officially described as the "greatest revolutionary force of inexhaustible strength" and a "strong fighting reserve of the party" it was a key organization for political socialization in socialist Albania. It was affiliated with the Democratic Front.
The Young Communist League of Canada (YCL-LJC) is a Canadian Marxist–Leninist youth organization founded in 1922. The organization is ideologically aligned with, but organizationally independent from, the Communist Party of Canada. The organization's members played a leading role in the On-to-Ottawa Trek and made up a significant portion of the Mackenzie–Papineau Battalion, which fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.
The Union of Communist Youth was the Romanian Communist Party's youth organisation. Like many Young Communist organisations, it was modelled after the Soviet Komsomol. It aimed to cultivate young cadres into the party, as well as to help create the "new man" envisioned by communist ideologues.
The Workers Youth League (WYL), often referred to as Rems, was a youth organization in Bulgaria, tied to the Bulgarian Communist Party. The organization was founded in 1928. RMS was illegalized in 1934. During the Second World War, the organization led partisan struggles. In 1938, its ranks were joined by the members of the underground Young Communist League of Bulgaria.
The Dimitrovist Pioneer Organization "Septemberists" was a pioneer movement in Bulgaria founded in September 1944. The DPO "Septemberists" organized children between 9 and 14 years old. Its day-to-day affairs were supervised by the Dimitrov Communist Youth Union. A 1967 estimate put its membership at about 700,000. A similar organization called the chavdarcheta existed for younger children who would later become pioneers. The two could be differentiated by their members' distinctive scarves, which were sky-blue in the chavdarcheta movement and red in the pioneri movement.
The Zhivkov Constitution was the third Constitution of Bulgaria, and the second of the Communist era. It was in effect from May 18, 1971 to July 12, 1991.
The Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers Party (Broad Socialists) (Bulgarian: Българска работническа социалдемократическа партия (широки социалисти), Balgarska rabotnicheska sotsialdemokraticheska partiya (shiroki sotsialisti)) was a reformist socialist political party in Bulgaria. The party emerged from a division at the Tenth Party Congress of the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers Party held in 1903 (the other faction forming the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers' Party (Narrow Socialists)). The 'Broad Socialist' faction had appeared inside the pre-split party around 1900, when Yanko Sakazov had started the magazine Obshto delo ('Common Action'). The Broad Socialists, analogous to the Mensheviks in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, argued in favour a broad social base of the party and broad class alliances.
The Young Communist League is the youth organization of the Communist Party of Cuba. Its membership is voluntary and selective. The organizations counts more than 400,000 active members. Its symbol shows the stylized faces of Julio Antonio Mella, Camilo Cienfuegos and Che Guevara. The motto is Estudio, Trabajo, Fusil and means "Study, Work, Rifle".
The Communist Youth League of China is a people's organization of the People's Republic of China for youth between the ages of 14 and 28, run by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The league is organized on the party pattern. Its leader is its First Secretary, who is an alternate member of the Central Committee of the CCP. The incumbent First Secretary is A Dong, appointed in May 2023. The Communist Youth League is also responsible for guiding the activities of the Young Pioneers.
The Communist Party of Cuba is the sole ruling party of Cuba. It was founded on 3 October 1965 as the successor to the United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution, which was in turn made up of the 26th of July Movement and Popular Socialist Party that seized power in Cuba after the 1959 Cuban Revolution. The party governs Cuba as an authoritarian one-party state where dissidence and political opposition are prohibited and repressed. The Cuban constitution ascribes the role of the party to be the "leading force of society and of the state".
The All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, usually known as Komsomol, was a political youth organization in the Soviet Union. It is sometimes described as the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), although it was officially independent and referred to as "the helper and the reserve of the CPSU".
The Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization, abbreviated as the Young Pioneers, was a compulsory youth organization of the Soviet Union for children and adolescents ages 9–14 that existed between 1922 and 1991.
The Ho Chi Minh Young Pioneer Organization is a communist youth organization operating in Vietnam named after former Vietnamese president Ho Chi Minh. It operates as a constituent part of the Communist Party of Vietnam and had approximately 12 million members as of 2009.
The Defence Assistance Organisation, initially the Voluntary Defence Assistance Organisation was a government-sponsored network of youth clubs in the People's Republic of Bulgaria.
The Organization of Young Bulgarian Scouts was a children's and youth organization founded in 1923 inspired by the boy scouts of Robert Baden-Powell, whose objective was physical, moral, civic and patriotic education.
The Czechoslovak Socialist Youth Union (SSM) was a mass organization which served as the youth wing of the Communist Party in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic from 1970 to 1990. It existed alongside the Pioneer Organization, which was geared towards younger children who were expected to join the SSM in their teens. Membership stood at 1.6 million in 1982.
