The first “communist” ideas are often traced back to Plato and his idea of classless society. Later, in the 16th century, Thomas More described in his work an “Utopian” society, based on common ownership. In the 18th century Jean Jacques Rousseau also criticized private property ownership but it wasn’t until the mid 19th century and the consequences of the Industrial Revolution that Engels and Marx established the modern definition of communism.

Still, communism as they saw it had little to do with what indeed manifested. Marx believed that communism would be only successful if built on the foundations of an advanced capitalistic and economic development. Ironically enough, modern communism first developed as a strong political doctrine in Russia, one of the poorest and least developed countries in Europe, with the majority of its population being illiterate farmers, far from the idea of the proletariat. It the theory of socialism and communism, the proletariat is the lowest class in the capitalist society, represented by the figure of the industrial factory worker who is being unfairly exploited by the bourgeoisie and who seeks to destroy the latter and set the foundations of a society of common ownership, classless relationships and equal opportunities for all. Both classes were absent in Russia.

Regardless of this, the October Revolution in 1917 marked the beginning of the rise of communism in Europe. The Bolshevik Party was the first communist (Marxist) party ever to form a government. The opposition pleaded that any reforms should be postponed until a certain development of capitalism is achieved however the ruling party was quick to establish a single-party regime, to nationalize property and impose strict government control on production, transport and all basic economic and social processes in the country. In the meanwhile they were able to win the hearts of the people with slogans touching their needs and believes, like “peace, bread, and land” and founded the so called Comintern (Communist International) – an international communist organization, founded in 1919 by representatives of 34 communist parties around the world.

The Russian communists leader, Vladimir Lenin, did understand the importance of a stable economics and the impact the so called “war communism” had on economical development. In 1921 he introduced the so called New Economic Policy which allowed limited private initiative. The first Five Year Plan, imposed by his successor Joseph Stalin however put the end of it.

In years of the Cold War communism quickly spread in Eastern Europe and other poorly developed countries such as Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam etc., mainly due to the outcome of World War 2 and Russia’s (then The Soviet Union) occupation of many Eastern European and East-Asian countries. Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia formed the so called Eastern/Communist Bloc, or the space “behind the Iron Curtain” in Europe. Albania and Yugoslavia refused to be under the dictatorship of the Soviet Union and were established as separate from the Comintern communist countries. An estimate one third of the world’s population lived in countries under a communist regime in the 80s.

The names of the communist leaders in all communist countries – Stalin, Ceausescu, Tito - became symbols of an era in European history that lasted for almost 50 years and drew a distinct division line between Eastern and Western Europe. It even split a city in two; and even if The Wall is long gone, the gap between the East and the West is still a painful reminder of the days of communism.