Proletarian in the context of The Fourth Estate (painting)

Vanguardism, a core concept of Leninism, is the idea that a revolutionary vanguard party, composed of the most conscious and disciplined workers, must lead the proletariat in overthrowing capitalism and establishing socialism, ultimately progressing to communism.

The vanguard works to engage the working class in revolutionary politics and to strengthen proletarian political power against the bourgeoisie.

War communism (Russian: Военный коммунизм, romanized: Vojenný kommunizm), also called military communism, was the economic and political system that existed in Soviet Russia during the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1921. War communism began in June 1918, enforced by the Supreme Economic Council. It ended on 21 March 1921, with the beginning of the New Economic Policy, which lasted until 1928. The system has often been described as simple authoritarian control by the ruling and military castes to maintain power and control in the Soviet regions, rather than any coherent political ideology. The Soviet propaganda justified it by claiming that the Bolsheviks adopted this policy with the goal of keeping towns (the proletarian power-base) and the Red Army stocked with food and weapons since circumstances dictated new economic measures.

The deadly Russian famine of 1921–22 was in part triggered by Vladimir Lenin's war communism policies, especially food requisitioning. However, the famine was preceded by bad harvests, harsh winter, drought especially in the Volga Valley which was exacerbated by a range of factors including the war, the presence of the White Army and the methods of war communism. The outbreaks of diseases such as cholera and typhus were also contributing factors to the famine casualties.

In the political terminology of the former Soviet Union, the state of socialist orientation (Russian: Страны социалистической ориентации, romanized: Strany sotsialisticheskoy oriyentatsii, lit. 'countries of socialist orientation'), also called socialist-leaning state and socialist-oriented state, were the post-colonial Third World countries which the Soviet Union recognized as adhering to the ideas of socialism in the Marxist–Leninist understanding. As a result, these countries received significant economic and military support. In Soviet press, these states were also called "countries on the path of the construction of socialism" (Russian: страны, идущие по пути строительства социализма, romanized: strany, idushchiye po puti stroitel'stva sotsializma) and "countries on the path of the socialist development" (Russian: страны, стоящие на пути социалиcтического развития, romanized: strany, stoyashchiye na puti sotsialicticheskogo razvitiya). All these terms meant to draw a distinction from the true socialist states (in Marxist–Leninist understanding).

The use of the term was partly a result of a reassessment of national liberation movements in the Third World following World War II, widespread decolonization and the emergence of the Non-Aligned Movement as well as Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the de-Stalinization of Soviet Marxism. The discussion of anti-colonial struggle at the 2nd World Congress of the Comintern in 1920 had been formulated in terms of a debate between those for an alliance with the anti-imperialist national bourgeoisie (initially advocated by Vladimir Lenin) and those for a pure class line of socialist, anti-feudal as well as anti-imperialist struggle (such as M. N. Roy). The revolutions of the post-war decolonization era (excepting those led by explicitly proletarian forces such as the Vietnamese Revolution), e.g. the rise of Nasserism, were initially seen by many communists as a new form of bourgeois nationalism and there were often sharp conflicts between communists and nationalists. However, the adoption of leftist economic programs (such as nationalization and/or land reform) by many of these movements and governments, as well as the international alliances between the revolutionary nationalists and the Soviet Union, obliged communists to reassess their nature. These movements were now seen as neither classical bourgeois nationalists nor socialist per se, but rather offering the possibility of "non-capitalist development" as a path of "transition to socialism". At various times, these states included Algeria, Angola, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Libya, Mozambique, South Yemen and many others.

The hammer and sickle (Unicode: U+262D ☭ HAMMER AND SICKLE) is a socialist and communist symbol representing proletarian solidarity between industrial and agricultural workers. It was first adopted during the Russian Revolution at the end of World War I, the hammer representing workers and the sickle representing the peasants.

After World War I (from which Russia withdrew in 1917) and the Russian Civil War, the hammer and sickle became more widely used as a symbol for labor within the Soviet Union (USSR) and for international proletarian unity. It was taken up by many communist movements around the world, some with local variations. The hammer and sickle remains commonplace in Communist states, such as China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam, but also some former Soviet republics following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, such as Belarus and Russia. Some countries have imposed bans on communist symbols, where the display of the hammer and sickle is prohibited.

Socialist patriotism is an ideology and a form of patriotism promoted by Marxist–Leninist movements. Socialist patriotism promotes people living within Marxist–Leninist countries to adopt a "boundless love for the socialist homeland, a commitment to the revolutionary transformation of society [and] the cause of communism". Marxist–Leninists claim that socialist patriotism is not connected with nationalism, as Marxists and Marxist–Leninists denounce nationalism as a bourgeois ideology developed under capitalism that sets workers against each other. Socialist patriotism is commonly advocated directly alongside proletarian internationalism, with communist parties regarding the two concepts as compatible with each other. The concept has been attributed by Soviet writers to Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.

Lenin separated patriotism into what he defined as proletarian, socialist patriotism from bourgeois nationalism. Lenin promoted the right of all nations to self-determination and the right to unity of all workers within nations; however, he also condemned chauvinism and claimed there were both justified and unjustified feelings of national pride. Lenin believed that nations subjected to imperial rule had the right to seek national liberation from imperial rule.