Noun
Communist (plural Communists)
- A member of a formally constituted Communist Party.
1941, George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn, Pt. III:...all through the between-war years no Socialist programme that was both revolutionary and workable ever appeared; basically, no doubt, because no one genuinely wanted any major change to happen... The Communists wanted to go on and on, suffering a comfortable martyrdom, meeting with endless defeats and afterwards putting the blame on other people.
- A proponent of the kind of communism formally espoused by such a party, typically either Marxism, or more commonly, Leninism or Maoism.
- (inexact) Any citizen of a country controlled by such a party, particularly Red Chinese and (historical) Soviets.
1929, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Disintegration Machine:I caught a glimpse of them through the half-opened door, and had a passing impression of prosperous and intelligent men, with astrakhan collars to their coats, glistening top-hats, and every appearance of that bourgeois well-being which the successful Communist so readily assumes.
- (inexact, sometimes proscribed) Alternative letter-case form of communist, a proponent of the general philosophy of communism.
Synonyms
- (party member): Red, cadre, party member, apparatchik (general); Chicom (PRC)
- (philosophical proponent): Red, Marxist (general); Bolshevik, Leninist, Marxist-Leninist, Stalinist, Stalinite (USSR); Maoist, Chicom (PRC); Titoist (Yugoslavia); Hoxhaist (Albania); Sankarist (Burkina Faso)
- (citizen of a communist country): Red (general); Soviet (USSR); Red Chinese, Chicom (PRC)