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Half a year ago I found a list of existing communist subdivisions in different countries, but now I cannot find it anymore. That list consisted of 7-10 entries, and definitely listed Kerala state in India and whatever regime the Zapatistas installed in the Mexican state of Chiapas after the civil war. It even included some county in the USA.

Now I can find only a list of countries containing Laos, Vietnam and North Korea, which I'm not interested in. Also, I cannot find anything Chiapas and Kerala have in common. I'm interested in ones that exist now (at least a couple of years ago).

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  • Well, there was Limerick Soviet...
    – alamar
    Jul 6, 2022 at 7:36
  • @alamar it existed in 1919 for two weeks, i ask about ones that exist now (at least a couple of years ago, not a hundred)
    – Ivan Borsuk
    Jul 6, 2022 at 7:46
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    Perhaps this could help: List of communist parties
    – Roger V.
    Jul 6, 2022 at 8:19
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    Can't imagine this is well known if it "included some county in the USA". I mean I can imagine some right-wing pundits declare AOC a commie etc., but I don't quite see that in a more serious/academic venue.
    – Fizz
    Jul 6, 2022 at 8:57
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    @StuartF your comment raises the question of what qualifies as a "communist subdivision." Is the party affiliation of elected officials sufficient, or must there be some element of communism written into the municipal charter, the state constitution, or similar? Or would statutes or ordinances suffice? Regardless, the list sought by this question must have had some criteria, so if we find the list we can perhaps learn what those criteria were.
    – phoog
    Jul 6, 2022 at 11:37

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This would, of course, require one to define Communist for the purposes of this question. There is a spectrum on the political left from Communists over Socialists to Social Democrats, with different names in different countries for similar policies and similar names for different policies.

For instance, the German state of Thuringia is ruled by a coalition led by Bodo Ramelow, a member of Die Linke.

  • Die Linke was created by the fusion of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and the WASG.
  • The PDS is the successor of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED).
  • The SED was the ruling party of the GDR under Communist rule and itself the result of a fusion of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the eastern Branches of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) -- a merger which happened under direct orders of the Soviet occupation administration. I think it is generally accepted that the SED was Communist in the sense of this question.
  • The SPD was re-established in eastern Germany after the fall of the Communist rule, so it could be argued with some justification that those who remained in the SED/PDS/Linke after Reunification should be labeled "Communist." But what about today, a generation later? The PDS has the Communist Platform as a subgroup, but does that make the entire party Communist?

I would argue that Ramelow is not properly characterized as a Communist, but from a sufficiently non-Communist viewpoint the distinctions among the left might blurred.

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