On October 10 North Korea lavishly celebrates what is officially described as “the day when the North Korean Communist Party was founded by the Great Leader Kim Il Sung.” Well, as historians know – and curiously, North Korean official media itself used to admit – in this sentence only the verb “to found” is correct, while everything else, including the date, is wrong. However, let’s forget about it for the time being and talk about another issue: what is the Communist (or, broader speaking, ruling Leninist) Party? What does it do? Where did it come from?

When in 1848 two