Armies usually have ranks. Colonels, lieutenants, and sergeants are generally perceived as a natural part of a military: such as, for example, divisions or squads.

Yet in the communist world it was not always so.

Soviet Russia and its successor state, the Soviet Union, did not have military ranks until 1935. Communist China did not have ranks before 1955 and between 1965 and 1988. And Albania, following the Chinese example, abolished ranks in the 1960s and only reinstated them in the 1990s.

North Korea did not introduce ranks for officers until the final days of 1952, a result of the country’s