"If the rulers really wanted to communicate with their subjects, they did not use the grotesque doctrine of 'Marxism-Leninism'; they appealed, rather, to nationalist sentiments"

 

"Marxism was a philosophical or semi-philosophical doctrine and a political ideology which was used by the communist state as the main source of legitimacy and the obligatory faith. This ideology was indispensable, regardless of whether people believed in it. In the last period of communist rule it hardly existed as a living faith; the distance between it and reality was so great, and hopes for the joyful future of the communist paradise were fading so rapidly, that both the ruling class (i.e., the party apparatus ) and the ruled were aware of the its emptiness. But it remained officially binding, precisely because it was the main instrument of the the legitimacy of the system of power. If the rulers really wanted to communicate with their subjects, they did not use the grotesque doctrine of 'Marxism-Leninism'; they appealed, rather, to nationalist sentiments or, in the case of the Soviet Union, to imperial glory Eventually the ideology fell apart, together with the empire; its collapse was one of the reasons that the communist system of power died out in Europe."

~ Leszek Kolakowski, from the 2004 Preface to his 1976/8 book Main Currents of Marxism