National Bolshevism

National Bolshevism, whose supporters are known as National Bolsheviks and colloquially as Nazbols, is a syncretic political movement committed to combining ultranationalism and Bolshevik communism. The movement first emerged in Germany following World War I, where figures such as Ernst Niekisch and Karl Otto Paetel advocated for a synthesis of radical nationalism and Soviet socialism to oppose Western liberalism and the Treaty of Versailles. This German current, often associated with the Weimar Republic's Conservative Revolution, sought a revolutionary "third way" that rejected capitalism in favour of a state-driven, nationalist collective.

In Russia, National Bolshevism appeared during the Civil War through the Smenovekhovtsy movement, which viewed the Soviet state as the primary vehicle for restoring Russian national power. While many early proponents were later purged under Joseph Stalin, the ideology influenced the revival of state nationalism in the 1930s. In the post-Soviet period, the movement was revitalised by the National Bolshevik Party, founded by Eduard Limonov and Aleksandr Dugin, which combined radical anti-establishment politics with Eurasianism. Today, the term is broadly used to describe "red-brown" alliances and fringe movements that advocate for an anti-globalist, nationalist form of socialism.