The historiography of communist parties has had two main trajectories. The first, tied to Cold War anti-communism, has focused on the influence of the Soviet Union on the development of national parties. In essence, its central argument was that regardless of national, ethnic, or regional particularities, what distinguished the international communist movement from other left-wing political movements was that communist parties fundamentally served the interests of the Soviet Union's state policy. Bob Darke succinctly summed up this perspective in 1952, writing: ‘[t]here are not English communists, Czech communists, Russian communists. There are only communists’.

As the Western Cold War anti-communist consensus shattered in the upsurges of the 1960s and 1970s, historians – many of whom were themselves activists in the social movements of that era – introduced a different trajectory. This trajectory has emphasised that communists and their parties developed strategies, projects, and campaigns more expressive of their position as ‘revolutionaries’ in their own countries, whilst also looking to the Soviet Union for inspiration, guidance, and political and financial support. This was especially true as the model of revolutionary insurrectionism of the international movement's early years was replaced by a United Front framework in response to the rise of fascism in the 1930s. This framework, especially in Western capitalist countries, largely remained during the post-Second World War years of capitalist stabilisation. Especially after 1956, communist activity came to reflect the issues, concerns, and social life of the societies in which communists lived.