This neologism refers to the only scientific (Eichhorn I., 1969) materialist doctrine and explanation of the world, according to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who founded it. It was further developed by Lenin (and also by Stalin until 1956) and other politically and ideologically (temporarily) accepted theoreticians of the workers' movement. It served as the theoretical basis for the struggle of the working class until the global (Marx) or initially national (Lenin) victory under the leadership of revolutionary parties of the working class, which then – so the conviction goes – made it possible to build socialism and subsequently achieve communism. According to its own understanding, Marxism-Leninism included philosophical or historical and dialectical materialism, political economy and the doctrine of scientific communism. The term was used in the Soviet Union from the 1920s onwards to describe the ideological doctrine of the Communist Party (in the Soviet Union, the CPSU/Bolsheviks) and other national revolutionary workers parties or parties of a new type as a programme and ideology (in the sense of an ideological doctrine). It also served to distinguish it from competing workers' parties that differed in their programmes and ideologies. Marxism-Leninism as the ideology and programme of national parties with a claim to leadership in all social matters reduced and condensed the views of Marx, Engels and Lenin into an ideological dogma, while at the same time partially contradicting their works and ignoring or smoothing over opposing views. After the so-called establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat (Diktatur des Proletariats) in the states of the Soviet-led bloc, Marxism-Leninism became the dominant party ideology. It permeated all areas of social life and formed the ideological basis of content in all parts of the GDR education system.