Approaching translation as a constitutive feature of Marxism and communism in all its variations including the original thought of Marx and Lenin, this special issue brings together literary critics and cultural anthropologists who reflect on Marxism and communism as epistemologies and ontologies of translation in various philosophical and literary as well as historiographic contexts. It charts the dissemination, domestication, transformation, and militarization of Marxist-Leninist concepts and practices in the concentration camps in occupied Czechoslovakia and the Dutch East Indies, China, North Korea, the Soviet Union, Turkey, and Lebanon.