The KPD, also known as KPD-Ost or KPD (Rote Fahne), was founded in 1990 in the GDR, after the Fall of the Berlin Wall but before the eventual German reunification by members of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) who opposed the reforms from the party's new leadership and wanted to stay loyal to Marxism-Leninism.

Following Erich Honecker's expulsion from SED, KPD offered him and his wife Margot their party membership, which they gladly accepted.

After a week of protests from the KPD and other leftwing organizations, Kutschick reconsidered and left the AfD caucus.

[4][5] The party upholds a strict anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninist line, and states that it "consistently fights revisionism, opportunism and its main form, anti-Stalinism.

[7] On the subject of the first leader of the state, Kim Il-sung, it claims that he was "a great politician who acquired himself big merits in the modern political history and left behind definite traces".