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Formation of the socialist camp. Eastern European socialism as a social model

Formation of the socialist camp. Eastern European socialism as a social model

29.09.2019

Strengthening the shaken positions of the Soviet Union in the socialist camp and among the communist parties of the third world countries was the first foreign policy concern of Khrushchev's successors. In this direction, they acted very cautiously (at least until the Czechoslovak crisis), mainly by trial and error, but still achieving tangible results.

The new leaders began with a peace-loving gesture towards Beijing, ending the polemic and postponing the conference of the Communist Parties that Khrushchev planned to convene in December 1964. Conciliatory sentiments, which allowed for the possibility of some concessions, also prevailed in relation to Romania, which defended its economic choice and forms of its participation. in CMEA. The strengthening of Soviet positions also took place among the communist parties of Latin America, which gathered in December 1964 for a conference in Havana. The USSR approved the results of the conference and supported the armed struggle in many countries of Latin America, thereby demonstrating the firm determination of the new leadership of the Soviet Union not to cede areas of military operations to Chinese influence.

This position contributed to rapprochement with Cuba and worsened relations with China, which, after the “story” with Soviet missiles in Cuba, strengthened its position in the third world. The USSR further provided great economic and military assistance to North Korea and North Vietnam, which were rather "clients" of China. Thanks to this assistance, both countries took a position of strict neutrality in relation to the Sino-Soviet conflict.

The compromise that the Soviet Union made with F. Castro on the issue of armed struggle in Latin America, as well as assistance to Hanoi at the time of the intensification of American intervention in Vietnam, indicated that the USSR preferred to establish relations with the socialist camp - even to the detriment of its relations with the United States.

The decisions taken at the 23rd Congress of the CPSU in March 1966 confirmed the trend towards a tougher foreign policy in the post-Khrushchev period. Peaceful coexistence was no longer seen as "the general line of the foreign policy of the Soviet Union." This idea, of course, continued to be present in relations between East and West, but in all other cases, "the competition between the two camps was as active as ever." If peaceful coexistence remained the goal of Soviet policy, it nevertheless ceased to be a grandiose design for resolving the various aspects of the evolution of the international system. The intensification of US military intervention in Vietnam, which proved to the Soviet Union that it could not deter the United States from "exporting counter-revolution", was directly related to the Soviet leadership's reassessment of the idea of "peaceful coexistence." In this context, the strengthening of the socialist camp received an undeniable priority.

Despite the undoubted successes of the Soviet leaders in their desire to regain full control over the socialist camp, they had to overcome certain difficulties, especially in relations with the Cubans, the Chinese and, soon, with the Czechs and Slovaks. At the 23rd Congress of the CPSU, the Cuban delegate made a direct reproach to the Soviet Union, which, in his opinion, did not "take the necessary risk in its relations with Vietnam." The radicalism of the Cuban opposition could push other Latin American communist parties in the same direction, especially in the conditions when Che Guevara called for "creating two, three, many Vietnams in order to deprive the United States of their power."

It should be noted that the Soviet government acted cautiously in the Vietnamese conflict. It refrained, for example, from providing Hanoi with certain types of weapons that could immediately sharply aggravate the conflict (non-nuclear surface-to-sea missiles that could hit the capital ships of the US 7th Fleet, which bombed North Vietnam). China, although it did not accept the Soviet proposal in 1965 to provide joint military and economic assistance to Hanoi, could not resist stigmatizing "Soviet cowardice" in the face of American aggression. In 1965, he demanded that his allies expose the position of the Soviet Union. However, the "cultural revolution" that began in China in 1966 almost completely excluded him from international life, to the deep relief of the Soviet Union. By this time, China had ceased to classify countries such as Cuba, North Korea, and North Vietnam as "socialist." The military coup in Indonesia in the autumn of 1965 decapitated the powerful Communist Party of this country, the largest outside the socialist camp, and deprived China of its main ally both in its Asian policy and in the communist movement (in the polemic between China and the Soviet Union, the Indonesian communists stood on the side of China ).

In Eastern Europe, the Soviet leadership managed to stabilize the situation and eliminate the consequences of the events of 1956. An unprecedented example of a flexible restoration of order was the "kadarization" in Hungary: political life, of course, continued to remain under the absolute control of the party, but some freedom was allowed in the cultural sphere, and most importantly , a prudent economic policy provided Hungary with exceptional living conditions for communist Eastern Europe. The situation in Hungary contrasted strongly with the situation in Czechoslovakia, in the pre-war period the most developed country in Central Europe. The harsh political regime, economic disruptions, especially difficult to endure because the country knew better times, gave rise to a spirit of resistance that was no longer limited to intellectual circles. , penetrating into the party itself. In June 1967, on the initiative of communist writers, the Congress of Writers openly opposed the leadership of the party. By autumn, after massive student demonstrations and strikes, opposition to the authorities intensified even more. In January 1968, Novotny was forced to cede leadership of the party to Dubcek. From that moment on, events began to take on an increasingly rapid character. To gain confidence, the new party leadership decided to immediately implement a series of reforms. In an atmosphere of freedom and the abolition of all censorship, political activity developed; The HRC agreed to alternative elections of its leaders; small parties within the Popular Front were able to regain their former independence and began to defend special points of view; the question even arose of the possibility of the existence of a truly opposition party of a socialist persuasion that would compete with the communist one. In economic terms, a reform was prepared that provided for, within the framework of planning, not so much directive as initiative, the independence of enterprises and the market conditions for their management. The independence of enterprises allowed the workers to take a number of steps towards the transition to self-government.

The changes that took place in the leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and at first favorably received in Moscow, seemed to lead, in the conditions of a very rapid and, apparently, uncontrolled evolution of the party, to a real political crisis of the Soviet system in Czechoslovakia. This crisis was characterized by a transition, on the one hand, from economic to political reforms and, on the other hand, from the opposition movement of the intelligentsia and workers to a crisis within the party itself. The example could become contagious, and the leaders of the GDR and Poland had already shown a certain persistence at the conferences of the communist parties of Eastern Europe in Dresden (March 1968), then in Warsaw (July 1968, in the absence of Czechoslovakia, which, after being sharply attacked in Dresden, refused to take part in this conference).

The meeting of Brezhnev and Dubcek in Chern and the meeting of the "six" on August 3 in Bratislava led only to external reconciliation, since the Czechoslovak communists decided not to abandon the reforms they had begun. Finally, after quite a long hesitation and under pressure from the leadership of the GDR, the Soviet side decided to start an intervention - "at the request of the Czechoslovak comrades." On the night of August 20-21, 1968, the troops of five Warsaw Pact countries entered Czechoslovakia. The attitude of the country's population to this action convinced the Soviet leadership of the need for a "transitional period": on August 26, an agreement was adopted in Moscow on "normalizing the situation", and on October 16, an agreement was concluded in Prague on the "temporary presence of Warsaw Pact troops" in Czechoslovakia. However, the ongoing demonstrations of protest against the occupation led the Soviet leadership to the decision to remove Dubcek and his entourage from the leadership of the country and put G. Husak at the head of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (April 17, 1969). Having carried out a wide purge of "hostile" elements in the country, Husak signed on May 6, 1970 a new treaty of alliance with the USSR and forced the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia to approve the Soviet intervention.

It seems that this action of the USSR pursued two goals: the first was dictated by strategic considerations of foreign policy; the second, perhaps more significant, was the internal situation in Czechoslovakia and the evolution of its communist party.

Together with Poland and the GDR, Czechoslovakia formed what was called the Iron Triangle of the Warsaw Pact. Czechoslovakia, covering the countries of the Treaty from the southern flank, was the main bridgehead of the USSR. Soviet leaders and their allies could not help but be alarmed by some statements by the top leaders of Czechoslovakia (General Przlik, for example), demanding a revision of the provisions of the Warsaw Pact in order to reduce the leading role of the Soviet Union in favor of the Eastern European countries. On the other hand, in the atmosphere of the "Prague Spring" the usual wariness of the Czechoslovak leadership towards the FRG was greatly weakened, the new leadership intended to normalize its relations with this country, which, for its part, seemed ready to provide Czechoslovakia with a solid loan. This did not suit the GDR, the most hostile to the "Prague Spring" Eastern European state. Finally, the establishment of special relations between Yugoslavia, Romania and Czechoslovakia (shortly before the Soviet intervention, on August 9, Tito, and on August 20, Ceausescu received a triumphant reception in Prague) could not help but worry Moscow, which feared the restoration of a new "small Entente" that united these three countries during the period between the wars. The communist “Little Entente” could only be united by the desire to weaken the hegemony of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe.

The evolution of the Czechoslovak Communist Party worried the Soviet leaders no less, and perhaps even more, than geopolitical problems. The abolition of censorship, as well as the process of democratization of the party, made them fear the "social democratization" of the CPC. At the beginning of September 1968, a party congress was already scheduled, at which changes were to be made to the charter and to the formulation of the principles of democratic centralism. It was precisely in order to prevent the HRC from taking a decisive step in this direction that the military intervention was undertaken on August 21. (Even in mid-July, after the Warsaw meeting of the five Communist Parties, its participants addressed the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia with a threatening letter, in which they asserted: “Either you have lost control of the situation, or you do not want to do anything to control it.”)

Indeed, unlike the events of 1956 and 1968, the military intervention was prompted more by a premonition of danger than by concrete circumstances. The deeply conservative Soviet elite could not let the situation get out of their control.

The “normalization” of the situation in Czechoslovakia hastened the revolution that began in the late 1950s. the process of integration, both military and economic, of Eastern Europe and the USSR. In addition to the Warsaw Pact and the CMEA, the Soviet Union initiated the creation of about 30 interstate institutions designed to coordinate the work of industry and transport, the distribution of energy, chemical production and the production of weapons. These institutions were characterized by a tendency to rapidly expand the scope of their activities and, as a result, the strengthening of the control of the Soviet Union over the economic life of the “fraternal states”. This is how the principle of “limited sovereignty” or the so-called “Brezhnev doctrine” was actually implemented. This process, however, caused resistance, and the most stubborn was provided by Romania, which prevented the Soviet Union in 1974 from establishing even closer coordination of the military command of the Warsaw Pact countries .

Poland was destined to punch the most serious breach in the seemingly closed system of Eastern European regimes. The sharp increase in prices in 1970 caused mass unrest among the workers of its Baltic ports. Gomulka was forced to cede the leadership of the party and the country to Gierek. Over the next ten years, the Polish authorities pursued an economic policy based on extensive imports, which avoided the immediate implementation of structural reforms, but further increased the country's already exceptionally large external debt. The result was the need to raise food prices, which in turn caused a new wave of strikes, this time even more numerous, powerful and consistent, which reached their climax in the summer of 1980 in Gdansk. The government was faced with the necessity of recognizing the independent Solidarity trade union, whose network of organizations covered the entire country within a few weeks. The political movement in Poland was not beholden to the party, and this was its main difference from Budapest or Prague. After the repressions in Prague and the failure to fulfill the second promise of the Terek in 1970 to soften the regime, the Poles no longer had any illusions about reforms from above, and the Polish movement developed completely independently, developing its own organizational forms. Without claiming to establish any forms of self-government of enterprises, Solidarity nevertheless played the role of a counterbalance to official power and, relying on the basic requirements of Polish society, questioned many aspects of the activities of a single party-state body. Given these completely new circumstances, it was only with great difficulty that the Soviet leadership could intervene directly in Polish affairs without the risk of bloodshed. Therefore, the "normalization" of the situation in the country was entrusted to the Pole, General Jaruzelski, and this was the main difference from the events of 1968. ) "normalization" was blacklisted by the international community from the deeds committed by the Soviet Union. The result of this was the continuous degradation of the image of the Soviet Union, whose actions were increasingly associated with the violation of human rights both within the country and in neighboring countries. By an unexpected coincidence, the struggle of a handful of Soviet dissidents from the intelligentsia, about which the vast majority of the population of the USSR knew nothing, coincided with the struggle of the workers of Gdansk.

Similar information.

All-round support of the Eastern European countries of people's democracy, as well as China, North Korea, Mongolia and Vietnam, and then Cuba, remained the most important direction of the foreign policy of the USSR in the post-Stalin period. New in relations with the socialist countries was de-Stalinization - the exposure of the cult of personality, the rejection of its theory and practice. An appeal was made from Moscow to the leaders of these countries to carry out the democratization of their domestic and foreign policies along the lines of the USSR. This call sparked the growth of a democratic movement in opposition to the Stalinist model of socialism. In the summer of 1956, a general strike broke out in Poznań, Poland, followed by street riots. The speech was suppressed by army units. Only thanks to the flexible policy of the General Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party, W. Gomulka, who came to power again, was it possible to prevent a large-scale military "appeasement" of Poland with the help of Soviet troops.

However, soon under the influence of the Polish events, the situation in Hungary sharply worsened. In September-October 1956, in the wake of student and worker demonstrations, the new government headed by Imre Nagy, having taken the position of reformism, tried to get out of its rigid dependence on Moscow, break allied relations with the USSR and other countries of people's democracy, and achieve entry into NATO. The Hungarian Working People's Party was driven out of power and actually found itself outside the law. The total control over all aspects of the life of Hungarian society by the punitive authorities was terminated. At the request of the Nagy government, parts of the Soviet troops stationed in Budapest and other cities were withdrawn from the country. At the same time, the border with Austria was opened. The apogee of the Hungarian "October Revolution" was the events of October 23, 1956, when armed students and workers gathered at a rally in Budapest destroyed the monument to Stalin. In response to these actions, the Soviet leadership decided on military intervention in the internal affairs of Hungary (based on the formal appeal of the "provisional workers' and peasants' government" J. Kadar). On the night of November 4, Budapest was occupied by Soviet troops. The popular uprising was put down. About 20 thousand rebels died, tens of thousands of Hungarians fled to Austria. The power of the Communist Party and the allied obligations of the Hungarian People's Republic in relation to the USSR and the countries of the Warsaw Pact were restored.

The Hungarian events of 1956 became one of the first actions of the USSR to toughen its policy within the framework of the socialist camp, at the same time serving to reduce the popularity of communist ideas in the world.

Since the mid-1950s, especially after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, the claims of China, headed by Mao Zedong, as the second leader in the socialist world and the world communist movement, were fully manifested. Chinese diplomacy has shown significant activity in relations with Asian countries that have embarked on the path of non-capitalist development. Differences between Moscow and Beijing were inevitable, since China no longer wanted to put up with the role of "little brother" in the family of socialist peoples. Since 1957, Chinese leaders began to express sharp criticisms of the Soviet model of building socialism and the campaign unfolding in the USSR to expose the cult of personality. Moscow's attempts to smooth over the Soviet-Chinese contradictions by holding meetings of the communist and workers' parties - in 1957 and 1960. were not successful. Accusing the Soviet leadership of departing from the principles of Marxism-Leninism and of revisionism, Beijing strongly advocated curtailing relations with the USSR. In 1960, a sharp aggravation of Soviet-Chinese relations began: China made claims to a number of border territories of the USSR and Mongolia. At the same time, problems arose in the relations between the USSR and Albania, which supported Mao's policy in the international arena. In 1961, Albania refused to provide the USSR with naval bases and arrested Soviet submarines in its ports. In 1962, Soviet-Albanian relations were actually severed, and in 1968 Albania withdrew from the Warsaw Pact. Since 1962, armed conflicts began on the Soviet-Chinese border. Romania also took a special position within the framework of the socialist camp, which in 1958 achieved the withdrawal of Soviet troops from its territory. To a large extent, they were guided by China and the leaders of North Korea. Thus, during the years of the "thaw" there was a gradual corrosion of the unity of the socialist countries.

In the context of Soviet-American relations in the second half of the 50s. the most important problem was the settlement of the question of the status of West Berlin. According to the decisions of the Potsdam Peace Conference in 1945, the capital of Germany, like the entire territory of the country, was divided into occupation zones. The Soviet zone in 1949 turned into the GDR, and Berlin became the capital of socialist Germany. The territory of West Berlin was actually part of the FRG. In November 1958, the Soviet government turned to Western countries with a request to review the status of West Berlin, which was to become a free and demilitarized city. The goal was to eliminate the "outpost of imperialism on socialist German soil." The fundamental decision on the status of West Berlin was postponed (in accordance with the agreements between Khrushchev and Eisenhower) until May 1960, when a conference of the heads of government of the USSR, the USA, France and England was to be held. But the meeting never took place: on May 1, 1960, an American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft was shot down over Soviet territory (pilot F. Power was detained at the landing site and gave evidence denouncing him as a spy). East-West relations sharply deteriorated. A broad anti-American ("anti-imperialist") campaign was launched in the USSR. The Paris Conference on European Security was disrupted, and during Khrushchev's visit as head of the Soviet delegation to the session of the UN General Assembly (September 23, 1960), a new, tough line in the foreign policy of the USSR was demonstrated.

In the spring and summer of 1961, the political crisis in the GDR escalated, caused primarily by the fact that a significant part of the population, mainly young people and students in large cities, openly came out in favor of changing the political system. The territory of West Berlin was used for extensive material and financial assistance to East German dissidents. In this regard, after preliminary agreement with Moscow, on the initiative of the head of the GDR, W. Ulbricht, a wall of concrete and barbed wire was erected around West Berlin on the night of August 13, 1961. This measure made it possible to prevent "voting with their feet" against the socialist system. The Berlin crisis sharply intensified the confrontation between East and West and had a negative impact on the development of international relations in Europe.

Following the Berlin one, the Caribbean, or "missile" crisis followed, which put the whole world on the brink of catastrophe, since the USSR and the USA, as never before, found themselves on the verge of a thermonuclear war.

On January 1, 1959, a revolution won in Cuba, as a result of which anti-American rebel forces led by Fidel Castro came to power. The US launched a massive subversive and propaganda war against Cuba. The US administration of John F. Kennedy supported the Cuban Contras in every possible way. An attempt at an armed invasion of Cuba by counter-revolutionary formations in the Gulf of Pigs in February 1961 failed and at the same time provoked a sharp protest from Moscow. In September 1962, the USSR decided to provide military-technical and economic assistance to the island of Liberty, according to which Soviet medium-range missiles with nuclear warheads were deployed in Cuba in deep secrecy. This created a direct and immediate threat to US security. On October 22, 1962, the White House issued an ultimatum to the Soviet Union to remove the missiles, and a naval and air blockade was established around Cuba. In response, the Soviet statement contained a demand for an immediate end to the blockade of Cuba, and in case of refusal, the Soviet Union threatened to deliver "the most powerful retaliatory strike." The armed forces of the United States and the USSR were put on high alert.

At the last moment, on October 25-27, thanks to direct negotiations between US President John F. Kennedy and the leader of the Soviet Union, N. S. Khrushchev, a nuclear conflict was prevented. The USSR agreed to withdraw its missiles from Cuba, and the United States promised not to organize direct invasions of the island, and also to withdraw medium-range missiles with nuclear warheads aimed at the USSR from Turkey. The Caribbean crisis was the culminating moment in international relations during the Cold War period. After its resolution, the understanding was strengthened that there can be no winners in a nuclear war. The result of this was the signing on August 5, 1963 in Moscow of the Treaty on the Ban on Nuclear Tests in the Atmosphere, Outer Space and Under Water between the USSR, the USA and Great Britain (only one nuclear power, China, abstained from signing the "three environments" treaty).

The countries of Europe and Asia, which fell away from the capitalist system after the Second World War, formed together with the Soviet Union a single and powerful socialist camp that opposed the camp of capitalism. The two camps - the socialist camp led by the USSR and the capitalist camp led by the USA - embody two lines of economic development. One line is the line of the growth of economic power, the continuous upsurge of the peaceful economy and the steady improvement in the well-being of the working masses of the Soviet Union and the people's democracies. The other line is the line of the economy of capitalism, the productive forces of which are marking time, this is the line of the militarization of the economy, the decline in the living standards of the working people in the conditions of the ever-growing general crisis of the world capitalist system.

The two camps - socialist and capitalist - embody two opposite courses of international politics. The ruling circles of the USA and other imperialist states are taking the path of preparing for a new world war and fascisizing the internal life of their countries. The socialist camp is fighting against the threat of new wars and imperialist expansion, for the eradication of fascism, for the strengthening of peace and democracy.

The Second World War and the formation of two camps in the international arena had as their most important economic consequence the disintegration of a single all-encompassing world market. “The economic result of the existence of two opposing camps was that the single all-encompassing world market collapsed, as a result of which we now have two parallel world markets, also opposing each other”1. This determined the further deepening of the general crisis of capitalism.

During the post-war period, the countries of the socialist camp joined together economically and established close economic cooperation and mutual assistance. The economic cooperation of the countries of the socialist camp is based on a sincere desire to help each other and achieve a general economic upsurge.

The main capitalist countries - the USA, Britain and France - tried to subject the Soviet Union to an economic blockade.

1 I.V. Stalin, Economic problems of socialism in the USSR, pp. 30-31.

Union, China and the European countries of people's democracy, counting on the strangulation of these countries. But by doing this, they contributed, against their will, to the formation and strengthening of a new, parallel (world market). Thanks to the crisis-free development of the economy of the countries of the socialist camp, the new world market does not know the difficulties of marketing, its capacity is constantly growing.

As a result of the collapse of the single world market, the relative stability of markets that existed at the first stage of the general crisis of capitalism came to an end. The second stage of the general crisis of capitalism is characterized by a reduction in the capacity of the world capitalist market. This means that the sphere of application of the forces of the main capitalist countries (USA, England, France) to world resources is inevitably shrinking and the conditions of the world market for these countries are deteriorating. The chronic underutilization of enterprises in the capitalist countries increased in the post-war period. This is especially true of the United States, despite the fact that after the end of the Second World War, huge production facilities in various industries in the United States were partially mothballed and partially destroyed.

The narrowing of the sphere of application of the forces of the main capitalist countries to world resources causes an intensification of the struggle between the countries of the imperialist camp for markets, for sources of raw materials, for spheres of investment of capital. The imperialists, and above all the American ones, are trying to overcome the difficulties that have arisen as a result of the loss of huge markets by increased expansion at the expense of their competitors, acts of aggression, an arms race, and the militarization of the economy. But all these measures lead to an even greater deepening of the contradictions of capitalism.

Concept definition

The concept is quite broad and controversial, but it is possible to give a definition. The socialist camp is a term that refers to countries that have embarked on the path of socialist development and the maintenance of the Soviet ideology, moreover, regardless of the support or hostility of the USSR towards them. A vivid example is some countries with which our country had rather a political confrontation (Albania, China and Yugoslavia). In the historical tradition, the countries named above were called communist in the USA, opposing them to their democratic model.

Along with the concept of "socialist camp", synonymous terms were also used - "socialist countries" and "socialist commonwealth". The latter concept was typical for the designation of the allied countries in the USSR.

Origins and formation of the socialist camp

As is known, the October Socialist Revolution was carried out under internationalist slogans and the declaration of the ideas of the world revolution. This attitude was key and was preserved throughout the years of the existence of the USSR, but many countries did not follow this Russian example. But after the victory in World War II, many countries, including European ones, followed the model of socialist development. Sympathy for the country - the winner of the Nazi regime - played a role. Thus, some states even changed their traditional political vector from West to East. The alignment of political forces on earth has changed radically. Therefore, the concept of "socialist camp" is not some kind of abstraction, but specific countries.

The concept of countries with a socialist orientation was embodied in the conclusion of friendly treaties and subsequent mutual assistance. Groups of countries that formed after the war are also commonly referred to as military-political blocs that have been on the frontier of hostilities more than once. But in 1989-1991, the USSR collapsed, and most of the socialist countries headed for liberal development. The collapse of the socialist camp was due to both internal and external factors.

Economic cooperation of the countries of the socialist community

The main factor in the creation of the socialist camp was economic mutual assistance: the provision of loans, trade, scientific and technical projects, the exchange of personnel and specialists. The key of these types of interactions is foreign trade. This fact by no means means that a socialist state should trade only with friendly countries.

All countries that were part of the socialist camp sold the products of their national economy on the world market and received in return all modern technologies, industrial equipment, as well as raw materials necessary for the production of certain goods.

The countries of the socialist camp

Democratic Republic of Somalia;
People's Republic of Angola;
People's Republic of the Congo;
People's Republic of Mozambique;
Folk;
Republic of Ethiopia.

People's Democratic Republic of Yemen;
Socialist Republic of Vietnam;
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan;
Mongolian People's Republic;
People's Republic of China;
People's Republic of Kampuchea;
Democratic People's Republic of Korea;
Lao Democratic Republic.

South America:

Republic of Cuba;
People's Revolutionary Government of Grenada.

German Democratic Republic;
People's Socialist;
Polish People's Republic;
Czechoslovak Socialist Republic;
People's Republic of Bulgaria;
Socialist Republic of Romania;
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia;

Existing socialist countries

There are also countries in the modern world that are, in one sense or another, socialist. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea positions itself as a socialist state. Exactly the same course is taking place in the Cuban Republic and Asian countries.

In eastern countries such as the People's Republic of China and Vietnam, the classical communist parties run the state apparatus. Despite this fact, capitalist tendencies, that is, private property, can be traced in the economic development of these countries. A similar political and economic situation is observed in the Lao Republic, which was also part of the socialist camp. This is a peculiar way to combine market and planned economy.

At the beginning of the 21st century, socialist tendencies began to emerge and consolidate in Latin America. There was even a whole theoretical doctrine of "Socialism XXI", which is actively used in practice in third world countries. For 2015, socialist governments are in power in Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua. But these are not countries of the socialist camp; such governments arose in them after its collapse at the end of the 20th century.

Maoist Nepal

In mid-2008, a revolution took place in Nepal. A group of communist Maoists overthrew the monarch and won the election as the Communist Party of Nepal. Since August, the head of state has been the main party ideologue, Bauram Bahattarai. After these events, Nepal became a country where a course with a clear communist dominant operates in political and economic life. But the course of Nepal is clearly not similar to the policy pursued by the USSR and the socialist camp.

Cuban socialist policy

Cuba has long been considered a socialist state, but in 2010 the head of the republic set a course for economic change along the Chinese model of modernizing a socialist society. The central aspect of this policy is to increase the role of private capital in the economic system.

Thus, we examined the countries of the socialist orientation, both past and present. The socialist camp is a collection of countries friendly to the USSR. Modern states pursuing a socialist policy do not belong to this camp. This is very important to consider in order to understand certain processes.