Abstract
The preceding chapters have documented how communist regimes came to power in Eastern Europe with varying degrees of domestic and Soviet support: Motivations had been mixed. For the Soviet Union, despite a notional commitment to the long-term goal of world revolution, the primary concern had been geo-political. For the local communists who engineered the revolutions there had been an ideological commitment to the socialist ideal nurtured during years of struggle against fascism. By 1958 this ideological commitment was all but moribund. Henceforth the nations of Eastern Europe were bound together not by a shared commitment to communism but by a military alliance and an international economic order both dominated by the Soviet Union. Communism was no longer a liberation ideology, yet it continued profoundly to structure political, social and economic life, what gradually became known as ‘actually existing socialism’.
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Notes
For a much fuller account of how Marx’s theoretical constructs were converted into a functioning economic system see: N. Swain, Hungary: The Rise and Fall of Feasible Socialism (London and New York, 1992), pp. 61–8.
W. Brus, ‘Postwar Reconstruction and Socio-Economic Transformation’, in M. C. Kaser and E. A. Radice (eds), The Economic History of Eastern Europe 1991–1975, Vol. II (Oxford, 1986), p. 570.
J. M. Van Brabant, Socialist Economic Integration (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 31–4. The precise date within 1949 is a matter of some dispute.
N. Spulber, The Economics of Communist Europe (New York and London, 1957), pp. 21–2. Spulber includes neither the GDR nor Albania, but Albania was clearly the poorest nation is Europe, while the future GDR is clearly categorisable as industrial, even though it included the less industrialised parts of pre-war Germany.
Sources: J. F. Triska (ed.), Constitutions of the Communist Party States (Stanford, 1968); B Szajkowski (ed.), Marxist Governments: a World Survey, 3 vols (London, 1981);
R. F. Staar, Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, fourth edition (Standford, 1982)
R. J. Meintyre, Bulgaria: Politics, Economics, and Society (London and New York, 1988)
H-G. Heinrich, Hungary: Politics, Economics and Society (London, 1986)
G. Kolankiewicz and P. G. Lewis, Poland: Politics, Economics and Society (London and New York, 1988);
E. Hankiss, East European Alternatives (Oxford, 1990), pp. 31–4.
J. F. Triska (ed.), Constitutions of the Communist Party States (Stanford University, 1968).
M. C. Kaser, Health Care in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (London, 1976).
Zs. Ferge, A Society in the Making (Harmondsworth, 1979), p. 64.
It is beyond the scope of this book to consider social inequalities under ‘actually existing socialism’ in any greater depth. The reader is referred to the following works: D. Lane, The End of Inequality? (Harmondsworth, 1971); I. Szélenyi, Urban Inequalities under State Socialism (Oxford, 1983); Ferge, A Society in the Making, Swain, Hungary: The Rise and Fall
I. Szélenyi, Urban Inequalities under State Socialism (Oxford, 1983);
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© 1993 Geoffrey Swain and Nigel Swain
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Swain, G., Swain, N. (1993). Actually Existing Socialism in Operation. In: Eastern Europe since 1945. The Making of the Modern World. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22656-6_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22656-6_6
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