دانلود کتاب The People’s Democracies - are they socialist states?

INTRODUCTION
During and after the Second World War, eastern
Europe was the scene of important social and politi-
cal upheavals, which gave birth to a series of states
of a particular type. These are usually given the
name of People's Democracies.
The common feature of the People's Democracies
is an economic and social structure similar to that
of the Soviet Union. For a long time, they also
shared another feature -- a deep dependence on the
Soviet bureaucracy. Most of them still have this,
even today.
For some years, particularly from 1948 to 1953,
many people used the knowledge of this dependence
on the Soviet Union as a substitute for an explanation
of the nature of these countries. There was hardly
any noticeable distinction made between the Baltic
countries, which had been taken into the Soviet Union,
and the People's Democracies, which had not
been annexed, "yet." At that time, the fashionable
phrase used by some Trotskyists was "structural
assimilation," which was proclaimed as the main
tendency in the evolution of the People's Democra-
cies. The evolution of these countries for the past
10 years has shown that the states in question, far
from being assimilated into the Soviet Union are
instead winning more and more autonomy. Conse-
quently they exist as states independently of the
Soviet Union. The problem of the social nature
of these states is then clearly posed, even for th>se
who have turned their backs on the question.
What is the nature of these states? How were
they l;>orn? And what will be their future evolution?
This is what we propose to examine.