Socialist Camp
사회주의 진영
The Soviet self-designation for the political-military bloc of communist states aligned around the USSR after World War II. It encompassed the people's democracies of Eastern Europe plus China, North Korea, North Vietnam, Mongolia, and later Cuba, forming one pole of the Cold War in opposition to the capitalist camp. The camp's unity was undermined by Yugoslavia's break in 1948 and the Sino-Soviet and Albanian splits in the 1960s; the term was gradually replaced by 'socialist commonwealth' and 'world socialist system.'
In depth
Formation of the term
"Socialist camp" was the name the Soviet Union used for its own side after World War II. Around the time communist parties took power in Eastern Europe and the Chinese civil war ended in 1949, the USSR grouped itself with the East European people's democracies and China under this heading; North Korea and North Vietnam were added afterwards. At the November 1960 Moscow meeting of 81 communist parties, thirteen parties were listed as belonging to countries of the socialist camp: Albania, Bulgaria, China, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Korea, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union, Vietnam and Yugoslavia. The confrontation between the socialist and capitalist camps was presented as the central feature of world development.
Fractures and armed intervention
The camp carried internal contradictions from its first years. After the conflict between Tito, who advanced a distinct model of socialist society, and Stalin, Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform in June 1948 and left the camp; relations were restored only in 1955, and the country never joined the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) or the Warsaw Treaty Organization.
The camp's unity was also enforced by arms. The Hungarian uprising of 1956 was put down by Soviet troops, and in August 1968 Soviet and allied Warsaw Pact forces invaded Czechoslovakia, halting the Prague Spring reforms. The latter was justified by what the West called the Brezhnev Doctrine, the claim of a collective right to defend socialist achievements.
Decline of the term and dissolution
As Soviet relations with China and with Albania deteriorated in the 1960s, "socialist camp" fell out of use, replaced by "socialist commonwealth" and "world socialist system." In Poland in 1980-81 millions of working people backed the independent trade union Solidarity in opposition to rule by the pro-Soviet bureaucracy, and when the USSR gave up armed enforcement during perestroika, regime change followed across most of Eastern Europe from 1988 into the early 1990s. With the collapse of the USSR in 1991, COMECON and the Warsaw Pact were dissolved and the camp ceased to exist as an institution.
Related terms
Related people
Related historical events
Sources
- history-names.ru Социалистический лагерь: термин, которым после Второй мировой войны в СССР обозначались государства, пошедшие по пути строительства социализма; постепенно вышел из употребления после ухудшения советско-китайских отношений, заменён на «социалистическое содружество» и «мировая социалистическая система»
- Wikipedia (RU) Восточный блок: термин использовался на Западе для обозначения просоветских государств; советская сторона использовала «социалистический лагерь»
- cambridge.org Lorenz M. Lüthi, Cold Wars, Chapter 3: 'The Socialist Camp was a Soviet creation'; traces its formation, internal fractures, and enforcement through military intervention
- Marxists Internet Archive Charles Gagnon (1980): documents the 1960 Moscow Meeting of 81 communist parties, the last document agreed upon by the communist movement as a whole, referencing thirteen parties from the socialist camp
- history-names.ru
- Marxists Internet Archive
- Wikipedia (EN)