 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(February 2022) |
The 21st Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union took place in Moscow, USSR 27 January - 5 February 1959. [1] It was a mid-term or "Extraordinary" Congress, timed so that Khrushchev could try to consolidate his power over rivals after the attempted coup of the Anti-Party Group in 1957. The Seven-Year Plan of economic development was adopted.
At the projected rate of growth, Soviet textile production would, by the end of the seven-year plan, approach the level of the United States, both in total output and per capita. The total amount of capital construction investment stipulated in the seven-year plan was equivalent to the total capital construction investment of the Soviet Union over 40 years.
The seven-year plan called for an almost fivefold increase in national income over 1940 levels, and an increase of the real incomes of workers and collective farm holders by about 40%. There were also plans to develop residential buildings and expand nurseries, kindergartens, boarding schools and nursing homes. The working week was expected to be reduced to 40 hours by 1962 and to 35 to 30 hours in 1964 to 1968. The seven-year plan also stipulated that school education at all levels would be greatly improved. [2]
On the basis of summing up the experience of socialist construction in the Soviet Union and the achievements of the socialist system, the 21st Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union raised theoretical questions about the transition from socialism to communism. In his report, Khrushchev elaborated the two stages of the communist society and the transition from socialism to communism, the material and technological basis for the construction of communist society, and the distribution of the material and spiritual wealth of the society under the conditions of socialism and communism. [2]
Khrushchev believed that the correct settlement of the German question was essential to the maintenance of peace and national security. In order to achieve German reunification, the Soviet Union supported the democratic circles of Germany government of the German Democratic Republic to form a federation. The Soviet Union was preparing to withdraw not only from Germany, but also from Poland and Hungary, where it had entered under the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet Union supported the plans of the People's Republic of Poland to establish an "atomic-free zone" in Europe and reduce conventional weapons in the area. [3]
With regard to the Middle and Near East, the countries that had achieved national liberation would continue to need the support of the socialist countries and all progressive peoples, and the Soviet Union was strengthening friendly relations with other socialist countries. The Soviet Union was ready to sign on to the destruction of atomic, hydrogen and rocket weapons.
Khrushchev accused the "revisionists" in Yugoslavia of minimizing the role of the Party and, in effect, rejecting the Leninist doctrine that the Party was the guiding force in the struggle for socialism. [3] All Communist and workers' parties would exist and struggle on the basis of complete independence and the principles of proletarian internationalism, voluntary cooperation and mutual assistance. [3] The role of the Soviet Union was not to control other countries, but to serve as a model for other socialist countries by being the first country to blaze the path of socialism. The socialist countries were united by the common goal of liberation, hard work and universal peace.
Khrushchev alluded to the need to draw lessons from the Chinese communes, lest other socalism countries blindly follow China's ideas of the Great Leap Forward and inflict irreparable economic and political damage. On February 7, 1959, Zhou Enlai and Khrushchev signed an agreement on economic cooperation between China and the Soviet Union in Moscow. The agreement stipulated that between 1959 and 1967, 78 large enterprises and power stations in the fields of metallurgy, chemistry, coal, petroleum and machinery manufacturing would be built in China. The Soviet Union would provide equipment, design and various other technical assistance, with a total value of about 5 billion rubles. China would compensate the Soviet Union by supplying it with goods under existing trade agreements. [4]
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), at some points known as the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), sometimes referred to as the Soviet Communist Party (SCP), and formerly known as the Bolshevik Party, was the founding and ruling political party of the Soviet Union. The CPSU was the sole governing party of the Soviet Union until 1990 when the Congress of People's Deputies modified Article 6 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution, which had previously granted the CPSU a monopoly over the political system. The party's main ideology was Marxism-Leninism.
Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary vanguard party as the political prelude to the establishment of communism. Lenin's ideological contributions to the Marxist ideology relate to his theories on the party, imperialism, the state, and revolution. The function of the Leninist vanguard party is to provide the working classes with the political consciousness and revolutionary leadership necessary to depose capitalism.
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology that became the largest faction of the communist movement in the world in the years following the October Revolution. It was the predominant ideology of most socialist governments throughout the 20th century. Developed in Russia by the Bolsheviks, it was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, Soviet satellite states in the Eastern Bloc, and various countries in the Non-Aligned Movement and Third World during the Cold War, as well as the Communist International after Bolshevisation. Today, Marxism–Leninism is the ideology of the ruling parties of China, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam, as well as many other Communist parties. The state ideology of North Korea is derived from Marxism–Leninism. Marxist–Leninist states are commonly referred to as "communist states" by Western academics. Marxist–Leninists reject anarchism and left communism, as well as reformist socialism and social democracy. They oppose fascism and liberal democracy, and are self-proclaimed anti-imperialists. Marxism–Leninism holds that a two-stage communist revolution is needed to replace capitalism. A vanguard party, organized through democratic centralism, would seize power on behalf of the proletariat and establish a one-party socialist state, called the dictatorship of the proletariat. The state would control the means of production, suppress opposition, counter-revolution, and the bourgeoisie, and promote Soviet collectivism, to pave the way for an eventual communist society that would be classless and stateless.
A communist state is a form of government that combines the state leadership of a communist party, Marxist–Leninist political philosophy, and an official commitment to the construction of a communist society. Communism in its modern form grew out of the socialist movement in 19th-century Europe and blamed capitalism for societal miseries. In the 20th century, several communist states were established, first in Russia with the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then in portions of Eastern Europe, Asia, and a few other regions after World War II. The institutions of these states were heavily influenced by the writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and others. During most of the 20th century, around one-third of the world's population lived in communist states. However, the political reforms of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev known as Perestroika and socio-economic difficulties produced the revolutions of 1989, which brought down all the communist states of the Eastern Bloc bar the Soviet Union. The repercussions of the collapse of these states contributed to political transformations in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and several other non-European communist states. Presently, there are five communist states in the world: China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam.
In the USSR, during the eleven-year period from the death of Joseph Stalin (1953) to the political ouster of Nikita Khrushchev (1964), the national politics were dominated by the Cold War, including the U.S.–USSR struggle for the global spread of their respective socio-economic systems and ideology, and the defense of hegemonic spheres of influence. Since the mid-1950s, despite the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) having disowned Stalinism, the political culture of Stalinism — a very powerful General Secretary of the CPSU—remained in place, albeit weakened.
The Sino-Soviet split was the gradual deterioration of relations between China and the Soviet Union caused by doctrinal divergences that arose from their different interpretations and practical applications of Marxism–Leninism, as influenced by their respective geopolitics during the Cold War of 1947–1991. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Sino-Soviet debates about the interpretation of orthodox Marxism became specific disputes about the Soviet Union's policies of national de-Stalinization and international peaceful coexistence with the Western Bloc, which Chinese founding father Mao Zedong decried as revisionism. Against that ideological background, China took a belligerent stance towards the Western world, and publicly rejected the Soviet Union's policy of peaceful coexistence between the Western Bloc and Eastern Bloc. In addition, Beijing resented the Soviet Union's growing ties with India due to factors such as the Sino-Indian border dispute, and Moscow feared that Mao was too nonchalant about the horrors of nuclear warfare.
An index of articles related to the former nation known as the Soviet Union. It covers the Soviet revolutionary period until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This list includes topics, events, persons and other items of national significance within the Soviet Union. It does not include places within the Soviet Union, unless the place is associated with an event of national significance. This index also does not contain items related to Soviet Military History.
On the Ten Major Relationships is a speech by Mao Zedong which outlines how the People's Republic of China would construct socialism different from the model of development undertaken by the Soviet Union. It was delivered by Mao during an enlarged session of a Politburo meeting of the Chinese Communist Party on April 25, 1956 and further elaborated in the 7th Supreme State Conference on May 2 the same year.
Peaceful coexistence was a theory, developed and applied by the Soviet Union at various points during the Cold War in the context of primarily Marxist–Leninist foreign policy and adopted by Soviet-allied socialist states, according to which the Socialist Bloc could peacefully coexist with the capitalist bloc. This was in contrast to the antagonistic contradiction principle that socialism and capitalism could never coexist in peace. The Soviet Union applied it to relations between the western world, particularly NATO countries, and nations of the Warsaw Pact.
Communism is a left-wing to far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products to everyone in the society based on need. A communist society would entail the absence of private property and social classes, and ultimately money and the state.
The People's Socialist Republic of Albania, officially the People's Republic of Albania from 1946 until 1976, was the one-party communist state in Albania from 1946 to 1991. It succeeded the Democratic Government of Albania (1944–1946).
Before the perestroika Soviet era reforms of Gorbachev that promoted Eurocommunism, the majority of its history it went the formal ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was Marxism–Leninism, a form of socialism consisting of a centralised command economy with a vanguardist one-party state that aimed to realize the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviet Union's ideological commitment to achieving communism included the national communist development of socialism in one country and peaceful coexistence with capitalist countries while engaging in anti-imperialism to defend the international proletariat, combat the predominant prevailing global system of capitalism and promote the goals of Russian Communism. The state ideology of the Soviet Union—and thus Marxism–Leninism—derived and developed from the theories, policies and political praxis of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.
The Albanian–Soviet split was the gradual deterioration of relations between the People's Republic of Albania and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which occurred in the 1956–1961 period as a result of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's rapprochement with Yugoslavia along with his "Secret Speech" and subsequent de-Stalinization, including efforts to extend these policies into Albania as was occurring in other Eastern Bloc states at the time.
Democracy and Totalitarianism (1968) is a book by French philosopher and political scientist Raymond Aron. It compares the political systems of the Soviet Union and the democratic countries of the West.
Socialism with Chinese characteristics is a set of political theories and policies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that are seen by their proponents as representing Marxism–Leninism adapted to Chinese circumstances and specific time periods, consisting of Deng Xiaoping Theory, Three Represents, Scientific Outlook on Development, and Xi Jinping Thought. According to CCP doctrine, Xi Jinping Thought is considered to represent Marxist–Leninist policies suited for China's present condition while Deng Xiaoping Theory was considered relevant for the period when it was formulated.
A socialist state, socialist republic, or socialist country, sometimes referred to as a workers' state or workers' republic, is a sovereign state constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. The term communist state is often used synonymously in the West, specifically when referring to one-party socialist states governed by Marxist–Leninist communist parties, despite these countries being officially socialist states in the process of building socialism and progressing toward a communist society. These countries never describe themselves as communist nor as having implemented a communist society. Additionally, a number of countries that are multi-party capitalist states make references to socialism in their constitutions, in most cases alluding to the building of a socialist society, naming socialism, claiming to be a socialist state, or including the term people's republic or socialist republic in their country's full name, although this does not necessarily reflect the structure and development paths of these countries' political and economic systems. Currently, these countries include Algeria, Bangladesh, Guyana, India, Nepal, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka and Tanzania.
Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR is a work of political economy written by Joseph Stalin in 1951. It was one of the last works published before his death. In it, he made the claim that the Soviet Union had reached the lower stage of communism. The main impetus for the book came from the discussions around the preparations for a new textbook on political economy that would be standard throughout the communist movement. One of the main theoretical debates was on whether the law of value still operated within a socialist economy; some economists stated that Karl Marx in Das Kapital had only meant for it to apply to capitalist exchange. Stalin insisted that it still operated under a socialist economy. Nonetheless, he argued that it was a historical and not eternal law and that it would disappear in the second higher stage of communism. Under socialism, it was necessary for commodity exchange and trained "business executives to conduct production on rational lines and disciplines them". Stalin laid the book out as plan for the transition to full communism but insisted that objective economic laws would still have to be followed.
The Eighth Five-Year Plan of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a set of production goals and guidelines for administering the economy from 1966 to 1970—part of a series of such plans used by the USSR from 1928 until its dissolution. "Directives" for the plan involved set high goals for industrial production, especially in vehicles and appliances. These directives for the Eighth Five-Year Plan was approved by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and by the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union but no final version was apparently ever ratified by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, some of the changes envisioned were made.
The Beidaihe Conference of 1958 was an enlarged meeting held by the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee from August 17 to 30 1958. It also involved a conference of provincial industrial secretaries and other relevant local leaders from the 25th to the 31st.
The Third Program of the CPSU is the main document of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, adopted at its 22nd Congress on 31 October 1961. The main goal of the program was to create a plan for the construction of communism.
 | This Soviet Union–related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |