Abstract

The article is devoted to the consideration and analysis of the practical policy of Latin American national reformism and social reformism during the Cold War. The author shows that the political and ideological gamut of the non-communist left movement in Latin America in the bipolar period was very wide. Specifically in this scientific article, the author refers to examples of the exercise of power by different directions of the socialist movement in the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Peru, Chile. The author shows the existing connections between Latin American national reformism and the Socialist International and at that time comes to the conclusion that the ideology and practice of Latin American social democracy during the Cold War had a special, specific character. The common features characteristics of both the ideological project and the practical policy of the social reformist forces in the period under review were a commitment to political transformations, the expansion of social and political rights of citizens, the strengthening of the state and public sector in the economy, the priority of social policy, an anti-oligarchic strategy, a focus on a fair agrarian reform, anti-imperialism and the desire to defend national independence in foreign policy. In some cases (Nicaragua, Panama, Chile), the nature of social-economic transformations went beyond the framework of classical social reformism and had a revolutionary democratic content. The results of the center-left experiments in Latin American countries during the Cold War have varied, but by the 1990s most of them had failed. This is largely due to the fact that in the specific historical conditions of Latin American countries, national reformism in power led to the development of authoritarian and personalist tendencies, an increase in corruption and bureaucracy, attempts to merge the party and state apparatus.

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