The Soviet Theory of “People's Democracy”

Abstract

The concept of “people's democracy” has posed a real ideological dilemma for the U.S.S.R. Prior to the spring of 1948 Soviet theory was confronted with the fact that—partly because of Soviet policy itself—eastern Europe was not developing toward socialism by exactly the same pattern of violent revolutionary change which the U.S.S.R. had experienced, but in a manner more closely approximating gradual “reform.” To a very considerable extent it was in the interest of the Soviet Union to emphasize the differences between its own development and that of the “new democracies” in order to quiet national and non-Communist fears in those countries. At the same time, the U.S.S.R. apparently felt obliged to establish its own position of ideological “leadership” in eastern Europe and, simultaneously, to fit the concept of “people's democracy” into the body of orthodox Marxist-Leninist doctrine.