From 1940 to 1950, countries with a socialist ideology were called "countries of popular democracy." By 1950, there were fifteen of them. What socialist countries were then included in this number? In addition to the Soviet Union, these were: NSRA (Albania), SFRY (Yugoslavia), Czechoslovakia (Czechoslovakia), NRB (Bulgaria), SRV (Vietnam), Hungary (Hungary), SRR (Romania), East Germany (part of Germany), Poland (Poland ), China (China), Mongolia (Mongolia), Lao PDR (Lao Republic), North Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Cuba.
What distinguished socialist countries from other countries of the world? What irritated the representatives of capitalism? First of all, socialist ideology, in which public interests are higher than personal interests.
The dramatic events and the defeat of socialism in the Soviet Union could not but affect the system of international relations. The bipolar world has become a multi-polar world. The USSR was a rather influential subject. Its collapse put the other socialist countries of the world in an extremely difficult and rather dangerous situation: they had to defend their policies and their sovereignty without the support of the most powerful state before. The reactionaries of the whole world were sure that Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, and China would fall in a rather short time.
However, today these socialist countries continue to build a socialist society, and their population, by the way, is a quarter of the population of the entire Earth. Perhaps the tragic fate of Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan allowed them to survive in the most difficult 90s, which fell on the collapse of the Union and led to chaos. The role of the avant-garde belonging to the Soviet Union earlier decided to take on China, which other socialist countries began to equal.
It is more convenient to divide the development of socialism in this country into two main periods: Mao Zedunovsky (from 1949 to 1978) and Densiopinovsky (which began in 1979 and continues to this day.
China successfully completed its first “five-year plan” with the help of the USSR, achieving annual economic growth of 12%. The share of its industrial products rose to 40%. At the eighth congress of the CCP, the victory of the socialist revolution was announced. The plans for the next "five-year period" have planned an increase in indicators. But the desire to make a huge leap led to a sharp decline (by 48%) in production.
Convicted of obvious excesses, Mao Zedong was forced to leave the leadership of the country and immerse himself in theory. But such a rapid decline played a positive role: the rapid growth of the economy was stimulated by the interest in each person working in their work. In four years, industrial production more than doubled (by 61%), while the growth of agricultural production indicators exceeded the 42% mark.
However, the so-called "cultural revolution", which began in 1966, plunged the country into uncontrollable economic chaos for twelve years.
Deng Xiaoping took the PRC out of the crisis, which delved into the study of the works of the theorists of Marxism-Leninism and worked out its own path to socialism, similar to the domestic concept of the NEP. Foreign aggression of the PRC still threatened, so the duration of the transition period was to be fifty years.
The Third Plenary of the eleventh convocation announced a new course, emphasizing the combination of a planned distribution system and a market system, with massive attraction of investments from other countries. In addition, the formation of independent enterprises, family contracts, and new discoveries in science were encouraged.
The young socialist country developed rapidly:
- every decade industrial production doubled;
- China's GDP yielded by 2005 only US GDP ;
- the average annual income increased (up to 1740 cu per person);
- Mutual trade indicators surpassed the same US indicators by $ 200,000,000. (despite Washington’s restriction on Chinese imports);
- gold reserves exceeded the reserves of all countries, becoming the largest in the world;
- increased, and significantly, the life expectancy of the Chinese.
Many countries are now eyeing the experience of China's development, including its closest neighbors.