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237-458: The descriptive term was often applied to all multilateral activities involving members of the organization, rather than being restricted to the direct functions of Comecon and its organs. This usage was sometimes extended as well to bilateral relations among members because in the system of communist international economic relations, multilateral accords – typically of a general nature – tended to be implemented through

474-439: A state as well as external autonomy for states. In any state, sovereignty is assigned to the person, body or institution that has the ultimate authority over other people and to change existing laws. In political theory , sovereignty is a substantive term designating supreme legitimate authority over some polity . In international law , sovereignty is the exercise of power by a state . De jure sovereignty refers to

711-483: A monopolist seller would face a monopsonist buyer, with no structure to set prices. Comecon was established at a Moscow economic conference January 5–8, 1949, at which the six founding member countries were represented; its foundation was publicly announced on January 25; Albania joined a month later and East Germany in 1950. Recent research by the Romanian researcher Elena Dragomir suggests that Romania played

948-643: A semi-colony to a leading world power, with greatly advanced literacy, women's rights, basic healthcare, primary education, and life expectancy. Its leading role in World War II saw the emergence of the industrialized Soviet Union as a superpower . Marxist–Leninist governments modeled on the Soviet Union took power with Soviet assistance in Bulgaria , Czechoslovakia , East Germany , Poland , Hungary, and Romania . A Marxist–Leninist government

1185-557: A senate from whom he can obtain advice, to delegate some power to magistrates for the practical administration of the law, and to use the Estates as a means of communicating with the people. Bodin believed that "the most divine, most excellent, and the state form most proper to royalty is governed partly aristocratically and partly democratically". During the Age of Enlightenment , the idea of sovereignty gained both legal and moral force as

1422-459: A social revolution . The two classes are the proletariat , who make up the majority of the population within society and must sell their labor power to survive, and the bourgeoisie , a small minority that derives profit from employing the working class through private ownership of the means of production. According to this analysis, a communist revolution would put the working class in power, and in turn establish common ownership of property,

1659-745: A 59-year period during which it was recognised as sovereign by many (mostly Roman Catholic) states despite possessing no territory – a situation resolved when the Lateran Treaties granted the Holy See sovereignty over the Vatican City . Another case, sui generis is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta , the third sovereign entity inside Italian territory (after San Marino and the Vatican City State ) and

1896-435: A bigger state nor is their governance subjected to supervision. The sovereignty (i.e. legal right to govern) however, is disputed in both cases as the first entity is claimed by Serbia and the second by Somalia . Internal sovereignty is the relationship between sovereign power and the political community. A central concern is legitimacy : by what right does a government exercise authority? Claims of legitimacy might refer to

2133-498: A call for "a common single planning organ." This was resisted by Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland, but most emphatically by increasingly nationalistic Romania, which strongly rejected the notion that they should specialize in agriculture. In Central and Eastern Europe, only Bulgaria happily took on an assigned role (also agricultural, but in Bulgaria's case this had been the country's chosen direction even as an independent country in

2370-500: A communist party, the rejection of private property and capitalism, state control of economic activity and mass media , restrictions on freedom of religion , and suppression of opposition and dissent. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, several previously Communist governments repudiated or abolished Communist rule altogether. Afterwards, only a small number of nominally Communist governments remained, such as China , Cuba , Laos , North Korea , and Vietnam . With

2607-502: A country and is not subordinate to any other government in that country or a foreign sovereign state. ( The Arantzazu Mendi , [1939] A.C. 256), Stroud's Judicial Dictionary External sovereignty is connected with questions of international law – such as when, if ever, is intervention by one country into another's territory permissible? Following the Thirty Years' War , a European religious conflict that embroiled much of

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2844-413: A country could still veto, but the hope was that they would typically choose just to step aside rather than either veto or be a reluctant participant. This aimed, at least in part, at allowing Romania to chart its own economic course without leaving Comecon entirely or bringing it to an impasse (see de-satellization of Communist Romania ). Also until the late 1960s, the official term for Comecon activities

3081-826: A deputy prime minister, the executive committee met quarterly, usually in Moscow. In 1971 and 1974, the executive committee acquired economic departments that ranked above the standing commissions. These economic departments considerably strengthened the authority and importance of the executive committee. There were four council committees: Council Committee for Cooperation in Planning, Council Committee for Scientific and Technical Cooperation, Council Committee for Cooperation in Material and Technical Supply, and Council Committee for Cooperation in Machine Building. Their mission

3318-538: A designated individual or group of individuals that are acting on behalf of the people of the state. Juridical sovereignty emphasizes the importance of other states recognizing the rights of a state to exercise their control freely with little interference. For example, Jackson, Rosberg and Jones explain how the sovereignty and survival of African states were more largely influenced by legal recognition rather than material aid. Douglass North identifies that institutions want structure and these two forms of sovereignty can be

3555-473: A distinct stage between capitalism and communism. This intermediate stage was a concept introduced by Vladimir Lenin as a means to defend the Bolshevik seizure of power against traditional Marxist criticism that Russia's productive forces were not sufficiently developed for socialist revolution . A distinction between communist and socialist as descriptors of political ideologies arose in 1918 after

3792-521: A form of associate status in the organization, specified in its 1964 agreement with Comecon. Collectively, the members of the Comecon did not display the necessary prerequisites for economic integration: their level of industrialization was low and uneven, with a single dominant member (the Soviet Union) producing 70% of the community national product. In the late 1980s, there were ten full members:

4029-526: A form of communism. In their words, the Hutterites "established in their communities a rigorous system of Ordnungen, which were codes of rules and regulations that governed all aspects of life and ensured a unified perspective. As an economic system, communism was attractive to many of the peasants who supported social revolution in sixteenth century central Europe." This link was highlighted in one of Karl Marx 's early writings; Marx stated that "[a]s Christ

4266-686: A formal or informal way, often the countries were discouraged from developing their own designs that competed with the main Comecon design. Although not formally part of the organization's hierarchy, the Conference of First Secretaries of Communist and Workers' Parties and of the Heads of Government of the Comecon Member Countries was Comecon's most important organ. These party and government leaders gathered for conference meetings regularly to discuss topics of mutual interest. Because of

4503-455: A greater emphasis on certain aspects of classical Marxism while rejecting or modifying other aspects. Many schools of thought have sought to combine Marxian concepts and non-Marxian concepts, which has then led to contradictory conclusions. There is a movement toward the recognition that historical materialism and dialectical materialism remain the fundamental aspects of all Marxist schools of thought . Marxism–Leninism and its offshoots are

4740-556: A hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the broad base. They were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher members of the party as being reliable and completely subject to party discipline . The Great Purge of 1936–1938 was Joseph Stalin 's attempt to destroy any possible opposition within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . In the Moscow trials , many old Bolsheviks who had played prominent roles during

4977-578: A high number of passenger seats, and was lightweight. According to the designers, the train was technologically more advanced than the trains used in New York's Subway, London's Tube or the Paris Metro. However, due to the plan of Comecon, older Soviet trains were used, which guaranteed profit for the Soviet Union and work for workers in Soviet factories. That economical change lead to the cancellation of

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5214-540: A matter of debate, but the distinction rests largely on the communists' adherence to the revolutionary socialism of Karl Marx." In the United States, communism is widely used as a pejorative term as part of a Red Scare , much like socialism , and mainly in reference to authoritarian socialism and Communist states . The emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally Communist state led to

5451-476: A matter of fact, theorists found that during the post Cold War era many people focused on how stronger internal structures promote inter-state peace. For instance, Zaum argues that many weak and impoverished countries that were affected by the Cold War were given assistance to develop their lacking sovereignty through this sub-concept of "empirical statehood". The Roman jurist Ulpian observed that: Ulpian

5688-535: A method for developing structure. For a while, the United Nations highly valued juridical sovereignty and attempted to reinforce its principle often. More recently, the United Nations is shifting away and focusing on establishing empirical sovereignty. Michael Barnett notes that this is largely due to the effects of the post Cold War era because the United Nations believed that to have peaceful relations states should establish peace within their territory. As

5925-537: A more "law-governed" and technocratic price-based approach. However, with the August 1948 death of Andrei Zhdanov , Voznesensky lost his patron and was soon accused of treason as part of the Leningrad Affair ; within two years he was dead in prison. Instead, what won out was a "physical planning" approach that strengthened the role of central governments over technocrats. At the same time, the effort to create

6162-425: A particular type of communism. One of the first uses of the word in its modern sense is in a letter sent by Victor d'Hupay to Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne around 1785, in which d'Hupay describes himself as an auteur communiste ("communist author"). In 1793, Restif first used communisme to describe a social order based on egalitarianism and the common ownership of property. Restif would go on to use

6399-529: A possible communist or socialist theorist, or as the first author to give communism a serious consideration. The 5th-century Mazdak movement in Persia (modern-day Iran) has been described as communistic for challenging the enormous privileges of the noble classes and the clergy , criticizing the institution of private property , and striving to create an egalitarian society. At one time or another, various small communist communities existed, generally under

6636-531: A post-capitalist society – positive humanism, socialism, Communism, realm of free individuality, free association of producers, etc. He used these terms completely interchangeably. The notion that 'socialism' and 'Communism' are distinct historical stages is alien to his work and only entered the lexicon of Marxism after his death." According to the Encyclopædia Britannica , "Exactly how communism differs from socialism has long been

6873-617: A prerequisite to socialism , were critical of the Bolsheviks from the beginning due to Russia being seen as too backward for a socialist revolution . Council communism and left communism , inspired by the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the wide proletarian revolutionary wave, arose in response to developments in Russia and are critical of self-declared constitutionally socialist states . Some left-wing parties, such as

7110-922: A producer and any foreign customer, limiting the ability to learn to adjust to foreign customers' needs. Furthermore, there was often strong political pressure to keep the best products for domestic use in each country. From the early 1950s to Comecon's demise in the early 1990s, intra-Comecon trade, except for Soviet petroleum, was in steady decline. Beginning no later than the early 1970s, Soviet petroleum and natural gas were routinely transferred within Comecon at below-market rates. Most Western commentators have viewed this as implicit, politically motivated subsidization of shaky economies to defuse discontent and reward compliance with Soviet wishes. Other commentators say that this may not have been deliberate policy, noting that whenever prices differ from world market prices, there will be winners and losers. They argue that this may have been simply an unforeseen consequence of two factors:

7347-476: A rather important role in the Comecon's creation in 1949. Dragomir argues that Romania was interested in the creation of a "system of cooperation" to improve its trade relations with the other people's democracies, especially with those able to export industrial equipment and machinery to Romania. According to Dragomir, in December 1948, the Romanian leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej sent a letter to Stalin, proposing

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7584-530: A recent paper by Faudot, Nenovsky and Marinova (2022) the functioning and the collapse of the Comecon has been studied. It focuses on the evolution of the monetary mechanisms and some technical problems of multilateral payments and the peculiarities of the transfer ruble. Comecon as an organization proved unable to develop multilateralism mainly because of issues related to domestic planning that encouraged autarky and, at best, bilateral exchanges. After Stalin's death in 1953, Comecon again began to find its footing. In

7821-717: A set of more detailed, bilateral agreements. Comecon was the Eastern Bloc's response to the formation in Western Europe of the Marshall Plan and the OEEC, which later became the OECD . The Comecon was founded in 1949 by the Soviet Union , Bulgaria , Czechoslovakia , Hungary , Poland , and Romania . The primary factors in Comecon's formation appear to have been Joseph Stalin 's desire to cooperate and strengthen

8058-434: A single individual was that sovereignty would therefore be indivisible; it would be expressed in a single voice that could claim final authority. An example of an internal sovereign is Louis XIV of France during the seventeenth century; Louis XIV claimed that he was the state. Jean-Jacques Rousseau rejected monarchical rule in favor of the other type of authority within a sovereign state, public sovereignty. Public Sovereignty

8295-503: A single regime of planning "common economic organization" with the ability to set plans throughout the Comecon region also came to nought. A protocol to create such a system was signed January 18, 1949, but never ratified. While historians are not unanimous on why this was stymied, it clearly threatened the sovereignty not only of the smaller states but even of the Soviet Union itself, since an international body would have had real power; Stalin clearly preferred informal means of intervention in

8532-458: A socialist principle of " to each according to his contribution ". Socialism has been described as a philosophy seeking distributive justice, and communism as a subset of socialism that prefers economic equality as its form of distributive justice. In 19th century Europe, the use of the terms communism and socialism eventually accorded with the cultural attitude of adherents and opponents towards religion . In European Christendom , communism

8769-546: A socialist state that is in the process of constructing communism. Terms used by Communist states include national-democratic , people's democratic , socialist-oriented , and workers and peasants' states. According to Richard Pipes , the idea of a classless , egalitarian society first emerged in ancient Greece . Since the 20th century, ancient Rome has been examined in this context, as well as thinkers such as Aristotle , Cicero , Demosthenes , Plato , and Tacitus . Plato, in particular, has been considered as

9006-407: A state to deter opposition groups in exchange for bargaining. While the operations and affairs within a state are relative to the level of sovereignty within that state, there is still an argument over who should hold the authority in a sovereign state. This argument between who should hold the authority within a sovereign state is called the traditional doctrine of public sovereignty. This discussion

9243-644: A strong authority allows you to keep the agreement and enforce sanctions for the violation of laws. The ability for leadership to prevent these violations is a key variable in determining internal sovereignty. The lack of internal sovereignty can cause war in one of two ways: first, undermining the value of agreement by allowing costly violations; and second, requiring such large subsidies for implementation that they render war cheaper than peace. Leadership needs to be able to promise members, especially those like armies, police forces, or paramilitaries will abide by agreements. The presence of strong internal sovereignty allows

9480-462: A strong central authority in the form of absolute monarchy . In his 1576 treatise Les Six Livres de la République ("Six Books of the Republic") Bodin argued that it is inherent in the nature of the state that sovereignty must be: The treatise is frequently viewed as the first European text theorizing state sovereignty. Bodin rejected the notion of transference of sovereignty from people to

9717-710: A work about More, whose ideas could be regarded as "the foregleam of Modern Socialism" according to Kautsky. During the October Revolution in Russia, Vladimir Lenin suggested that a monument be dedicated to More, alongside other important Western thinkers. In the 17th century, communist thought surfaced again in England, where a Puritan religious group known as the Diggers advocated the abolition of private ownership of land. In his 1895 Cromwell and Communism , Eduard Bernstein stated that several groups during

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9954-455: Is a 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

10191-466: Is a non- idealist attempt at the understanding of material history and society, whereby communism is the expression of a real movement, with parameters that are derived from actual life. According to Marxist theory, class conflict arises in capitalist societies due to contradictions between the material interests of the oppressed and exploited proletariat  – a class of wage laborers employed to produce goods and services – and

10428-417: Is between an internal sovereign or an authority of public sovereignty. An internal sovereign is a political body that possesses ultimate, final and independent authority; one whose decisions are binding upon all citizens, groups and institutions in society. Early thinkers believed sovereignty should be vested in the hands of a single person, a monarch. They believed the overriding merit of vesting sovereignty in

10665-461: Is common to all nations (jus gentium), as well as the fundamental laws of the state that determine who is the sovereign, who succeeds to sovereignty, and what limits the sovereign power. Thus, Bodin's sovereign was restricted by the constitutional law of the state and by the higher law that was considered as binding upon every human being. The fact that the sovereign must obey divine and natural law imposes ethical constraints on him. Bodin also held that

10902-484: Is its degree of absoluteness . A sovereign power has absolute sovereignty when it is not restricted by a constitution, by the laws of its predecessors, or by custom , and no areas of law or policy are reserved as being outside its control. International law ; policies and actions of neighboring states; cooperation and respect of the populace; means of enforcement; and resources to enact policy are factors that might limit sovereignty. For example, parents are not guaranteed

11139-412: Is not a law" (Book II, Chapter VI) – and predicated on the assumption that the people have an unbiased means by which to ascertain the general will. Thus the legal maxim, "there is no law without a sovereign." According to Hendrik Spruyt , the sovereign state emerged as a response to changes in international trade (forming coalitions that wanted sovereign states) so that the sovereign state's emergence

11376-528: Is not always enlightened, and consequently does not always see wherein the common good lies; hence the necessity of the legislator. But the legislator has, of himself, no authority; he is only a guide who drafts and proposes laws, but the people alone (that is, the sovereign or general will) has authority to make and impose them. Rousseau, in the Social Contract argued, "the growth of the State giving

11613-729: Is now seen to have been an illegal entity by the modern Polish administration. The post-1989 Polish state claims direct continuity from the Second Polish Republic which ended in 1939. For other reasons, however, Poland maintains its communist-era outline as opposed to its pre-World War II shape which included areas now in Belarus , Czech Republic , Lithuania , Slovakia and Ukraine but did not include some of its western regions that were then in Germany . Additionally sovereignty can be achieved without independence, such as how

11850-403: Is one with a government that has been elected by the people and has the popular legitimacy. Internal sovereignty examines the internal affairs of a state and how it operates. It is important to have strong internal sovereignty to keeping order and peace. When you have weak internal sovereignty, organisations such as rebel groups will undermine the authority and disrupt the peace. The presence of

12087-519: Is practiced predominantly by the military or police force it is considered coercive sovereignty . State sovereignty is sometimes viewed synonymously with independence , however, sovereignty can be transferred as a legal right whereas independence cannot. A state can achieve de facto independence long after acquiring sovereignty, such as in the case of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Additionally, independence can also be suspended when an entire region becomes subject to an occupation. For example, when Iraq

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12324-543: Is sovereign is not an exact science, but often a matter of diplomatic dispute. There is usually an expectation that both de jure and de facto sovereignty rest in the same organisation at the place and time of concern. Foreign governments use varied criteria and political considerations when deciding whether or not to recognise the sovereignty of a state over a territory. Membership in the United Nations requires that "[t]he admission of any such state to membership in

12561-432: Is that it is a claim that must be recognized if it is to have any meaning: Sovereignty is a hypothetical trade, in which two potentially (or really) conflicting sides, respecting de facto realities of power, exchange such recognitions as their least costly strategy. There are two additional components of sovereignty that should be discussed, empirical sovereignty and juridical sovereignty. Empirical sovereignty deals with

12798-480: Is that of educating voters in what are deemed their true interests rather than in response to the expression of interest by voters themselves. When they have gained control of the state, Leninist communists' main task was preventing other political parties from deceiving the proletariat, such as by running their own independent candidates. This vanguardist approach comes from their commitments to democratic centralism in which communists can only be cadres, i.e. members of

13035-401: Is the belief that ultimate authority is vested in the people themselves, expressed in the idea of the general will. This means that the power is elected and supported by its members, the authority has a central goal of the good of the people in mind. The idea of public sovereignty has often been the basis for modern democratic theory. Within the modern governmental system, internal sovereignty

13272-542: Is the intermediary unto whom man unburdens all his divinity, all his religious bonds, so the state is the mediator unto which he transfers all his Godlessness, all his human liberty." Thomas Müntzer led a large Anabaptist communist movement during the German Peasants' War , which Friedrich Engels analyzed in his 1850 work The Peasant War in Germany . The Marxist communist ethos that aims for unity reflects

13509-608: Is the second form of post-world war change in the norms of sovereignty, representing a significant shift since member nations are no longer absolutely sovereign. Some theorists, such as Jacques Maritain and Bertrand de Jouvenel have attacked the legitimacy of the earlier concepts of sovereignty, with Maritain advocating that the concept be discarded entirely since it: Efforts to curtail absolute sovereignty have met with substantial resistance by sovereigntist movements in multiple countries who seek to " take back control " from such transnational governance groups and agreements, restoring

13746-520: Is usually found in states that have public sovereignty and is rarely found within a state controlled by an internal sovereign. A form of government that is a little different from both is the UK parliament system. John Austin argued that sovereignty in the UK was vested neither in the Crown nor in the people but in the " Queen-in-Parliament ". This is the origin of the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty and

13983-502: Is usually seen as the fundamental principle of the British constitution. With these principles of parliamentary sovereignty, majority control can gain access to unlimited constitutional authority, creating what has been called "elective dictatorship" or "modern autocracy". Public sovereignty in modern governments is a lot more common with examples like the US, Canada, Australia and India where

14220-680: Is viewed overwhelmingly negatively as a mass murderer ; for significant numbers of Russians and Georgians, he is regarded as a great statesman and state-builder. After the Chinese Civil War , Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949 as the Nationalist government headed by the Kuomintang fled to the island of Taiwan. In 1950–1953, China engaged in a large-scale, undeclared war with

14457-614: The 1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election , socialist parties totaled well over 70% of the vote. The Bolsheviks were clear winners in the urban centres, and took around two-thirds of the votes of soldiers on the Western Front, obtaining 23.3% of the vote; the Socialist Revolutionaries finished first on the strength of support from the country's rural peasantry, who were for the most part single issue voters , that issue being land reform, obtaining 37.6%, while

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14694-490: The 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union . War communism was the first system adopted by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War as a result of the many challenges. Despite communism in the name, it had nothing to do with communism, with strict discipline for workers, strike actions forbidden, obligatory labor duty, and military-style control, and has been described as simple authoritarian control by

14931-665: The Cheget , to Russian president Boris Yeltsin . That evening at 7:32, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian flag . Previously, from August to December 1991, all the individual republics, including Russia itself, had seceded from the union. The week before the union's formal dissolution, eleven republics signed the Alma-Ata Protocol , formally establishing

15168-671: The Christian universalist teaching that humankind is one and that there is only one god who does not discriminate among people. Communist thought has also been traced back to the works of the 16th-century English writer Thomas More . In his 1516 treatise titled Utopia , More portrayed a society based on common ownership of property, whose rulers administered it through the application of reason and virtue . Marxist communist theoretician Karl Kautsky , who popularized Marxist communism in Western Europe more than any other thinker apart from Engels, published Thomas More and His Utopia ,

15405-505: The Cold War had begun. Stalin himself believed that capitalism was a hollow shell and would crumble under increased non-military pressure exerted through proxies in countries like Italy. He greatly underestimated the economic strength of the West and instead of triumph saw the West build up alliances that were designed to permanently stop or contain Soviet expansion. In early 1950, Stalin gave

15642-841: The Commonwealth of Independent States , and declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. As of 2023, states controlled by Communist parties under a single-party system include the People's Republic of China, the Republic of Cuba , the Democratic People's Republic of Korea , the Lao People's Democratic Republic , and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam . Communist parties, or their descendant parties, remain politically important in several other countries. With

15879-821: The Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic made the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic a sovereign entity within but not independent from the USSR. At the opposite end of the scale, there is no dispute regarding the self-governance of certain self-proclaimed states such as the Republic of Kosovo or Somaliland (see List of states with limited recognition , but most of them are puppet states ) since their governments neither answer to

16116-621: The English Civil War (especially the Diggers) espoused clear communistic, agrarianist ideals and that Oliver Cromwell 's attitude towards these groups was at best ambivalent and often hostile. Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century through such thinkers as Gabriel Bonnot de Mably , Jean Meslier , Étienne-Gabriel Morelly , and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in France. During

16353-689: The Eurasian Economic Union with Armenia , Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Along with Ukraine, Georgia , Azerbaijan and Moldova are also part of the GUAM . Vietnam and Laos joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1995 and 1997 respectively. Albania had stopped participating in Comecon activities in 1961 following the Soviet–Albanian split , but formally withdrew in 1987. East Germany reunified with

16590-668: The Holocaust , the vast majority of states rejected the prior Westphalian permissiveness towards such supremacist power based sovereignty formulations and signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. It was the first step towards circumscription of the powers of sovereign nations, soon followed by the Genocide Convention which legally required nations to punish genocide. Based on these and similar human rights agreements, beginning in 1990 there

16827-642: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development . All four Central European states are now members of the Visegrád Group . Russia, the successor to the Soviet Union, along with Ukraine and Belarus founded the Commonwealth of Independent States which consists of most of the ex-Soviet republics. The country also leads the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation with Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan and

17064-524: The Russian Revolution or in Lenin's Soviet government afterwards, including Lev Kamenev , Grigory Zinoviev , Alexei Rykov , and Nikolai Bukharin , were accused, pleaded guilty of conspiracy against the Soviet Union, and were executed. The devastation of World War II resulted in a massive recovery program involving the rebuilding of industrial plants, housing, and transportation as well as

17301-611: The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party renamed itself as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , which resulted in the adjective Communist being used to refer to socialists who supported the politics and theories of Bolshevism, Leninism , and later in the 1920s those of Marxism–Leninism . In spite of this common usage, Communist parties also continued to describe themselves as socialists dedicated to socialism. According to The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx , "Marx used many terms to refer to

17538-731: The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies in the October Revolution; after a few weeks of deliberation, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries formed a coalition government with the Bolsheviks from November 1917 to July 1918, while the right-wing faction of the Socialist Revolutionary Party boycotted the soviets and denounced the October Revolution as an illegal coup . In

17775-530: The Second World War were regarded as sovereign despite their territories being under foreign occupation; their governance resumed as soon as the occupation had ended. The government of Kuwait was in a similar situation vis-à-vis the Iraqi occupation of its country during 1990–1991. The government of Republic of China (ROC) was generally recognized as sovereign over China from 1911 to 1971 despite

18012-595: The Socialist Party of Great Britain , boasted of having called the Bolsheviks, and by extension those Communist states which either followed or were inspired by the Soviet Bolshevik model of development, establishing state capitalism in late 1917, as would be described during the 20th century by several academics, economists, and other scholars, or a command economy . Before the Soviet path of development became known as socialism , in reference to

18249-476: The Soviet Union and governed locally by their pro-Soviet functionaries. When in 1991 Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia re-enacted independence, it was done so on the basis of continuity directly from the pre-Soviet republics. Another complicated sovereignty scenario can arise when regime itself is the subject of dispute. In the case of Poland , the People's Republic of Poland which governed Poland from 1945 to 1989

18486-511: The Soviet Union with the Russian Revolution of 1917, and then in portions of Eastern Europe, Asia, and a few other regions after World War II . As one of the many types of socialism , communism became the dominant political tendency, along with social democracy , within the international socialist movement by the early 1920s. During most of the 20th century, around one-third of the world's population lived under Communist governments. These governments were characterized by one-party rule by

18723-556: The Soviet economic model , several scholars posit that in practice the model functioned as a form of state capitalism . Public memory of 20th-century Communist states has been described as a battleground between anti anti-communism and anti-communism . Many authors have written about mass killings under communist regimes and mortality rates , such as excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin , which remain controversial, polarized, and debated topics in academia, historiography, and politics when discussing communism and

18960-497: The West and withdrew from Comecon on 2 October 1990. In the late 1950s, a number of communist-ruled non-member countries – the People's Republic of China , North Korea , Mongolia , Vietnam , and Yugoslavia  – were invited to participate as observers in Comecon sessions. Although Mongolia and Vietnam later gained full membership, China stopped attending Comecon sessions after 1961. Yugoslavia negotiated

19197-427: The bourgeoisie  – the ruling class that owns the means of production and extracts its wealth through appropriation of the surplus product produced by the proletariat in the form of profit . This class struggle that is commonly expressed as the revolt of a society's productive forces against its relations of production , results in a period of short-term crises as the bourgeoisie struggle to manage

19434-400: The common ownership of the means of production, therefore abolishing the bourgeoisie, ultimately abolishing the proletariat itself and ushering the world into communism as a new mode of production . In between capitalism and communism, there is the dictatorship of the proletariat ; it is the defeat of the bourgeois state but not yet of the capitalist mode of production, and at the same time

19671-652: The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Fall of Communism , there was a split between those hardline Communists, sometimes referred to in the media as neo-Stalinists , who remained committed to orthodox Marxism–Leninism , and those, such as The Left in Germany, who work within the liberal-democratic process for a democratic road to socialism; other ruling Communist parties became closer to democratic socialist and social-democratic parties. Outside Communist states, reformed Communist parties have led or been part of left-leaning government or regional coalitions, including in

19908-477: The divine right of kings , or to a social contract (i.e. popular sovereignty ). Max Weber offered a first categorization of political authority and legitimacy with the categories of traditional, charismatic and legal-rational. With "sovereignty" meaning holding supreme, independent authority over a region or state, "internal sovereignty" refers to the internal affairs of the state and the location of supreme power within it. A state that has internal sovereignty

20145-401: The general will , is inalienable, for the will cannot be transmitted; it is indivisible since it is essentially general; it is infallible and always right, determined and limited in its power by the common interest; it acts through laws. Law is the decision of the general will regarding some object of common interest, but though the general will is always right and desires only good, its judgment

20382-462: The lois royales , the fundamental laws of the French monarchy which regulated matters such as succession, are natural laws and are binding on the French sovereign. Despite his commitment to absolutism, Bodin held some moderate opinions on how government should in practice be carried out. He held that although the sovereign is not obliged to, it is advisable for him, as a practical expedient, to convene

20619-548: The materialist conception of history which holds that the key characteristic of economic systems through history has been the mode of production and that the change between modes of production has been triggered by class struggle. According to this analysis, the Industrial Revolution ushered the world into the new capitalist mode of production . Before capitalism, certain working classes had ownership of instruments used in production; however, because machinery

20856-445: The means of production , earning profit via the surplus value generated by the proletariat, who have no ownership of the means of production and therefore no option but to sell its labor to the bourgeoisie. According to the materialist conception of history, it is through the furtherance of its own material interests that the rising bourgeoisie within feudalism captured power and abolished, of all relations of private property, only

21093-401: The productive forces ) is the primary agent of change in the structure of society and of human social relations and that social systems and their relations (e.g. feudalism , capitalism , and so on) become contradictory and inefficient as the productive forces develop, which results in some form of social revolution arising in response to the mounting contradictions. This revolutionary change is

21330-431: The state (or nation state ). Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a more libertarian socialist approach of communization , revolutionary spontaneity , and workers' self-management , and a more authoritarian vanguardist or communist party -driven approach through the development of a socialist state , followed by

21567-435: The two-stage theory , communists made no major distinction between the socialist mode of production and communism; it is consistent with, and helped to inform, early concepts of socialism in which the law of value no longer directs economic activity. Monetary relations in the form of exchange-value , profit , interest , and wage labor would not operate and apply to Marxist socialism. While Joseph Stalin stated that

21804-488: The withering away of the state . As one of the main ideologies on the political spectrum , communist parties and movements have been described as radical left or far-left. Variants of communism have been developed throughout history, including anarchist communism , Marxist schools of thought , and religious communism , among others. Communism encompasses a variety of schools of thought, which broadly include Marxism , Leninism , and libertarian communism, as well as

22041-409: The " Peace of Westphalia ", but for different reasons. He created the first modern version of the social contract (or contractarian) theory, arguing that to overcome the "nasty, brutish and short" quality of life without the cooperation of other human beings, people must join in a "commonwealth" and submit to a "Soveraigne [ sic ] Power" that can compel them to act in the common good. Hobbes

22278-405: The 1930s). Essentially, by the time the Soviet Union was calling for tight economic integration, they no longer had the power to impose it. Despite some slow headway – integration increased in petroleum, electricity, and other technical/scientific sectors – and the 1963 founding of an International Bank for Economic Co-operation, Comecon countries all increased trade with

22515-873: The 1949 victory of the Communists in the Chinese civil war and the retreat of the ROC to Taiwan . The ROC represented China at the United Nations until 1971, when the People's Republic of China obtained the UN seat. The ROC political status as a state became increasingly disputed; it became commonly known as Taiwan . The International Committee of the Red Cross is commonly mistaken to be sovereign. It has been granted various degrees of special privileges and legal immunities in many countries, including Belgium, France, Switzerland, Australia, Russia, South Korea, South Africa and

22752-577: The 1957 Treaty of Rome . Once again, efforts at transnational central planning failed. In December 1961, a council session approved the Basic Principles of the International Socialist Division of Labour, which talked of closer coordination of plans and of "concentrating production of similar products in one or several socialist countries." In November 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev followed this up with

22989-403: The 1957 abandonment of the 1956–60 Soviet five-year plan , as the Comecon governments struggled to reestablish their legitimacy and popular support. The next few years saw a series of small steps toward increased trade and economic integration, including the introduction of the " convertible rouble  [ ru ] ", revised efforts at national specialization, and a 1959 charter modeled after

23226-559: The 20th century. In Western Europe, communist parties were part of several post-war governments, and even when the Cold War forced many of those countries to remove them from government, such as in Italy, they remained part of the liberal-democratic process. There were also many developments in libertarian Marxism, especially during the 1960s with the New Left . By the 1960s and 1970s, many Western communist parties had criticized many of

23463-696: The Bolsheviks to maintain power and control in the Soviet regions, rather than any coherent political ideology . The Soviet Union was established in 1922. Before the broad ban in 1921, there were several factions in the Communist party, more prominently among them the Left Opposition , the Right Opposition , and the Workers' Opposition , which debated on the path of development to follow. The Left and Workers' oppositions were more critical of

23700-594: The Comecon members deemed underdeveloped, Cuba obtained oil in direct exchange for sugar at a rate highly favorable to Cuba. Within the socialist economic paradigm, the subsidies in favor of Cuba and other underdeveloped Comecon members were viewed as rational and fair because they counteracted unequal exchange . The organization of Comecon was officially focused on common expansion of states, more effective production and building relationships between countries within. And as in every planned economy, operations did not reflect state of market, innovations, availability of items or

23937-422: The Communist ideal. Mao charged that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was the leader of a "revisionist clique" which had turned against Marxism and Leninism and was now setting the stage for the restoration of capitalism. The two nations were at sword's point by 1960. Both began forging alliances with communist supporters around the globe, thereby splitting the worldwide movement into two hostile camps. Rejecting

24174-753: The Constituent Assembly in January 1918. The Draft Decree on the Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly was issued by the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union , a committee dominated by Lenin, who had previously supported a multi-party system of free elections. After the Bolshevik defeat, Lenin started referring to the assembly as a "deceptive form of bourgeois-democratic parliamentarianism." Some argued this

24411-481: The Council Committee for Cooperation in Planning drew up draft agreements for joint projects, adopted a resolution approving these projects, and recommended approval to the concerned parties. If its decisions were not subject to approval by national governments and parties, this committee would be considered Comecon's supranational planning body. The international Secretariat, Comecon's only permanent body,

24648-548: The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, officially the highest Comecon organ, examined fundamental problems of economic integration and directed the activities of the Secretariat and other subordinate organizations. Delegations from each Comecon member country attended these meetings. Prime ministers usually headed the delegations, which met during the second quarter of each year in a member country's capital (the location of

24885-649: The European Community (the renamed EEC), and the " Sinatra doctrine " under which the Soviet Union allowed that change would be the exclusive affair of each individual country marked the beginning of the end for Comecon. Although the Revolutions of 1989 did not formally end Comecon, and the Soviet government itself lasted until 1991, the March 1990 meeting in Prague was little more than a formality, discussing

25122-628: The European people" had spurned east–west collaboration within the framework agreed within the United Nations, that is, through the Economic Commission for Europe. Some say that Stalin's precise motives in establishing Comecon were "inscrutable" They may well have been "more negative than positive", with Stalin "more anxious to keep other powers out of neighbouring buffer states … than to integrate them." Furthermore, GATT 's notion of ostensibly nondiscriminatory treatment of trade partners

25359-608: The European union have eroded the sovereignty of traditional states. The centuries long movement which developed a global system of sovereign states came to an end when the excesses of World War II made it clear to nations that some curtailment of the rights of sovereign states was necessary if future cruelties and injustices were to be prevented. In the years immediately prior to the war, National Socialist theorist Carl Schmitt argued that sovereignty had supremacy over constitutional and international constraints arguing that states as sovereigns could not be judged and punished. After

25596-469: The Fourierists in France were considered respectable socialists, while working-class movements that "proclaimed the necessity of total social change" denoted themselves communists . This latter branch of socialism produced the communist work of Étienne Cabet in France and Wilhelm Weitling in Germany. While liberal democrats looked to the Revolutions of 1848 as a democratic revolution , which in

25833-545: The Great Leap was a very expensive disaster." Put in charge of rescuing the economy, Deng adopted pragmatic policies that the idealistic Mao disliked. For a while, Mao was in the shadows but returned to center stage and purged Deng and his allies in the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). The Cultural Revolution was an upheaval that targeted intellectuals and party leaders from 1966 through 1976. Mao's goal

26070-681: The Holy Roman Empire) by the Holy Roman Emperor, granting them seats in the Reichstag , at the time the closest permanent equivalent to an UN-type general assembly; confirmed 1620. These sovereign rights were never deposed, only the territories were lost. Over 100 modern states maintain full diplomatic relations with the order, and the UN awarded it observer status. The governments-in-exile of many European states (for instance, Norway, Netherlands or Czechoslovakia ) during

26307-583: The Medieval period as the de jure rights of nobility and royalty. Sovereignty reemerged as a concept in the late 16th century, a time when civil wars had created a craving for a stronger central authority when monarchs had begun to gather power onto their own hands at the expense of the nobility, and the modern nation state was emerging. Jean Bodin , partly in reaction to the chaos of the French wars of religion , presented theories of sovereignty calling for

26544-605: The October Revolution which involved the assault on Petrograd occurred largely without any human casualties . By November 1917, the Russian Provisional Government had been widely discredited by its failure to withdraw from World War I, implement land reform, or convene the Russian Constituent Assembly to draft a constitution, leaving the soviets in de facto control of the country. The Bolsheviks moved to hand power to

26781-734: The R1 trains by A. Honzík. The Comecon plan, though more profitable for the Soviets, if less resourceful for the Czechs and Slovaks, forced the Czechoslovak government to buy trains "Ečs (81-709)" and "81-71", both of which were designed in early 1950s and were heavy, unreliable and expensive. (Materials available only in Czech Republic and Slovakia, video included) On the other hand, Czechoslovak trams ( Tatra T3 ) and jet trainers ( L-29 ) were

27018-540: The Roman Catholic Church with little ability to interfere with the internal affairs of many European states. It is a myth, however, that the Treaties of Westphalia created a new European order of equal sovereign states. In international law , sovereignty means that a government possesses full control over affairs within a territorial or geographical area or limit. Determining whether a specific entity

27255-654: The Russian Federation has some supporters, but is reformist rather than revolutionary, aiming to lessen the inequalities of Russia's market economy. Chinese economic reforms were started in 1978 under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping , and since then China has managed to bring down the poverty rate from 53% in the Mao era to just 8% in 2001. After losing Soviet subsidies and support, Vietnam and Cuba have attracted more foreign investment to their countries, with their economies becoming more market-oriented. North Korea,

27492-431: The Soviet Union . The declaration acknowledged the independence of the former Soviet republics and created the Commonwealth of Independent States , although five of the signatories ratified it much later or did not do it at all. On the previous day, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev (the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union ) resigned, declared his office extinct, and handed over its powers, including control of

27729-583: The Soviet Union in the Warsaw Pact . There were three kinds of relationships – besides the 10 full memberships – with the Comecon: Working with neither meaningful exchange rates nor a market economy, Comecon countries had to look to world markets as a reference point for prices, but unlike agents acting in a market, prices tended to be stable over a period of years, rather than constantly fluctuating, which assisted central planning. Also, there

27966-444: The Soviet Union, six East European countries, and three extra-regional members. Geography, therefore, no longer united Comecon members. Wide variations in economic size and level of economic development also tended to generate divergent interests among the member countries. All these factors combined to give rise to significant differences in the member states' expectations about the benefits to be derived from membership in Comecon. Unity

28203-606: The Soviet Union, were not acceptable to Stalin, who in July 1947, ordered these communist governments to pull out of the Paris Conference on the European Recovery Programme. This has been described as "the moment of truth" in the post- World War II division of Europe. According to the Soviet view the "Anglo-American bloc" and "American monopolists ... whose interests had nothing in common with those of

28440-482: The Soviet government of Nikita Khrushchev , who enacted a period of de-Stalinization and re-approached diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia in 1976. The Communist Party of China, led by Mao Zedong, established the People's Republic of China , which would follow its own ideological path of development following the Sino-Soviet split . Communism was seen as a rival of and a threat to Western capitalism for most of

28677-524: The Soviet model of rapid urbanization, Mao Zedong and his top aide Deng Xiaoping launched the Great Leap Forward in 1957–1961 with the goal of industrializing China overnight, using the peasant villages as the base rather than large cities. Private ownership of land ended and the peasants worked in large collective farms that were now ordered to start up heavy industry operations, such as steel mills. Plants were built in remote locations, due to

28914-500: The Soviets, built the hydrogen bomb , and strengthened the NATO alliance that covered Western Europe . According to Gorlizki and Khlevniuk, Stalin's consistent and overriding goal after 1945 was to consolidate the nation's superpower status and in the face of his growing physical decrepitude, to maintain his own hold on total power. Stalin created a leadership system that reflected historic czarist styles of paternalism and repression yet

29151-507: The US, and soon in Ireland. The Committee is a private organisation governed by Swiss law. Just as the office of head of state can be vested jointly in several persons within a state, the sovereign jurisdiction over a single political territory can be shared jointly by two or more consenting powers, notably in the form of a condominium . Likewise the member states of international organizations may voluntarily bind themselves by treaty to

29388-778: The Ukrainian Socialist Bloc finished a distant third at 12.7%, and the Mensheviks obtained a disappointing fourth place at 3.0%. Most of the Socialist Revolutionary Party's seats went to the right-wing faction. Citing outdated voter-rolls, which did not acknowledge the party split, and the assembly's conflicts with the Congress of Soviets, the Bolshevik–Left Socialist-Revolutionaries government moved to dissolve

29625-689: The United Nations will be affected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council." Sovereignty may be recognized even when the sovereign body possesses no territory or its territory is under partial or total occupation by another power. The Holy See was in this position between the annexation in 1870 of the Papal States by Italy and the signing of the Lateran Treaties in 1929,

29862-628: The United States, South Korea, and United Nations forces in the Korean War . While the war ended in a military stalemate, it gave Mao the opportunity to identify and purge elements in China that seemed supportive of capitalism. At first, there was close cooperation with Stalin, who sent in technical experts to aid the industrialization process along the line of the Soviet model of the 1930s. After Stalin's death in 1953, relations with Moscow soured – Mao thought Stalin's successors had betrayed

30099-451: The West relatively more than with one another. From its founding until 1967, Comecon had operated only on the basis of unanimous agreements. It had become increasingly obvious that the result was usually failure. In 1967, Comecon adopted the "interested party principle", under which any country could opt out of any project they chose, still allowing the other member states to use Comecon mechanisms to coordinate their activities. In principle,

30336-479: The abolition of capitalism. For Leninist communism, such goals, including short-term proletarian interests to improve their political and material conditions, can only be achieved through vanguardism , an elitist form of socialism from above that relies on theoretical analysis to identify proletarian interests rather than consulting the proletarians themselves, as is advocated by libertarian communists. When they engage in elections, Leninist communists' main task

30573-499: The actions of communist states, distanced from them, and developed a democratic road to socialism , which became known as Eurocommunism . This development was criticized by more orthodox supporters of the Soviet Union as amounting to social democracy . Since 1957, communists have been frequently voted into power in the Indian state of Kerala . In 1959, Cuban communist revolutionaries overthrew Cuba's previous government under

30810-462: The army and Mao's wife Jiang Qing . China's youth responded to Mao's appeal by forming Red Guard groups around the country. The movement spread into the military, urban workers, and the Communist party leadership itself. It resulted in widespread factional struggles in all walks of life. In the top leadership, it led to a mass purge of senior officials who were accused of taking a " capitalist road ", most notably Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping . During

31047-415: The auspices of Comecon; compilation of digests on Comecon activities; conduct of economic and other research for Comecon members; and preparation of recommendations on various issues concerning Comecon operations. In 1956, eight standing commissions were set up to help Comecon make recommendations pertaining to specific economic sectors. The commissions have been rearranged and renamed a number of times since

31284-485: The community"; this semantic constitution has led to numerous usages of the word in its evolution. Prior to becoming associated with its more modern conception of an economic and political organization, it was initially used to designate various social situations. After 1848, communism came to be primarily associated with Marxism , most specifically embodied in The Communist Manifesto , which proposed

31521-553: The continent, the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 established the notion of territorial sovereignty as a norm of noninterference in the affairs of other states, so-called Westphalian sovereignty , even though the treaty itself reaffirmed the multiple levels of the sovereignty of the Holy Roman Empire. This resulted as a natural extension of the older principle of cuius regio, eius religio (Whose realm, his religion), leaving

31758-591: The coordination of non-existent five-year plans. From January 1, 1991, the countries shifted their dealings with one another to a hard currency market basis. The result was a radical decrease in trade with one another, as "(Central and) Eastern Europe… exchanged asymmetrical trade dependence on the Soviet Union for an equally asymmetrical commercial dependence on the European Community." The final Comecon council session took place on June 28, 1991, in Budapest , and led to an agreement to dissolve in 90 days. The Soviet Union

31995-439: The cost of documentation. This, naturally, benefited the less industrialized Comecon countries, and especially the technologically lagging Soviet Union, at the expense of East Germany and Czechoslovakia and, to a lesser extent, Hungary and Poland. (This principle would weaken after 1968, as it became clear that it discouraged new research – and as the Soviet Union itself began to have more marketable technologies.) In

32232-497: The creation of the Comecon. At first, planning seemed to be moving along rapidly. After pushing aside Nikolai Voznesensky 's technocratic , price-based approach (see further discussion below ), the direction appeared to be toward a coordination of national economic plans, but with no coercive authority from Comecon itself. All decisions would require unanimous ratification, and even then governments would separately translate these into policy. Then in summer 1950, probably unhappy with

32469-418: The deliberate elimination of barriers to trade and other forms of interaction"). Although such equalization had not been a pivotal point in the formation and implementation of Comecon's economic policies, improved economic integration had always been Comecon's goal. While such integration was to remain a goal, and while Bulgaria became yet more tightly integrated with the Soviet Union, progress in this direction

32706-557: The demobilization and migration of millions of soldiers and civilians. In the midst of this turmoil during the winter of 1946–1947, the Soviet Union experienced the worst natural famine in the 20th century. There was no serious opposition to Stalin as the secret police continued to send possible suspects to the gulag . Relations with the United States and Britain went from friendly to hostile, as they denounced Stalin's political controls over eastern Europe and his Berlin Blockade . By 1947,

32943-595: The dictator Fulgencio Batista . The leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro , ruled Cuba from 1959 until 2008. With the fall of the Warsaw Pact after the Revolutions of 1989 , which led to the fall of most of the former Eastern Bloc , the Soviet Union was dissolved on 26 December 1991. It was a result of the declaration number 142-Н of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of

33180-528: The early 1950s, all Comecon countries had adopted relatively autarkic policies; now they began again to discuss developing complementary specialties, and in 1956, ten permanent standing committees arose, intended to facilitate coordination in these matters. The Soviet Union began to trade oil for Comecon manufactured goods. There was much discussion of coordinating five-year plans . However, once again, trouble arose. The Polish protests and Hungarian uprising led to major social and economic changes, including

33417-438: The era of perestroika ("restructuring"), the last attempt to put the Comecon economies on a sound economic footing. Gorbachev and his economic mentor Abel Aganbegyan hoped to make "revolutionary changes" in the economy, foreseeing that "science will increasingly become a 'direct productive force', as Marx foresaw… By the year 2000… the renewal of plant and machinery… will be running at 6 percent or more per year." The program

33654-413: The establishment of the first eight. In 1986 there were twenty-four standing commissions, each headquartered in the capital of a member country and headed by one of that country's leading authorities in the field addressed by the commission. The Secretariat supervised the actual operations of the commissions. The standing commissions had authority only to make recommendations, which had then to be approved by

33891-490: The exception of North Korea, all of these states have started allowing more economic competition while maintaining one-party rule. The decline of communism in the late 20th century has been attributed to the inherent inefficiencies of communist economies and the general trend of communist governments towards authoritarianism and bureaucracy . While the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally Communist state led to communism's widespread association with

34128-420: The executive committee or its specialized committees. The scientific institutes on standardization and on economic problems of the world economic system concerned themselves with theoretical problems of international cooperation. Both were headquartered in Moscow and were staffed by experts from various member countries. Several affiliated agencies, having a variety of relationships with Comecon, existed outside

34365-482: The executive committee, presented to the Session, and ratified by the interested member countries. Commissions usually met twice a year in Moscow. The six interstate conferences (on water management, internal trade, legal matters, inventions and patents , pricing, and labor affairs) served as forums for discussing shared issues and experiences. They were purely consultative and generally acted in an advisory capacity to

34602-465: The expressed and institutionally recognised right to exercise control over a territory. De facto sovereignty means sovereignty exists in practice , irrespective of anything legally accepted as such, usually in writing. Cooperation and respect of the populace; control of resources in, or moved into, an area; means of enforcement and security; and ability to carry out various functions of state all represent measures of de facto sovereignty. When control

34839-425: The favorable implications for the effective individual and collective sovereignty of the smaller states, Stalin "seems to have taken [Comecon's] personnel by surprise," bringing operations to a nearly complete halt, as the Soviet Union moved domestically toward autarky and internationally toward an "embassy system of meddling in other countries' affairs directly" rather than by "constitutional means". Comecon's scope

35076-452: The feudal privilege, thereby taking the feudal ruling class out of existence. This was another key element behind the consolidation of capitalism as the new mode of production, the final expression of class and property relations that has led to a massive expansion of production. It is only in capitalism that private property in itself can be abolished. Similarly, the proletariat would capture political power, abolish bourgeois property through

35313-477: The former Eastern Bloc. In Nepal, Communists ( CPN UML and Nepal Communist Party ) were part of the 1st Nepalese Constituent Assembly , which abolished the monarchy in 2008 and turned the country into a federal liberal-democratic republic, and have democratically shared power with other communists, Marxist–Leninists, and Maoists ( CPN Maoist ), social democrats ( Nepali Congress ), and others as part of their People's Multiparty Democracy . The Communist Party of

35550-535: The go-ahead for North Korea 's invasion of South Korea , expecting a short war. He was stunned when the Americans entered and defeated the North Koreans, putting them almost on the Soviet border. Stalin supported China 's entry into the Korean War , which drove the Americans back to the prewar boundaries, but which escalated tensions. The United States decided to mobilize its economy for a long contest with

35787-470: The government is divided into different levels. External sovereignty concerns the relationship between sovereign power and other states. For example, the United Kingdom uses the following criterion when deciding under what conditions other states recognise a political entity as having sovereignty over some territory; "Sovereignty." A government which exercises de facto administrative control over

36024-507: The historic circumstances in which it finds itself", and stated that Russia might be able to skip the stage of bourgeois rule through the Obshchina . The moderate Mensheviks (minority) opposed Lenin's Bolsheviks (majority) plan for socialist revolution before the capitalist mode of production was more fully developed. The Bolsheviks' successful rise to power was based upon the slogans such as "Peace, Bread, and Land", which tapped into

36261-418: The idea to group together different countries, such as Afghanistan and Hungary , has no adequate explanation. While the term Communist state is used by Western historians, political scientists, and news media to refer to countries ruled by Communist parties, these socialist states themselves did not describe themselves as communist or claim to have achieved communism; they referred to themselves as being

36498-546: The inspiration of religious text . In the medieval Christian Church , some monastic communities and religious orders shared their land and their other property. Sects deemed heretical such as the Waldensians preached an early form of Christian communism . As summarized by historians Janzen Rod and Max Stanton, the Hutterites believed in strict adherence to biblical principles, church discipline, and practised

36735-442: The intensifying alienation of labor experienced by the proletariat, albeit with varying degrees of class consciousness . In periods of deep crisis, the resistance of the oppressed can culminate in a proletarian revolution which, if victorious, leads to the establishment of the socialist mode of production based on social ownership of the means of production, " To each according to his contribution ", and production for use . As

36972-531: The international relationships at an economic level with the smaller states of Central Europe, and which were now, increasingly, cut off from their traditional markets and suppliers in the rest of Europe. Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland had remained interested in Marshall aid despite the requirements for a convertible currency and market economies . These requirements, which would inevitably have resulted in stronger economic ties to free European markets than to

37209-630: The lack of technical experts, managers, transportation, or needed facilities. Industrialization failed, and the main result was a sharp unexpected decline in agricultural output, which led to mass famine and millions of deaths. The years of the Great Leap Forward in fact saw economic regression, with 1958 through 1961 being the only years between 1953 and 1983 in which China's economy saw negative growth. Political economist Dwight Perkins argues: "Enormous amounts of investment produced only modest increases in production or none at all. ... In short,

37446-660: The last Communist country that still practices Soviet-style Communism, is both repressive and isolationist. Communist political thought and theory are diverse but share several core elements. The dominant forms of communism are based on Marxism or Leninism but non-Marxist versions of communism also exist, such as anarcho-communism and Christian communism , which remain partly influenced by Marxist theories, such as libertarian Marxism and humanist Marxism in particular. Common elements include being theoretical rather than ideological, identifying political parties not by ideology but by class and economic interest, and identifying with

37683-430: The law of value would still apply to socialism and that the Soviet Union was socialist under this new definition, which was followed by other Communist leaders, many other communists maintain the original definition and state that Communist states never established socialism in this sense. Lenin described his policies as state capitalism but saw them as necessary for the development of socialism, which left-wing critics say

37920-504: The legacy of Communist states. Communism derives from the French word communisme , a combination of the Latin -rooted word communis (which literally means common ) and the suffix isme ( an act, practice, or process of doing something ) . Semantically, communis can be translated to "of or for the community", while isme is a suffix that indicates the abstraction into a state, condition, action, or doctrine . Communism may be interpreted as "the state of being of or for

38157-479: The legal right to do so; de facto sovereignty refers to the factual ability to do so. This can become an issue of special concern upon the failure of the usual expectation that de jure and de facto sovereignty exist at the place and time of concern, and reside within the same organization. The term arises from the unattested Vulgar Latin * superanus (itself a derived form of Latin super – "over") meaning "chief", "ruler". Its spelling, which has varied since

38394-400: The legitimacy of who is in control of a state and the legitimacy of how they exercise their power. Tilly references an example where nobles in parts of Europe were allowed to engage in private rights and Ustages , a constitution by Catalonia recognized that right which demonstrates empirical sovereignty. As David Samuel points out, this is an important aspect of a state because there has to be

38631-446: The long run ensured liberty, equality, and fraternity , Marxists denounced 1848 as a betrayal of working-class ideals by a bourgeoisie indifferent to the legitimate demands of the proletariat . By 1888, Marxists employed the term socialism in place of communism , which had come to be considered an old-fashioned synonym for the former. It was not until 1917, with the October Revolution , that socialism came to be used to refer to

38868-439: The main Western description of the meaning and power of a State. In particular, the " Social contract " as a mechanism for establishing sovereignty was suggested and, by 1800, widely accepted, especially in the new United States and France , though also in Great Britain to a lesser extent. Thomas Hobbes , in Leviathan (1651) put forward a conception of sovereignty similar to Bodin's, which had just achieved legal status in

39105-433: The massive public desire for an end to Russian involvement in World War I , the peasants' demand for land reform , and popular support for the soviets . 50,000 workers had passed a resolution in favour of Bolshevik demand for transfer of power to the soviets Lenin's government also instituted a number of progressive measures such as universal education , healthcare and equal rights for women . The initial stage of

39342-526: The meeting was determined by a system of rotation based on Cyrillic script ). All interested parties had to consider recommendations handed down by the Session. A treaty or other kind of legal agreement implemented adopted recommendations. Comecon itself might adopt decisions only on organizational and procedural matters pertaining to itself and its organs. Each country appointed one permanent representative to maintain relations between members and Comecon between annual meetings. An extraordinary Session, such as

39579-525: The mid-1970s. They were largely unaffected by the 1973 oil crisis . Another short-term economic gain in this period was that détente brought opportunities for investment and technology transfers from the West . This also led to an importation of Western cultural attitudes, especially in Central Europe. However, many undertakings based on Western technology were less than successful (for example, Poland's Ursus tractor factory did not do well with technology licensed from Massey Ferguson ); other investment

39816-408: The misery of the proletariat  – a new class of urban factory workers who labored under often-hazardous conditions. Foremost among these critics were Marx and his associate Engels. In 1848, Marx and Engels offered a new definition of communism and popularized the term in their famous pamphlet The Communist Manifesto . In 1917, the October Revolution in Russia set the conditions for

40053-417: The most advanced capitalist development; however, the Russian Empire was one of the poorest countries in Europe with an enormous, largely illiterate peasantry, and a minority of industrial workers. Marx warned against attempts "to transform my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into a historico-philosophy theory of the arche générale imposed by fate upon every people, whatever

40290-427: The most well-known of these and have been a driving force in international relations during most of the 20th century. Classical Marxism is the economic, philosophical, and sociological theories expounded by Marx and Engels as contrasted with later developments in Marxism, especially Leninism and Marxism–Leninism. Orthodox Marxism is the body of Marxist thought that emerged after the death of Marx and which became

40527-449: The official Comecon hierarchy. They served to develop "direct links between appropriate bodies and organizations of Comecon member countries." These affiliated agencies were divided into two categories: intergovernmental economic organizations (which worked on a higher level in the member countries and generally dealt with a wider range of managerial and coordinative activities) and international economic organizations (which worked closer to

40764-402: The official philosophy of the socialist movement as represented in the Second International until World War I in 1914. Orthodox Marxism aims to simplify, codify, and systematize Marxist method and theory by clarifying the perceived ambiguities and contradictions of classical Marxism. The philosophy of orthodox Marxism includes the understanding that material development (advances in technology in

41001-470: The one in December 1985, might be held with the consent of at least one-third of the members. Such meetings usually took place in Moscow. The highest executive organ in Comecon, the executive committee, was entrusted with elaborating policy recommendations and supervising their implementation between sessions. In addition, it supervised work on plan coordination and scientific-technical cooperation. Composed of one representative from each member country, usually

41238-431: The only element which places into the realm of possibility moving on from this mode of production. This dictatorship , based on the Paris Commune 's model, is to be the most democratic state where the whole of the public authority is elected and recallable under the basis of universal suffrage . Sovereignty Sovereignty can generally be defined as supreme authority . Sovereignty entails hierarchy within

41475-805: The operational level of research, production, or trade). A few examples of the former are the International Bank for Economic Cooperation (managed the transferable rouble system), the International Investment Bank (in charge of financing joint projects), and Intermetall (encouraged cooperation in ferrous metallurgy ). International economic organizations generally took the form of either joint enterprises, international economic associations or unions, or international economic partnerships. The latter included Interatominstrument (nuclear machinery producers), Intertekstilmash (textile machinery producers), and Haldex (a Hungarian-Polish joint enterprise for reprocessing coal slag). Communism Communism (from Latin communis , 'common, universal')

41712-644: The origin of power), provides that the people are the legitimate sovereign. Rousseau considered sovereignty to be inalienable; he condemned the distinction between the origin and the exercise of sovereignty, a distinction upon which constitutional monarchy or representative democracy is founded. John Locke , and Montesquieu are also key figures in the unfolding of the concept of sovereignty; their views differ with Rousseau and with Hobbes on this issue of alienability. The second book of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Du Contrat Social, ou Principes du droit politique (1762) deals with sovereignty and its rights. Sovereignty, or

41949-428: The other Comecon states. This lack of either rationality or international central planning tended to promote autarky in each Comecon country because none fully trusted the others to deliver goods and services. With few exceptions, foreign trade in the Comecon countries was a state monopoly , and the state agencies and captive trading companies were often corrupt. Even at best, this tended to put several removes between

42186-413: The party as being reliable and completely subject to party discipline . Trotskyism overtook the left communists as the main dissident communist current, while more libertarian communisms , dating back to the libertarian Marxist current of council communism, remained important dissident communisms outside the Soviet Union. Following Lenin's democratic centralism , the Leninist parties were organized on

42423-401: The party who are full-time professional revolutionaries, as was conceived by Vladimir Lenin . Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism , to understand social class relations and social conflict and a dialectical perspective to view social transformation . It originates from

42660-444: The people in return for his maintaining their physical safety—led him to conclude that if and when the ruler fails, the people recover their ability to protect themselves by forming a new contract. Hobbes's theories decisively shape the concept of sovereignty through the medium of social contract theories. Jean-Jacques Rousseau 's (1712–1778) definition of popular sovereignty (with early antecedents in Francisco Suárez 's theory of

42897-402: The political ideologies grouped around those. All of these different ideologies generally share the analysis that the current order of society stems from capitalism , its economic system , and mode of production , that in this system there are two major social classes, that the relationship between these two classes is exploitative, and that this situation can only ultimately be resolved through

43134-449: The previous year. Although the Cominform was disbanded in 1956, interparty links continued to be strong among Comecon members, and all participated in periodic international conferences of communist parties. Comecon provided a mechanism through which its leading member, the Soviet Union, sought to foster economic links with and among its closest political and military allies. The East European members of Comecon were also militarily allied with

43371-491: The primary element in the transformation of society towards a communist mode of production . Communism in its modern form grew out of the socialist movement in 18th-century France , in the aftermath of the French Revolution . Criticism of the idea of private property in the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century through such thinkers as Gabriel Bonnot de Mably , Jean Meslier , Étienne-Gabriel Morelly , Henri de Saint-Simon and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in France. During

43608-412: The problems they had been intended to solve. One economic success of the 1970s was the development of Soviet oil fields. While doubtless "(Central and) East Europeans resented having to defray some of the costs of developing the economy of their hated overlord and oppressor," they benefited from low prices for fuel and other mineral products. As a result, Comecon economies generally showed strong growth in

43845-468: The productive forces continued to advance, the communist society , i.e. a classless, stateless, humane society based on common ownership , follows the maxim " From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs ." While it originates from the works of Marx and Engels, Marxism has developed into many different branches and schools of thought, with the result that there is now no single definitive Marxist theory. Different Marxian schools place

44082-440: The proletariat. According to communists, the proletariat can avoid mass unemployment only if capitalism is overthrown; in the short run, state-oriented communists favor state ownership of the commanding heights of the economy as a means to defend the proletariat from capitalist pressure. Some communists are distinguished by other Marxists in seeing peasants and smallholders of property as possible allies in their goal of shortening

44319-476: The rank of conference participants, their decisions had considerable influence on the actions taken by Comecon and its organs. The official hierarchy of Comecon consisted of the Session of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, the executive committee of the council, the Secretariat of the council, four council committees, twenty-four standing commissions, six interstate conferences, two scientific institutes, and several associated organizations. The Session of

44556-440: The religious emphasis with a rational and philanthropic basis. Notable among them were Robert Owen , who founded New Harmony, Indiana , in 1825, and Charles Fourier , whose followers organized other settlements in the United States, such as Brook Farm in 1841. In its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement in 19th-century Europe. As the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for

44793-432: The revision of the concept of sovereignty was made explicit with the Responsibility to Protect agreement endorsed by all member states of the United Nations. If a state fails this responsibility either by perpetrating massive injustice or being incapable of protecting its citizens, then outsiders may assume that responsibility despite prior norms forbidding such interference in a nation's sovereignty. European integration

45030-428: The right to decide some matters in the upbringing of their children independent of societal regulation, and municipalities do not have unlimited jurisdiction in local matters, thus neither parents nor municipalities have absolute sovereignty. Theorists have diverged over the desirability of increased absoluteness. A key element of sovereignty in a legalistic sense is that of exclusivity of jurisdiction also described as

45267-402: The rise to power of Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev increased Soviet influence in Comecon operations and led to attempts to give Comecon some degree of supranational authority. The Comprehensive Program for Scientific and Technical Progress was designed to improve economic cooperation through the development of a more efficient and interconnected scientific and technical base. This was

45504-435: The rise to state power of Vladimir Lenin 's Bolsheviks , which was the first time any avowedly communist party reached that position. The revolution transferred power to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets in which the Bolsheviks had a majority. The event generated a great deal of practical and theoretical debate within the Marxist movement, as Marx stated that socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by

45741-403: The ruler (also known as the sovereign ); natural law and divine law confer upon the sovereign the right to rule. And the sovereign is not above divine law or natural law. He is above ( i.e. not bound by) only positive law , that is, laws made by humans. He emphasized that a sovereign is bound to observe certain basic rules derived from the divine law, the law of nature or reason, and the law that

45978-404: The same period, Mao's personality cult grew to immense proportions. After Mao's death in 1976, the survivors were rehabilitated and many returned to power. Mao's government was responsible for vast numbers of deaths with estimates ranging from 40 to 80 million victims through starvation, persecution, prison labour , and mass executions. Mao has also been praised for transforming China from

46215-412: The second inside the Italian capital (since in 1869 the Palazzo di Malta and the Villa Malta receive extraterritorial rights, in this way becoming the only "sovereign" territorial possessions of the modern Order), which is the last existing heir to one of several once militarily significant, crusader states of sovereign military orders . In 1607 its Grand masters were also made Reichsfürst (princes of

46452-446: The slow adjustment of Comecon prices during a time of rising oil and gas prices, and the fact that mineral resources were abundant in the Comecon sphere, relative to manufactured goods. A possible point of comparison is that there were also winners and losers under EEC agricultural policy in the same period. Russian and Kazakh oil kept the Comecon countries' oil prices low when the 1973 oil crisis quadrupled Western oil prices. As one of

46689-488: The sovereign, proven illegitimate or otherwise contested and defeated for sovereignty to be genuine. International law, competing branches of government, and authorities reserved for subordinate entities (such as federated states or republics) represent legal infringements on exclusivity. Social institutions such as religious bodies, corporations, and competing political parties might represent de facto infringements on exclusivity. De jure , or legal, sovereignty concerns

46926-399: The specific needs of a country. One example came from former Czechoslovakia. In the 1970s, the Communist party of Czechoslovakia finally realized that there was a need for underground trains. Czechoslovak designers projected a cheap but technologically innovative underground train. The train was a state-of-the-art project, capable of moving underground or on the surface using standard rails, had

47163-431: The standard for all Comecon countries, including the USSR, and other countries could develop their own designs but only for their own needs, like Poland (respectively, Konstal trams and TS-11 jets). Poland was a manufacturer of light helicopters for Comecon countries ( Mi-2 of the Soviet design). The USSR developed their own model Kamov Ka-26 and Romania produced French helicopters under license for their own market. In

47400-471: The state-capitalist development and the Workers' in particular was critical of bureaucratization and development from above, while the Right Opposition was more supporting of state-capitalist development and advocated the New Economic Policy . Following Lenin's democratic centralism , the Leninist parties were organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the broad base. They were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher members of

47637-465: The term communism fell out of use during this period. An early distinction between communism and socialism was that the latter aimed to only socialize production , whereas the former aimed to socialize both production and consumption (in the form of common access to final goods ). This distinction can be observed in Marx's communism, where the distribution of products is based on the principle of " to each according to his needs ", in contrast to

47874-415: The term could also be understood in four different ways: Often, these four aspects all appear together, but this is not necessarily the case – they are not affected by one another, and there are historical examples of states that were non-sovereign in one aspect while at the same time being sovereign in another of these aspects. According to Immanuel Wallerstein , another fundamental feature of sovereignty

48111-545: The term frequently in his writing and was the first to describe communism as a form of government . John Goodwyn Barmby is credited with the first use of communism in English, around 1840. Since the 1840s, the term communism has usually been distinguished from socialism . The modern definition and usage of the term socialism was settled by the 1860s, becoming predominant over alternative terms such as associationism ( Fourierism ), mutualism , or co-operative , which had previously been used as synonyms. Meanwhile,

48348-453: The term's widespread association with Marxism–Leninism and the Soviet-type economic planning model. In his essay "Judging Nazism and Communism", Martin Malia defines a "generic Communism" category as any Communist political party movement led by intellectuals ; this umbrella term allows grouping together such different regimes as radical Soviet industrialism and the Khmer Rouge 's anti-urbanism. According to Alexander Dallin ,

48585-419: The trustees of public authority more and means to abuse their power, the more the Government has to have force to contain the people, the more force the Sovereign should have in turn to contain the Government," with the understanding that the Sovereign is "a collective being of wonder" (Book II, Chapter I) resulting from "the general will" of the people, and that "what any man, whoever he may be, orders on his own,

48822-400: The ultimate arbiter in all disputes on the territory. Specifically, the degree to which decisions made by a sovereign entity might be contradicted by another authority. Along these lines, the German sociologist Max Weber proposed that sovereignty is a community's monopoly on the legitimate use of force ; and thus any group claiming the right to violence must either be brought under the yoke of

49059-448: The upheaval of the French Revolution , communism emerged as a political doctrine under the auspices of François-Noël Babeuf , Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne , and Sylvain Maréchal , all of whom can be considered the progenitors of modern communism, according to James H. Billington . In the early 19th century, various social reformers founded communities based on common ownership. Unlike many previous communist communities, they replaced

49296-428: The upheaval of the French Revolution , communism emerged as a political doctrine under the auspices of François-Noël Babeuf , Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne , and Sylvain Maréchal , all of whom can be considered the progenitors of modern communism, according to James H. Billington . In the 20th century, several ostensibly Communist governments espousing Marxism–Leninism and its variants came into power, first in

49533-416: The vehicle for fundamental society-wide changes and ultimately leads to the emergence of new economic systems . As a term, orthodox Marxism represents the methods of historical materialism and of dialectical materialism, and not the normative aspects inherent to classical Marxism, without implying dogmatic adherence to the results of Marx's investigations. At the root of Marxism is historical materialism,

49770-416: The word's first appearance in English in the 14th century, was influenced by the English word " reign ". The concept of sovereignty has had multiple conflicting components, varying definitions, and diverse and inconsistent applications throughout history. The current notion of state sovereignty contains four aspects: territory, population, authority and recognition. According to Stephen D. Krasner ,

50007-472: The works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . As Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought , no single, definitive Marxist theory exists. Marxism considers itself to be the embodiment of scientific socialism but does not model an ideal society based on the design of intellectuals , whereby communism is seen as a state of affairs to be established based on any intelligent design; rather, it

50244-479: The world to pre World War II norms of sovereignty. There exists perhaps no conception the meaning of which is more controversial than that of sovereignty. It is an indisputable fact that this conception, from the moment when it was introduced into political science until the present day, has never had a meaning which was universally agreed upon. Lassa Oppenheim (30-03-1858 – 07-10-1919), an authority on international law An important factor of sovereignty

50481-550: Was cooperation . The term integration was always avoided because of its connotations of monopolistic capitalist collusion. After the "special" council session of April 1969 and the development and adoption (in 1971) of the Comprehensive Program for the Further Extension and Improvement of Cooperation and the Further Development of Socialist Economic Integration by Comecon Member Countries, Comecon activities were officially termed integration (equalization of "differences in relative scarcities of goods and services between states through

50718-422: Was "to ensure the comprehensive examination and a multilateral settlement of the major problems of cooperation among member countries in the economy, science, and technology." All committees were headquartered in Moscow and usually met there. These committees advised the standing commissions, the Secretariat, the interstate conferences, and the scientific institutes in their areas of specialization. Their jurisdiction

50955-532: Was Comecon's primary economic research and administrative organ. The secretary, who has been a Soviet official since Comecon creation, was the official Comecon representative to Comecon member states and to other states and international organizations. Subordinate to the secretary were his deputy and the various departments of the Secretariat, which generally corresponded to the standing commissions. The Secretariat's responsibilities included preparation and organization of Comecon sessions and other meetings conducted under

51192-431: Was a practical expression of this circumscription when the Westphalian principle of non-intervention was no longer observed for cases where the United Nations or another international organization endorsed a political or military action. Previously, actions in Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Kosovo , Somalia , Rwanda , Haiti , Cambodia or Liberia would have been regarded as illegitimate interference in internal affairs. In 2005,

51429-428: Was a tendency to underprice raw materials relative to the manufactured goods produced in many of the Comecon countries. International barter helped preserve the Comecon countries' scarce hard currency reserves. In strict economic terms, barter inevitably harmed countries whose goods would have brought higher prices in the free market or whose imports could have been obtained more cheaply and benefitted those for whom it

51666-405: Was also created under Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia ; Tito's independent policies led to the Tito–Stalin split and expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform in 1948, and Titoism was branded deviationist . Albania also became an independent Marxist–Leninist state following the Albanian–Soviet split in 1960, resulting from an ideological fallout between Enver Hoxha , a Stalinist, and

51903-427: Was also quite modern. At the top, personal loyalty to Stalin counted for everything. Stalin also created powerful committees, elevated younger specialists, and began major institutional innovations. In the teeth of persecution, Stalin's deputies cultivated informal norms and mutual understandings which provided the foundations for collective rule after his death. For most Westerners and anti-communist Russians, Stalin

52140-416: Was believed to be the atheist way of life. In Protestant England , communism was too phonetically similar to the Roman Catholic communion rite , hence English atheists denoted themselves socialists. Friedrich Engels stated that in 1848, at the time when The Communist Manifesto was first published, socialism was respectable on the continent, while communism was not; the Owenites in England and

52377-590: Was dissolved on December 26, 1991. After the fall of the Soviet Union and communist rule in Eastern Europe, East Germany (now unified with West Germany ) automatically joined the European Union (then the European Community) in 1990. The Baltic States ( Estonia , Latvia and Lithuania ), Czech Republic , Hungary , Poland , Slovakia , and Slovenia joined the EU in 2004, followed by Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 and Croatia in 2013. To date, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany (former GDR), Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia are now members of

52614-514: Was expressing the idea that the emperor exercised a rather absolute form of sovereignty that originated in the people, although he did not use the term expressly. Ulpian's statements were known in medieval Europe , but sovereignty was an important concept in medieval times. Medieval monarchs were not sovereign, at least not strongly so, because they were constrained by, and shared power with, their feudal aristocracy . Furthermore, both were strongly constrained by custom. Sovereignty existed during

52851-462: Was generally wider than that of the standing commissions because they had the right to make policy recommendations to other Comecon organizations. The Council Committee for Cooperation in Planning was the most important of the four. It coordinated the national economic plans of Comecon members. As such, it ranked in importance only after the Session and the executive committee. Made up of the chairmen of Comecon members' national central planning offices,

53088-415: Was much more efficient, this property became worthless and the mass majority of workers could only survive by selling their labor to make use of someone else's machinery, and making someone else profit. Accordingly, capitalism divided the world between two major classes, namely that of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie . These classes are directly antagonistic as the latter possesses private ownership of

53325-420: Was never established, while some Marxist–Leninists state that it was established only during the Stalin era and Mao era , and then became capitalist states ruled by revisionists ; others state that Maoist China was always state capitalist, and uphold People's Socialist Republic of Albania as the only socialist state after the Soviet Union under Stalin, who first stated to have achieved socialism with

53562-504: Was not a success. "The Gorbachev regime made too many commitments on too many fronts, thereby overstretching and overheating the Soviet economy. Bottlenecks and shortages were not relieved but exacerbated, while the ( Central and) East European members of Comecon resented being asked to contribute scarce capital to projects that were chiefly of interest to the Soviet Union…" Furthermore, the liberalization that by June 25, 1988, allowed Comecon countries to negotiate trade treaties directly with

53799-411: Was not inevitable; "it arose because of a particular conjuncture of social and political interests in Europe." Once states are recognized as sovereign, they are rarely recolonized, merged, or dissolved. Today, no state is sovereign in the sense they were prior to the Second World War. Transnational governance agreements and institutions, the globalized economy, and pooled sovereignty unions such as

54036-402: Was officially limited in November 1950 to "practical questions of facilitating trade." One important legacy of this brief period of activity was the "Sofia Principle", adopted at the August 1949 Comecon council session in Bulgaria. This radically weakened intellectual property rights, making each country's technologies available to the others for a nominal charge that did little more than cover

54273-788: Was otherwise continually frustrated by the national central planning prevalent in all Comecon countries, by the increasing diversity of its members (which by this time included Mongolia and would soon include Cuba) and by the "overwhelming asymmetry" and resulting distrust between the many small member states and the Soviet "superstate" which, in 1983, "accounted for 88 percent of Comecon's territory and 60 percent of its population." In this period, there were some efforts to move away from central planning, by establishing intermediate industrial associations and combines in various countries (which were often empowered to negotiate their own international deals). However, these groupings typically proved "unwieldy, conservative, risk-averse, and bureaucratic," reproducing

54510-501: Was overrun by foreign forces in the Iraq War of 2003 , Iraq had not been annexed by any country, so sovereignty over it had not been claimed by any foreign state (despite the facts on the ground ). Alternatively, independence can be lost completely when sovereignty itself becomes the subject of dispute. The pre-World War II administrations of Latvia , Lithuania and Estonia maintained an exile existence (and considerable international recognition) whilst their territories were annexed by

54747-446: Was provided instead by political and ideological factors. All Comecon members were "united by a commonality of fundamental class interests and the ideology of Marxism-Leninism" and had common approaches to economic ownership (state versus private) and management (plan versus market). In 1949 the ruling communist parties of the founding states were also linked internationally through the Cominform , from which Yugoslavia had been expelled

54984-407: Was the beginning of the development of vanguardism as an hierarchical party–elite that controls society, which resulted in a split between anarchism and Marxism , and Leninist communism assuming the dominant position for most of the 20th century, excluding rival socialist currents. Other communists and Marxists, especially social democrats who favored the development of liberal democracy as

55221-477: Was the other way around. Still, all of the Comecon countries gained some stability, and the governments gained some legitimacy, and in many ways this stability and protection from the world market was viewed, at least in the early years of Comecon, as an advantage of the system, as was the formation of stronger ties with other socialist countries. Within Comecon, there were occasional struggles over how this system should work. Early on, Nikolai Voznesensky pushed for

55458-440: Was thought to be incompatible with notions of socialist solidarity. In any event, proposals for a customs union and economic integration of Central and Eastern Europe date back at least to the Revolutions of 1848 (although many earlier proposals had been intended to stave off the Russian and/or communist "menace") and the state-to-state trading inherent in centrally planned economies required some sort of coordination: otherwise,

55695-409: Was thus the first to write that relations between the people and the sovereign were based on negotiation rather than natural submission. His expediency argument attracted many of the early proponents of sovereignty. Hobbes strengthened the definition of sovereignty beyond either Westphalian or Bodin's, by saying that it must be: Hobbes' hypothesis—that the ruler's sovereignty is contracted to him by

55932-560: Was to purify communism by removing pro-capitalists and traditionalists by imposing Maoist orthodoxy within the Chinese Communist Party . The movement paralyzed China politically and weakened the country economically, culturally, and intellectually for years. Millions of people were accused, humiliated, stripped of power, and either imprisoned, killed, or most often, sent to work as farm laborers. Mao insisted that those he labelled revisionists be removed through violent class struggle . The two most prominent militants were Marshall Lin Biao of

56169-492: Was wasted on luxuries for the party elite, and most Comecon countries ended up indebted to the West when capital flows died out as détente faded in the late 1970s, and from 1979 to 1983, all of Comecon experienced a recession from which (with the possible exceptions of East Germany and Bulgaria) they never recovered in the Communist era. Romania and Poland experienced major declines in the standard of living. The 1985 Comprehensive Program for Scientific and Technical Progress and

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