p The formation of the world socialist system is an intricate and prolonged process which began in October 1917 when the new, socialist world was born.

p The victory of popular democratic revolutions in a number of European and Asian countries after the Second World War created prerequisites for their socialist development and the formation of a world system of states with a socio- 101 economic order of a common type. This system crystallised and developed as the popular democratic revolutions advanced and turned into socialist revolutions, as socialist production relations and proletarian dictatorship struck root.

p In the immediate postwar years the internal development of the People’s Democracies was marked by a sharp class struggle between the exploiting classes and the working people, a determined struggle by all the democratic forces for popular rule, the people’s democratic path of development and for preventing the restoration of the old, bourgeois-landowner regimes. It was during this period that the foundations were laid for fraternal co-operation between the USSR and the People’s Democracies. This unity was wrought in the course of the joint struggle for winning and preserving national independence, for safeguarding and extending the revolutionary gains of the peoples, in the struggle for socialism.

p The world socialist system took shape in the main in the years 1949 and 1950. By that time socialism had triumphed in the European People’s Democracies; socialist production relations had fully gained the upper hand and the dictatorship of the proletariat in the form of People’s Democracy had been fully established. The weight and prestige of these countries in the world rose substantially and their international positions were consolidated.

p The formation of People’s Democracies in Asia—the Korean People’s Democratic Republic and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam—was of great importance.

p The proclamation of the Korean People’s Democratic Republic (September 1948) had been 102 preceded by deep-going changes in North Korea, where, on the strength of inter-Allied agreements, after the defeat of militarist Japan Soviet troops were stationed, playing a part similar to that in Central and Southeast Europe. The democratic, patriotic forces of the Korean people received full scope for their activity in North Korea. A land reform which abolished the system of semi-feudal exploitation, was carried out; industrial enterprises which had belonged to Japanese capitalists and traitors to the Korean people were nationalised.

p In an attempt to prevent democratic changes, to keep Korea as an object of exploitation and convert her into a military bridgehead, the US imperialists, whose forces occupied the southern part of the country, split Korea, setting up a puppet government in the south. In reply to the actions of the imperialists and their agents, representatives of political parties and mass organisations of North and South Korea, who met in Pyongyang in June-July 1948, decided to hold elections to the Supreme National Assembly on the entire territory of the country. Despite the terror and repressions, 77.5 per cent of the voters went to the polls in South Korea (99.97 per cent in North Korea). The Supreme National Assembly consisted of 360 South Korean and 121 North Korean representatives. The Assembly which opened on September 2, 1948, proclaimed the Korean People’s Democratic Republic and approved its constitution. Between 1950 and 1953, the Korean people repulsed the attempts of imperialism to abolish the Korean People’s Democratic Republic by force of arms.

p The struggle of the Vietnamese patriots and 103 the advance of the liberation movement in Vietnam after the expulsion of the Japanese invaders resulted in the Vietnamese people taking power into their own hands in the course of a general insurrection, and forming the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. As a result of the eightyear bitter armed struggle, the French colonialists were driven from the country and its Northern part took the road of socialism. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam, like the Korean People’s Democratic Republic, firmly joined the family of socialist countries.

p The victory of the people’s revolution in China and the formation of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949 was a paramount stage in the development of world socialism.

p The formation in October 1949 of the German Democratic Republic, the first state of workers and peasants in the history of the German people, was an event of momentous importance. The victory of People’s Democracy in the Eastern part of Germany essentially curtailed the basis of German imperialism and militarism. The German Democratic Republic at once undertook the complete uprooting of all vestiges of militarism and imperialism. From the very beginning fraternal relations were established between the GDR and other socialist states. Recognising the existing frontiers, the GDR maintains close economic and political relations with all its neighbours. The German Democratic Republic, the most western outpost of socialism in Europe, is the force which not only resists revanchist and militarist West Germany, but also shows that the German nation can develop along the road of peace and democracy.

p It is natural that the People’s Republic of China and the German Democratic Republic, just as the Korean People’s Democratic Republic and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, differed at the initial stage from other socialist states in degree of socio-economic change. There, socialist production relations triumphed after they had entered the world socialist system. The fact that the world socialist system was joined by countries differing so much in economic and cultural levels—economically developed and backward, those who had passed the capitalist stage and those who had bypassed it—from the very start determined the complex development of the community of socialist states.

p The formation of the world socialist system signified the accomplishment of the great task set by Lenin at the beginning of the 1920s: the conversion of proletarian dictatorship from a national into an international development. The world socialist system is a social, economic and political community of free, sovereign peoples following the road of socialism and communism and united by common interests, aims, and close ties of international socialist solidarity. The countries of the socialist community have the same type of economic basis—social ownership of the means of production; the same type of political system—rule of the people with the working class at their head; a common ideology—Marxism-Leninism; common interests in the defence of their revolutionary gains and national independence from encroachments by the imperialist camp; and a great common goal— communism.

p This socio-economic and political community 105 furnishes an objective basis for new, socialist international relations. A new world has arisen next to the capitalist countries, a new system of states with their own social, economic and political order.

p The formation of the world socialist system has changed not only the structure of the contemporary world, it has introduced radical changes in the system of international relations. Their basic content is determined above all by the struggle of the two opposing systems, with socialism exerting steadily growing influence on the entire course of world events.

p In the social sphere, the birth of the world socialist system means that the socialist system, now encompassing a number of states, has finally struck root in the world. The world system of socialist states represents the prototype of the future social organisation of all mankind. Broad prospects for successful advance along the road of social progress opened for all peoples. At whatever economic and political level a people may be they can clearly visualise how to advance further, to determine the aims of their struggle.

p Economically, socialism has introduced in the contemporary world a system radically differing from the capitalist economy and counterposed to it. The world socialist economic system which arose as a result of economic co-operation of socialist countries delineates the future integral world economic system. "The objective laws of the world socialist system,” it is stated in the CPSU Programme, "the growth of the productive forces of socialist society and the vital interests of the peoples of the socialist countries predetermine the increasing affinity of the various 106 national economies. As Lenin foresaw, tendencies develop towards the future creation of a world communist economy regulated by the victorious working people according to one single plan.”  [106•1 

p All these social and economic processes are exerting a decisive impact on the outcome of the struggle of ideologies in the world. The formation of the world socialist system exacerbated the crisis of bourgeois ideology. Growing fear of the future, of progress, the stake on anti-communism, disbelief in human capabilities, the absence of a perspective and positive programme—all this is a manifestation of the very deep crisis gripping bourgeois ideology.

p Having lost undivided world domination in October 1917, imperialism far from regaining it, has suffered the biggest defeats in the battle against socialism. The rise of the world socialist system signifies a new stage in the disintegration of the world capitalist system and accelerates this process.

p The formation of the world socialist system gave rise to new factors which began to determine the further course of historic development. It meant that the entire course of world events, all the international processes, including the capitalist system itself, were increasingly determined by the direct or indirect influence of world socialism. The era of capitalism’s “quiet” development, interrupted only at certain times by crises and wars, has gone. Times have arrived when capitalism’s upheavals are becoming a constantly operating factor.

p The narrower the bounds in which the laws of 107 the old, capitalist society operate, the more intensive the destructive impact of the laws governing the decline of capitalism within these bounds. Internal processes in the capitalist world are increasingly undermining the mainstays of the bourgeois system. The sharper class struggle is increasingly joined by the numerically larger proletariat whose activity and consciousness are rising. It rallies all the healthy forces of the nations resisting the omnipotence of the monopolies. At the same time the general instability of the capitalist economy is displayed more than ever, and the law of uneven development of capitalist states operates more intensively and disastrously. Against the background of capitalism’s general weakening, changes in the relationship of forces between these states proceed with unusual rapidity. The growth of imperialist contradictions has become particularly acute. The loss by imperialism of its colonial hinterland, the mounting national liberation struggle, the new, sharper form of contradictions between the colonies and metropolitan countries (between young independent states, on the one hand, and the imperialist powers, on the other) still further exacerbate the crisis now encompassing the entire imperialist system.

p Prior to the Second World War when only one socialist state existed, the defenders of capitalism were much more certain of the future of their system. Many even believed in the inevitable collapse of the "Soviet experiment”. Now that a mighty camp of socialist states has arisen, the ruling imperialist upper crust has practically nothing left of these illusions, and this affects its behaviour and its entire policy.

p Fear of the inevitable doom of the exploiting system, of the powerful socialist and democratic movement, of world socialism, has become a main factor determining the nature of imperialism’s entire policy in the postwar period. Monopoly capital tries to employ against the forces of socialism, democracy, national liberation and peace, an ever more aggressive policy, intrigues, flanking manoeuvres, subversive and splitting actions, local wars and the threat of a world war. The American monopoly bourgeoisie is seeking to establish its international diktat, and is proclaiming virtually the entire globe the "security zone" of the USA (in other words, the zone of American diktat and preparations for aggression).

p The intricate and ramified network of US military bases on foreign territories, the system of the North Atlantic Treaty and other military blocs, without precedent in history, of blocs which are intertwined and supplement each other—this entire cumbersome "security system" which the United States launched in the second half of the 1940s was conceived as a single mechanism for the entire capitalist world set into motion from a central "control board" in Washington. The US ruling element hoped to "exercise leadership" with the help of this mechanism, i.e., to achieve undivided supremacy in the part of the world where the capitalist system is still preserved and to carry out plans for restoring capitalism in socialist countries and for suppressing the national liberation, working-class and revolutionary movement in capitalist countries.

p An analysis of historical development shows that the shaping of the world socialist system proceeded in exceedingly intricate international 109 conditions of fierce struggle between the forces of the new, socialist world and the united front of the imperialist powers. Moreover, international imperialism has more than once tried to defeat socialism by armed force.

But in its desire to “extinguish” the world revolutionary process, international imperialism headed by the United States tackled a task beyond its strength. It has not succeeded, and will not succeed, in preventing society’s progress and in stemming the natural process of historical development. This is strikingly demonstrated by the epochal events after the Second World War, particularly after the emergence of the world socialist system. The victory of the socialist revolution in Cuba, which ushered in a new stage in the history of the peoples of America, the collapse of imperialism’s colonial system and the transition of a number of Afro-Asian countries to the non-capitalist path, the growth of the working-class and revolutionary movement in Western countries, the advent of a new, third stage in the general crisis of the world capitalist system—all these events took place under the direct impact of the world socialist system, introduced further radical change in the alignment of class and political forces internationally in favour of socialism, and considerably accelerated the disintegration of the old world. The operation of the laws of the new, socialist society is increasingly evident in world politics, in international events, in the world-wide system of international relations.