Real socialism

Real socialism (also actually existing socialism) was an ideological catchphrase popularized during the Brezhnev era within the Eastern Bloc countries and the Soviet Union. The term referred to the Soviet-type economic planning enforced by the ruling communist parties at that particular time.

From the 1960s onward, countries such as Poland, East Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, began to argue that their policies represented what was realistically feasible given their level of productivity, even if it did not conform to the Marxist concept of socialism. The concept of real socialism alluded to a future highly developed socialist system. However, the lagging productivity growth and insufficient standard of living in the Comecon countries caused the phrase "real socialism" to be increasingly perceived as dishonest and unreal. The actual party claims of nomenclatory socialism began to acquire not only negative but also sarcastic meanings. In later years, and especially after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the term began to be remembered as only one thing, as a reference for Soviet-style socialism.

After World War II, the terms "real socialism" or "really existing socialism" gradually became the predominating euphemisms used as self-description of the Eastern Bloc states' political and economical systems and their society models.De jure often referred to as "(democratic) people's republics," these states were ruled by a single Soviet-aligned Marxist-Leninist party, some of which were ruled autocratically, and had adapted a form of planned economy and propagated socialism and/or Communism as their ideology. The term "real (-ly existing) socialism" was introduced to explain the obvious gap between the propagated ideological framework and the political and economical reality faced by these states' societies.

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