Xiang Zuotao and Zhang Jihong: Practice and Reflection on Socialist Reforms in the Soviet Union and Eastern European Countries: Goals, Paths, and Achievements
The socialism of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries was born out of environments that were relatively backward in terms of economics and culture. Consequently, as these nations explored paths for socialist development, they faced a contradiction between relatively backward levels of productive forces and an advanced socialist system. In the process of building socialism, the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries faced a dual task: first, to liberate and develop the productive forces; and second, to reform the relations of production and the superstructure to eliminate factors constraining the development of those productive forces. In essence, the reforms in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were attempts by the ruling parties, based on problems arising during socialist construction, to promote the development of productive forces through partial adjustments to the relations of production and functional innovations in the superstructure. The reform explorations of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, which lasted nearly half a century, constitute a case of immense reference value in the history of socialist development. This article intends to analyze the reform practices of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries across dimensions such as the positioning of reform objectives, the primary content and progression of the reforms, their effectiveness, and an inquiry into the root causes of their failure, with the aim of providing useful references for contemporary socialist countries.
I. The Objectives of Reform in the Soviet Union and Eastern European Countries
Tracing the process of modern global social development, the early Western nations exhibited distinct "capital-accumulating" characteristics. Among them, the British Industrial Revolution was the most typical; its industrialization process was built upon a dual plunder—internal and external. Internally, through the "sheep-eating-men" style enclosure movement [1], peasants were forcibly deprived of their land, compelling the traditional agricultural population to transform into industrial workers, while capitalists systematically exploited laborers through excessively long working hours, appalling working environments, and low-wage systems. Externally, through colonial expansion, the wicked slave trade, and unequal trading systems, resources and wealth from across the globe were concentrated into a handful of Western nations. Within this dependent international economic system characterized by a "center-periphery" [2] structure dominated by the West, backward countries faced the practical dilemma of being "transformed into agricultural production areas mainly serving another part of the world that was primarily industrial." The Soviet model was an attempt by an actual socialist country to break the developmental paradigm dominated by capitalism and to explore a new path for achieving independence and advancing social development.
As the "weakest link in the imperialist chain" [3], Russia's social predicament in the early 20th century was highly complex. Although it had joined the ranks of the capitalist great powers, its economic structure exhibited marked dualistic characteristics—the coexistence of a highly backward agricultural economy and a nascent industrial economy, with industrial development heavily dependent on foreign capital, a narrow domestic market, and weak capacity for technological innovation. On the one hand, Russia’s fragile domestic bourgeoisie lacked the capital accumulation and political capacity to drive comprehensive industrialization; on the other hand, the penetration of international capital and the depletion caused by imperialist wars further exacerbated Russia's social contradictions and economic crises. Consequently, it was difficult for Russia to replicate the developmental path of Western capitalist countries. Following the victory of the October Revolution, the Soviet regime shouldered the historical mission of exploring a non-capitalist path of social development. It had to achieve a leap in national economic strength and military defense capabilities through rapid industrialization under the military threats and economic blockades of the capitalist world system, thereby ensuring the survival of the socialist regime and national independence. Concurrently, unlike the developmental paths of Western countries characterized by exploitation and plunder, the Soviet regime needed to inject principles of socialist fairness and justice into its own developmental path, exploring a new type of development that could both achieve economic catch-up and guarantee social equality.
After several years of arduous exploration, Lenin’s ideas for socialist construction in his later years became increasingly clear: under the leadership of an advanced Communist Party and Soviet regime, to adhere to certain socialist principles envisioned by Marx and Engels while actively absorbing and utilizing the advanced technologies of capitalist countries. Put simply, this was "socialism as the essence, capitalist technology for utility" [4]. Lenin made many incisive remarks on this. For example: "Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country"; "Be ready to take over what is good from abroad: Soviet power + Prussian railway order + American technology and trust organization + American national education, etc., etc. ++ = sum total = socialism"; "Whether socialism can be realized depends precisely upon our success in combining the Soviet power and the Soviet organization of administration with the up-to-date achievements of capitalism"; and so forth. In these formulas, the leadership of the Communist Party and the Soviet power occupied the central position; these were Lenin's primary concerns in his later years, serving as the guarantee for realizing socialism and the manifestation of its superiority.
However, after Lenin's death, the Soviet Union embarked on a path that differed from the vision of his later years, gradually forming a unique set of economic, political, and cultural structures known as the Soviet model. The core of the Soviet model lay in political power, rather than market forces, playing the key role in economic development. The state centrally allocated resources and developed key sectors and industries required for industrialization in a planned manner. Through mandatory planning [5], the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and government agencies seized decision-making power over the macro- and micro-economy, as well as the authority to dispose of human, material, and financial resources. They organized the entirety of social and economic life, rapidly mobilized the funds required for industrialization, and established a complete industrial system. It can be said that the relations of production and the superstructure constructed during the Stalin era under specific historical conditions suited the developmental level of the Russian productive forces in the first half of the 20th century. By utilizing state power for the centralized allocation of resources, it propelled a leap-frog development in industrialization. Consequently, the Soviet Union completed in a few decades the industrialization process that had taken Western countries several centuries. Following World War II, Eastern European countries also achieved rapid economic development by transplanting the Soviet model, breaking through the shackles of the "center-periphery" world system via a non-capitalist path.
It must be emphasized that, as the most active force for change, the development of productive forces inevitably requires continuous adjustments to the relations of production and the superstructure to adapt to that development. When productive forces achieve revolutionary breakthroughs, rigid relations of production and a backward superstructure will form systemic obstacles; at such a time, reform becomes an inevitable choice for releasing developmental potential. By the mid-1950s, the drawbacks of the Soviet model began to manifest. As the mobilizational advantages of the early industrialization period were gradually exhausted, the highly centralized economic system and political structure alienated from being facilitators of productive force development into obstructive forces. The reform practices of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries can be viewed as the ruling parties' response to the contradictory movement between productive forces and relations of production—an attempt to break the constraints placed on productive forces by institutional and mechanistic ossification through adjusting the specific forms of the relations of production and innovating the operational mechanisms of the superstructure, so as to further liberate and develop the productive forces.
First, the highly centralized mandatory planned economic system constructed by the Soviet model was an institutional product of national industrialization strategy and resource mobilization modes under specific historical conditions. While it demonstrated a powerful capacity for resource integration in the early stages, its endogenous structural contradictions became increasingly prominent as the stage of economic development shifted. Regarding the structure of ownership, the Soviet Union simplistically equated the superiority of socialist relations of production with the increase in the degree of public ownership of the means of production. The comprehensive transformation toward public ownership completed during the Stalin era increasingly decoupled from the actual level of productive forces, leading to a rupture between the form of ownership and economic efficiency. At the level of economic management mechanisms, the Soviet Union constructed a resource allocation system in which administrative directives replaced market regulation. National plans not only stipulated macro-objectives but also detailed the production scale, product specifications, prices, and sales channels for enterprises, causing the law of value and the mechanism of supply and demand to lose their regulatory functions. The "integration of government and enterprise" (政企合一) model reduced enterprises to administrative appendages; state-owned enterprises were positioned as units for executing national plans rather than independent economic subjects. The core task of an enterprise was to fulfill planned targets rather than to pursue efficiency. Regarding industrial structure, although the Soviet strategy of prioritizing heavy industry was rational under specific historical conditions, in the long run, this "imbalanced industrialization"—achieved at the expense of agriculture and light industry—led to a long-term imbalance in the proportions of the national economy. The excessive expansion of heavy industry squeezed the production of consumer goods and agricultural investment, triggering shortages of consumer goods and slow improvements in people's livelihoods. Furthermore, it made economic growth dependent on factor inputs rather than efficiency gains, resulting in an extensive growth model of "high input, high consumption, and low output." Shortly after the Soviet model was transplanted to Eastern European countries, the contradictions of adaptability between its endogenous institutional flaws and the local economic foundations further intensified. The continuous exposure of these drawbacks forced the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries to launch economic reforms in the mid-1950s, attempting to introduce market elements within the framework of a planned economy, restructure ownership, and adjust industrial layouts, thus beginning a long exploration of the transformation of the socialist economic system.
Second, the centralization of power under the Soviet model was a product of specific historical conditions. With the arrival of the period of peaceful construction, the high concentration of the power structure, along with decision-making mechanisms and governance methods that lacked the rule of law, increasingly became the primary obstacles to the construction of socialist democratic politics. This necessitated enhancing the scientific and modern level of the national governance system and governance capacity. Although the reforms initiated by the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries in the late 1940s each possessed unique characteristics in terms of strategy and intensity, their political goals were all toward reshaping intra-Party democratic mechanisms and strengthening the leadership capacity of the ruling parties.
Third, in the field of international relations, they sought to ease relations with the capitalist world and adjust the closed system resulting from the theory of "two parallel markets" during the early Cold War. The theory of "two parallel markets," a product of the "catch-up strategy," held that the growth of the socialist camp would inevitably be accompanied by the shrinking of the capitalist market and its systemic crisis. Based on this, the Soviet Union not only strengthened the self-sufficiency of the socialist economy through the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) but also transformed ideological opposition into restrictions on economic and technological exchanges and the movement of personnel with the West. This was the inevitable result of presupposing socialist modernization as an absolute rupture from the capitalist world. The goal of Khrushchev’s "Three Peaces" policy [6] was to break through the absolutist thinking of "confrontation between two camps," acknowledge the reality of the long-term coexistence of the two systems, and replace military confrontation with "peaceful competition," thereby providing theoretical space for socialist countries to participate in international exchanges. The Eastern European socialist regimes established after World War II mostly bore the characteristics of "external implantation" rather than being the result of endogenous social change. This "exogenous origin of the system" easily led to a certain psychological alienation among the Eastern European populace toward the Soviet-led socialist camp. Therefore, when "permitted" by the Soviet Union to conduct reforms, Eastern European countries were eager to put forward demands for "de-Sovietization"—attempting to break through the shackles of a planned economy and centralized politics while also desiring to establish equal diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.
II. The Policies and Practices of Reform in the Soviet Union and Eastern European Countries
The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), held in 1956, was a significant turning point in Soviet history. The report delivered by Khrushchev broke long-standing ideological constraints, triggered reflections within the Soviet Union on the model of socialist construction, and also propelled the reform processes in Eastern European countries such as Poland and Hungary.
Reform in the political sphere began with the rehabilitation of individuals involved in wrongful, false, and mistaken cases. Khrushchev's report initiated the process of rehabilitation in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries. This rehabilitation prompted a restructuring of the Soviet bureaucratic hierarchy. However, Khrushchev attributed the errors solely to Stalin’s personality, which resulted in a lack of a legal-theoretical basis for the rehabilitation work, planting the seeds for subsequent reversals in the reforms. Rehabilitation movements in Eastern European countries took on a more transitional character. The "Resolution on Closing the Illegal Cases Against Figures of the Workers' Movement During the Period of the Cult of Personality" passed by Hungary in 1962 not only rehabilitated victims of the Rákosi era but also settled various past political cases through judicial procedures, gradually restoring the socialist legal system. Taking the 1956 Poznań protests as an opportunity, Poland passed the "Resolution on the Party's Current Political and Economic Tasks," extending the scope of rehabilitation to participants in the pre-WWII anti-fascist resistance movement, in an attempt to construct a national-state identity to bridge social divisions.
After stabilizing the spirits of the officials and the people through the rehabilitation of wrongful cases, the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries began to focus on restoring intra-Party democracy to ensure the normalization of political life within the Party. Khrushchev proposed...
The concepts of the "party of the entire people" and the "state of the entire people" expanded the space for democratic discussion within the Party to a certain extent. For example, during discussions on agricultural reform, Party members could openly express suggestions regarding the improvement of the collective farm system. Yugoslavia was even more radical in terms of inner-Party democratic reform. From the 1950s onward, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia gradually weakened its attribute of political leadership and emphasized its role in ideological and political guidance, transforming itself from a "party of professional revolutionaries" into a "mass party." The 1963 Constitution and subsequent amendments further clarified the principles of inner-Party democracy, stipulating that each republic and autonomous province should send representatives to participate equally in the Presidium of the Federal Republic, thereby achieving democratic consultative decision-making. After the Hungarian Uprising [7], the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party attempted to restore the principle of democratic centralism and implement collective leadership and majority voting to change the previous dogmatic and bureaucratic work style. The new electoral law promulgated in 1983 established a system of multi-candidate elections, allowing multiple candidates to compete for the same position within the Party, which enhanced the competitiveness and democratic nature of inner-Party elections. In 1968, the Action Programme adopted by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia stipulated the following principles of political democracy: the abolition of discriminatory practices; the abandonment of the "cadre ceiling" (干部天花板) [8] targeted at non-party personages; and the genuine strengthening of the role of democratically elected bodies. The Party's elective bodies were required first to guarantee the implementation of all rights of Party members, ensure collective decision-making, and guarantee that power would not be concentrated in the hands of a few.
In the mid-1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev made "democratization" and "glasnost" (openness) the core objectives of Soviet political reform, repeatedly emphasizing that "the main thing is democratization" and advocating for "letting glasnost shine brightly." However, due to the lack of institutional boundaries and organizational control, this quickly triggered ideological disorder within the Party and a loss of control over social public opinion. More critically, Gorbachev progressively negated democratic centralism, abolished the leading position of the CPSU, and implemented a multi-party system, leading to the dissolution of internal cohesion within the CPSU and the loss of its governing legitimacy, resulting in the rapid collapse of the Soviet political system.
In the economic sphere, the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries attempted to advance limited reforms of ownership. Ownership reform in the Soviet Union always lingered at the level of devolving management rights. Khrushchev's resolution on Further Improving the Organization of Management in Industry and Construction decentralized the management rights of some enterprises to local authorities. Brezhnev granted enterprises more autonomy in the Statute on the Socialist State Production Enterprise. Reforms in Eastern European countries were more profound than those in the Soviet Union. The Guiding Principles for the Reform of the Economic Mechanism adopted by Hungary in May 1966 pointed out: "Our planned economy is based on the simultaneous development of two forms of socialist ownership, namely state and collective ownership (including the private plot economy [9] of cooperative members). While the socialist component holds an absolute advantage, the private component, including small handicrafts, small commerce, self-production and self-marketing, and the auxiliary economy of the non-agricultural population, will continue to be maintained as an auxiliary component." In May 1987, Poland promulgated the Outlines for Determining the Problems of Economic Organizational Structure, which stipulated that different organizational forms should be adopted for the processing and distribution of railways, water transport, roads, post and telecommunications, electricity, gas, coal, etc., and that these organizational forms should be based on joint-stock companies. In such joint-stock companies, the state should hold a certain or decisive amount of capital and be led by authoritative management bodies.
At the same time, the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries explored the introduction of market mechanisms on the basis of a planned economy to stimulate economic vitality. The Soviet acceptance of the market went through three stages—from instrumentalization to catastrophization and finally to institutionalization. During the Khrushchev period, free markets for agricultural products were permitted, essentially as a supplement to the planned economy. In the 1965 "New Economic System" reform, Brezhnev introduced profit incentive mechanisms, viewing the market as a means to improve efficiency. Gorbachev attempted to reconstruct the system with a "planned commodity economy," trying to improve productive efficiency by expanding enterprise autonomy and introducing economic accounting (khozraschyot) and market regulation factors while maintaining the premise of public ownership. However, Gorbachev's economic reform measures failed to bridge and coordinate effectively, lacking the patience for step-by-step advancement and a scientific plan; instead, they caused economic chaos and stagnation, leading to the daily deterioration of people's livelihoods and a rapid decline in government credibility. Practices in Eastern European countries saw some breakthroughs—in 1968, Czechoslovakia's Action Programme clearly stated: "The improvement of the economic situation and the transition to an intensive economy cannot be achieved through traditional methods or partial adjustments to the command management and planning system, but require a fundamental transformation of the socialist economic management and planning mechanism." In 1963, the "New Economic System" reform in the German Democratic Republic included: decentralizing economic management power; implementing a system of payment for production funds and an economic lever system centered on profit; expanding the financial power of enterprises, allowing them to use profits to establish various funds such as enterprise development funds, social welfare funds, reserve funds, and bonus funds; and implementing the principle that enterprise investment should primarily rely on self-raised funds and bank loans. The economic reform measures adopted by Yugoslavia in 1965 included: expanding enterprise autonomy, focusing on the role of market and price mechanisms, implementing free foreign trade policies, and promoting the better integration of the Yugoslav economy into the international division of labor.
Unlike the previous emphasis on developing heavy industry while neglecting light industry and agriculture, the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries began to focus on adjusting the economic structure and promoting the improvement of people's livelihoods during the reform process. In 1958, the Soviet Union abolished the compulsory delivery system and implemented a procurement system. From 1952 to 1964, the average price index for grain procurement increased by 7.48 times, and for livestock products by 15.69 times, significantly increasing farmers' income. From 1954 to 1958, the compulsory delivery system for private plots and sideline production was gradually abolished, and the sideline economy developed rapidly. The Soviet Union also built "Khrushchyovka" [10] on a large scale, which to some extent alleviated the urban housing shortage. During the Brezhnev period, investment in housing construction continued to increase, the pension system was reformed, pension standards were raised, and investment in public health was increased, improving medical facilities and services. However, Brezhnev's reforms eventually became unsustainable in terms of welfare due to economic stagnation; the model of "high promises, low fulfillment" triggered a crisis of trust among the common people. Eastern European countries also focused on improving livelihoods: Hungary established a "labor dividend" system in its 1968 reform, allocating 15% of enterprise profits for worker bonuses; Czechoslovakia achieved an average per capita living space of 18 square meters in the 1970s, exceeding the levels in Western Europe during the same period; Yugoslavia constructed a "low-level, wide-coverage" welfare system through free healthcare and nine-year compulsory education. However, the oil crisis of the 1970s triggered a debt crisis, and under its influence, the livelihood reforms of Eastern European countries entered a state of stagnation, exposing the fragility of dependent economies.
In the ideological sphere, the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries attempted to realize a transition from revolutionary narrative to governance discourse. Soviet ideological reform went through three stages: "de-Stalinization—re-Stalinization—liberalization." Khrushchev replaced the "dictatorship of a class" with the theory of the "state of the entire people," attempting to shift the basis of the CPSU's governing legitimacy from "revolutionary merit" to "service capacity." Brezhnev's theory of "developed socialism" temporarily stabilized ideology but fell into hollow preaching because it was divorced from reality. Gorbachev tried to build "humane, democratic socialism." However, the reforms of "glasnost" and "democratization" went to another extreme, gradually evolving into a negation of the guiding position of Marxism-Leninism, a negation of the leading position of the CPSU, and a negation of the socialist system, eventually leading to a crisis of faith and ideological collapse. Ideology in Eastern European countries focused on localized narratives. For example, Yugoslavia replaced the "Soviet model" with "socialist self-management [11]," interpreting Marxism as a "doctrine of human liberation"; Hungary's János Kádár proposed the slogan "those who are not against us are with us," shifting the ideological focus from "class struggle" to "social integration"; Poland utilized its Catholic tradition to construct "socialist patriotism," attempting to harmonize national identity with systemic loyalty; during the "Prague Spring," Alexander Dubček proposed following a "path toward humane, democratic socialism."
In the field of diplomacy, Soviet reform manifested the dual characteristics of easing tensions with Western countries and controlling Eastern European socialist states. Khrushchev's "Three Peaces" policy—peaceful coexistence, peaceful competition, and peaceful transition—was the starting point of the Soviet diplomatic transformation. In 1959, the Soviet Union attempted to establish a pattern of "US-Soviet joint governance" through the Camp David talks. The 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty marked a shift in Soviet diplomatic strategy from "exporting ideology" to "prioritizing geopolitical interests." The "détente strategy" of the Brezhnev period was more pragmatic. For example, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty achieved a strategic balance with the United States, and the 1975 Helsinki Accords recognized the status quo in Europe. It can be said that the oscillation between "expansion and contraction" reflected the Soviet Union's inability to reconcile the contradiction between its ideological mission and its national strength—when economic strength could no longer support global hegemony, military adventurism became a desperate choice to maintain influence. However, when dealing with relations with other socialist countries, the Soviet Union displayed an aspect of "great-power chauvinism." The Soviet Union emphasized the "Theory of Limited Sovereignty," declaring that "when a threat arises to the cause of socialism in [a] country, a threat to the security of the socialist community as a whole, it stops being only a problem of the people of that country; it becomes a common problem and concern of all socialist countries," and therefore other socialist countries needed to "provide military assistance to fraternal states to eliminate the threat to the socialist system." For example, in 1968, the Soviet Union mobilized the troops of several Warsaw Pact countries to invade Czechoslovakia, suppressing the "Prague Spring" reforms under the pretext of "defending the achievements of socialism." In the 1970s, based on the "Theory of Limited Sovereignty," the "Brezhnev Doctrine" was formed, which interfered in the internal affairs of Eastern European countries in the name of socialism and internationalism, seriously affecting the relationship between the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries. Gorbachev attempted to shed the image of great-power chauvinism through "New Thinking" diplomacy, aiming to achieve the strategic goal of promoting domestic reform by easing the external environment. However, many of Gorbachev's diplomatic reform measures lacked prudent consideration and thorough planning; he blindly trusted the support of Western countries and frequently made unilateral concessions, leading to a rapid strategic retreat on a global scale, which acted as a catalyst for the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The diplomatic reforms of Eastern European countries were characterized by both the pursuit of sovereignty and diplomatic breakthroughs. Yugoslavia's non-aligned policy created a new paradigm for the diplomacy of socialist states. By advocating "de-blocization" through the Brioni Declaration, Yugoslavia became a founding and core member of the Non-Aligned Movement. In the 1970s, Yugoslavia became a hub for East-West trade, and by 1980, its trade volume with the West accounted for 56% of its total foreign trade. Hungary implemented a policy of "active neutrality," signing a most-favored-nation agreement with the European Community in 1973, becoming the first Warsaw Pact country to establish institutionalized economic ties with the West. The diplomatic reforms of Poland and Czechoslovakia were of greater political symbolic significance. In 1970, Poland signed the Treaty of Warsaw with West Germany, recognizing the Oder-Neisse border in an official document for the first time, initiating the process of reconciliation between Eastern Europe and Nazi history. Czechoslovakia's 1968 Action Programme proposed the "combination of sovereign integrity and internationalism," attempting to achieve diplomatic autonomy within the framework of the Warsaw Pact. Although these efforts were partially thwarted by Soviet intervention, they foreshadowed the "Return to Europe" trend of Eastern European countries in the post-Cold War era.
III. The Effects and Causes of Reforms in the Soviet Union and Eastern European Countries
The reforms in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries achieved some success in weakening the Soviet model. However, overall, they did not meet expectations. They failed to promote the liberation and development of productive forces through the adjustment of the relations of production and the superstructure. The reforms themselves underwent periods of reversal and ultimately reached a state of stagnation.
In terms of political system reform, Khrushchev's reforms lacked systematic consideration and deployment, leaving many residual problems. Bureaucracy and privilege were not only uncurbed but became increasingly rampant, acting as obstacles to reform. Political reform fell into a vicious cycle of "reform—reversal—ossification," weakening the authority and legitimacy of the governing party and leading to a gradual loss of social confidence in reform, which birthed political opposition during the process of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the drastic changes in Eastern Europe.
In the economic sphere, reforms in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries also encountered bottlenecks. Reform consistently failed to break through the barriers of the absolute dominance of the planned economy. Although enterprises were granted a certain degree of autonomy, the deep structure of the integration of government and enterprise remained unchanged; enterprises continued to rely on superior organs and lacked a genuine sense of being market subjects.
"Independent management" was mostly a formality. Planned targets continued to dominate enterprise behavior, and the problem of low efficiency in resource allocation was not fundamentally improved. The industrial structure remained heavily biased toward heavy industry, and issues such as shortages of consumer goods and agricultural inefficiency persisted, such that the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries generally fell into the predicament of a "shortage economy" [12]. By the mid-to-late 1980s, development in both the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries encountered severe problems. The average annual growth of the Soviet Union's total social product declined from 7.4% during the "Eighth Five-Year Plan" period to 6.3% during the "Ninth Five-Year Plan" and 4.2% during the "Tenth Five-Year Plan." Concurrently, the corresponding growth in national income slowed significantly, reaching 7.11%, 5.04%, and 3.71% respectively. The situation faced by Eastern European countries was identical; on the eve of the Drastic Changes [13], economic development had basically stagnated.
In the ideological sphere, the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries encountered the dilemma of "stagnation upon control, and chaos upon liberalization" [14]. When the authorities attempted to relax control, a pattern of multifaceted divergence rapidly appeared in the realm of thought; yet when the "red line" of ideological security was touched, the state apparatus would activate its correction mechanism to strengthen the control of public opinion. This cycling between "loosening and tightening" exposed the dilemma of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries in handling ideological issues—they needed to utilize limited social vitality to alleviate the system's legitimacy anxiety, yet they could not tolerate intellectual pluralism. Periodic tightening of control not only interrupted the process of autonomous innovation in the socio-cultural sphere but also created a crisis of trust between intellectuals and the official apparatus. The resulting rift in identity further dissolved social cohesion.
Regarding foreign relations, the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries once attempted to open up to capitalist countries to a limited extent, seeking technological and economic exchange. However, dogmatic ideological opposition consistently restricted the breadth and depth of reform. Khrushchev’s "Three Peaces" policy [15] and Brezhnev’s "Détente" strategy in his early years in power improved relations with Western countries for a period, but the degree of participation by the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries in Western markets remained very limited. Taking the Soviet Union as an example, from 1950 to 1978, its foreign trade was primarily conducted with socialist countries, and the proportion involving developed capitalist countries remained low. Meanwhile, the relationship between the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries was even more distorted. The "specialized division of labor" of the CMEA (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) destroyed the economic autonomy of Eastern European countries, making it impossible for them to establish independent industrial systems and leaving them as mere links in the CMEA production chain. More seriously, the products of CMEA countries were mainly sold within member markets and lacked competition with products from Western countries; this led to a loss of incentive to utilize advanced technology to improve products or enhance quality and craftsmanship. Because of the lag in applying new technologies, the product cycles in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries could not adapt to the needs of the international market. After the 1970s, Western countries gradually increased the share of high-knowledge and high-tech products in their exports, while the products exported by CMEA countries were clearly backward and could not penetrate Western markets, resulting in a situation of "common backwardness" among these nations. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, rapid changes in social systems occurred successively in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries; the ruling parties lost their positions and the socialist system was subverted—this marked the failure of the Soviet and Eastern European reforms. Looking into the reasons, they mainly involve the following aspects.
First, the dogmatization of Marxism was the deep-seated ideological root of the failure of reform. The scientific nature of Marxism lies not only in revealing the laws of human social development but even more in its inherent openness and criticality—Marx and Engels explicitly opposed treating the theory of scientific socialism as a "ready-made dogma" or an "immutable formula." However, the ruling parties of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries treated Marxism with an attitude of bookishness [16]. For example, Marx's assertions on issues such as socialist ownership and the planned economy were predicated on the high development of capitalism, whereas the socialist practice of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries was built upon an economic base with relatively backward productive forces. The rulers of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe ignored this fundamental difference, directly equating theoretical presuppositions—such as the abolition of private ownership and the exclusion of the market economy—with actual institutional design, thereby forming a path dependency on the planned economic system. On one hand, they rejected the market mechanism as a "heterogeneous element" of capitalism, failing to recognize its instrumental attributes in resource allocation; on the other hand, they clung to a monolithic model of public ownership, excluding practical exploration of mixed ownership structures. Even when they attempted to expand enterprise autonomy or introduce material incentives during reform, they never broke through the barriers of dogmatism and remained trapped in the predicament of "minor repairs and patchwork." The shackles of dogmatism prevented the ruling parties of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries from examining the special contradictions of the primary stage of socialism [17] with a developmental perspective. They sanctified a model of social development suited to specific historical conditions, ultimately laying the ideological fuse for the systemic crisis.
After the victory of the October Revolution, Lenin actively explored paths for socialist construction in backward countries, breaking through dogmatic understandings of Marxism and demonstrating an open posture toward the achievements of human civilization, pointing out a feasible path for the development of economically and culturally backward countries. However, the rulers of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries failed to properly handle the relationship between socialism and capitalism during the reform process, long regarding capitalism as the antithesis of socialism. For example, when the third technological revolution set off a wave of productive force revolutions after World War II—with emerging technologies represented by computers, automation, and bioengineering placing entirely new requirements on methods of production organization and mechanisms of scientific innovation—the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries still clung to an extensive growth model and refused to learn from the beneficial experiences of capitalist countries in enterprise management and technological innovation systems. This cognitive bias, which viewed socialism and capitalism as absolute opposites, deviated from the basic principles of historical materialism and directly resulted in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries missing the historical opportunity to use the diffusion effect of globalized technology to upgrade productive forces. While Western countries achieved industrial upgrading through market mechanisms and technological innovation, the closed systems of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries caused their scientific research systems to become disconnected from the international frontier, ultimately leaving them at a disadvantage in the competition of comprehensive national strength.
Even more importantly, the ruling parties’ capacity for self-revolution became increasingly weak, and a bureaucratic privileged stratum that was detached from the masses even emerged internally. Relying on their monopoly over resource distribution and policy execution, and backed by the power of resource allocation granted by the planned economic system, the bureaucratic groups constructed a system of privilege. Although rent-seeking behavior did not manifest as large-scale accumulation of private property, it caused a structural imbalance in the distribution of social wealth through the institutionalized power of resource control. In sharp contrast, the ordinary people of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries lived for a long time under an intensifying "shortage economy." During the stages of high-speed economic growth, welfare distribution under the planned system could still partially bridge the class gap. When economic development stagnated, the dual pressures of the shortage economy and hyperinflation caused the long-endured problems of unfair resource distribution among the ordinary populace to explode. The collapse of the welfare system not only weakened the ordinary people's trust in the economic system but also fundamentally shook their identification with the superiority of the socialist system, eventually evolving into a deep crisis impacting the legitimacy of the regime.
Compared to the reform dilemma of the Soviet Union, the Eastern European countries not only had to deal with the cumulative ills of the traditional planned economic system but also had to face constraints coming from the Soviet Union. The reform choices of Eastern European countries always remained within the rigid framework of Soviet strategic interests. When the Soviet Union initiated reforms and required Eastern European countries to adjust in sync, the contradiction between the reform aspirations of Eastern European countries and the strategic intentions of the Soviet Union rapidly intensified. This was primarily manifested in countries with an inclination toward autonomous reform, such as Hungary and Czechoslovakia, which attempted to break through existing constraints through institutional innovation; such moves challenged the core interests of the Soviet Union in maintaining the socialist camp system—namely, geopolitical control achieved through ideological homogenization and institutional isomorphism. The logic of Soviet intervention clearly displayed the practical form of the "Doctrine of Limited Sovereignty" [18]—allowing limited adjustments in economic and social policies while resolutely containing any change that might shake its political dominance. The military interventions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia are typical cases of the Soviet Union using coercive means to re-establish the "red line."
IV. Conclusion
The ultimate setback of the reforms in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries reveals the deep contradictions of the Soviet model: path dependency in the relations of production and the superstructure constituted the main obstacles to breaking through systemic shackles and hindering the development of productive forces. On one hand, the maintenance of existing power structures by the bureaucratic privileged stratum caused reform to fall into the trap of "marginal adjustment"; on the other hand, the constraints of dogmatism hindered innovative understanding of the laws of socialist development. Historical materialism shows that socialist construction is a process of continuous exploration, and no "once and for all" solution exists. Engels’ assertion that socialist society is "not something immutable, but rather... should be viewed as a society that is constantly changing and reforming" profoundly reveals the essential attribute of the socialist system—its developmental logic is inherent in the contradictory movement between productive forces and relations of production, and it must necessarily adapt to the dynamic evolution of productive forces through continuous self-adjustment and improvement. The industrialization achievements created by the Soviet model in specific historical stages were essentially the phase-specific results of an economically and culturally backward country relying on institutional mobilization to "catch up"; its fatal limitation lay in absolutizing the practical experience of specific historical conditions, which eventually suffocated systemic vitality. Only with the theoretical self-awareness that "reform is always on the road" [19], and by continuously promoting the dynamic adaptation of relations of production to productive forces and the superstructure to the economic base, can we continuously liberate and develop the productive forces and promote the continuous improvement and consolidation of the socialist system.
(Author's affiliation: School of International Studies, Peking University) Source: Contemporary World and Socialism, Issue 6, 2025 Editor: Huihui