What were the Stalinist states?
MARXISTS USE the term “Stalinist” to describe the Soviet Union/Russian state after it degenerated under Joseph Stalin’s leadership from a relatively democratic workers’ state into a one-party totalitarian regime. The regimes in Eastern Europe (including Poland) that developed after World War Two shared the same features from their inception. These Stalinist states were characterised by nationalised and planned economies (replacing landlordism and capitalism) ruled over by a privileged elite of bureaucratic rulers who still called themselves ‘communist’ but ran military-police dictatorships where workers had no democratic rights. These regimes were caricatures of genuine socialism, which requires workers’ democratic participation at every level of society. Despite the economic advantages of a planned economy, the Stalinist bureaucracy’s ‘commandism’ and mismanagement led to crises which eventually resulted in the overthrow of these repressive regimes in 1989, unfortunately opening up th
