I
Editor s Preface
The study of Marxist regimes has for mauy ycars been equated with the
study of communist political systems. There were several historical aud
methodological reasons Ibr this.
For many years it was not diflqeuh to distinguish the eight regimes
in Eastern Europe and four i~ Asia which resoundingly claimed ad-
herence to the tenets of Marxism and more particularly to their Soviet
interpretation-Marxism-Leninism. These regimes， variously called
People s l(el~ublic ， People s Democratic P， epublic ， or q)emocratic
Republic ， Claimed to have derived their iuspiration fi:om the Soviet
~U/lioil to which， indeed， iu tile overwhehning number of cases they
owed their establishment.
~ To，many sdmlars and analysts these regimes represented a multipli-
catioll of and geographical extension of the Soviet model and co1~se-
quontly.of d~e Soviet sphere of influence. Although there were clearly
i substan.dal similarities between tile Soviet Union and the
people s
democracies， especially in ~lie initial phases of their development， these
were often overstressed at the expense of noticing the differences
between these political systems.
! It took a few yc-ars for scholars to realize that generalizing the par-
ticular， i~e. applying the Soviet experience to other states ruled by elites
which claimed to be guided by scientific socialism ， was not good
enough. The relative simplicity of the assumption of a cohesive com-
munist bloc was questioued arier the expulsion of Yugoslavia fi om tile
Ctmmmuist Information Bureau in 1948 and in particular afi:er tile
workers riots ill l oznafi in 1956 and the Htmgarian revohttion of the
same ，car. By the mid--19ti0s， the totalitariim model of connnunist
p~litics， whicl~ until then had been very much in t;arcc， begau to
ciomble. As some ol these regimes articulated demands tbr a distinc-
tive path ofs~<:ialisI development， many specialists studying these sys-
telll:; [~Ct!all to ll~flicc (ha I r c， hesivelleSS ol the colnlntlllist bloc was
l，，~s app]~cm than had been claimed before.
AI:.，， by the mid--19，1ls， i* the newly i lde)endent Affic: n states
clc~j，~ ~alic llmJti_l，arty siate~， were ttlroillg iuto one-party states or
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