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As a result, a transitional period called “People’s Democracy” (Naimark, 2010b) emerged.
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The first systematic attempt to define the theory of people’s democracy was made by Boris Nikolayevich Ponomarev, who was the Deputy Director of the International Intelligence Department, Deputy Director of the Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute, the main ideologist and historian of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Ponomarev believed that three key issues needed to be analyzed: who holds power, who controls the military, and how the economic structure is organized.
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At this stage, the earlier theories of the Soviet academy, especially the earlier “incorrect” views of Trainin and Varga, were severely criticized. In this discussion, the new authoritative theories contrasted the earlier theories in seven ways: the proletariat dictatorship and its functions, the leadership of the Communist Party, the people’s democratic revolution, the crashing of the bourgeois state, the People’s Republic as a new form of state, the economic and class structure, and the basic laws of the transition to socialism.
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After the completion of the Sovietization process, the Eastern bloc countries had a unified system of government, a unified ideological and economic system, and a unified foreign and military policy.
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Objectively speaking, the Soviet Union imposed its will on Eastern Europe in a gradual and cautious manner.
Western Studies on the Sovietization of Eastern Europe - Zhu (De Gruyter)