The Soviet Model in Eastern Europe

In the years since World War Two, the Soviet system has spread to a large number of other countries — the countries of Eastern Europe, China and North Korea, and later to North Vietnam and Cuba. The process is still continuing, with Chile as a possible second case in the Western Hemisphere. Many of these countries have experienced considerable growth success under the institutions of the Soviet command-economy model and the Soviet strategy of development. But one of the most remarkable aspects of this diffusion process is that even when the system was borrowed originally in its Stalinist form, experience soon led to some disillusionment with it, and a process of adaptation to local conditions has taken place. The result has been a process of reform and adaptation of the original model which, together with the Russians’ own modifications, has led to extensive differentiation. There are now numerous versions of socialist planning and socialist development strategy in operation in the world. This process of differentiation has been interesting as a possible harbinger of what the Russians themselves may do, but it has also been instructive as a demonstration that the Soviet model as it originally developed in the USSR is not a universally applicable approach to the problem of economic development.