Why was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) called that when they were communists?
In: 5
Because they werent technically communist. Communism is an idealized society that a socialist society is trying to achieve.
The name of country does need to reflect the nature of the country. North Korea is officially called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and I don’t anyone outside of North Korea would call them democratic.
[removed]
It’s a common misconception about Soviet Union. The society was not a communist one, neither officially, not factually.
One possible reason for this is that the Communist party was running the entire country.
Actual communism has never been done. It’s theoretically as pretty great way to live, but human nature gets in the way of it being feasible (hence the multiple failed attempts at communism).
Socialism could be called communism-lite and can actually work – “communist” countries like the USSR would be better described as socialist with communist aims that turned into fairly basic fascism.
Short answer – In the USSR’s ideology, communism was seen as the long-term goal, and socialism the path to get there.
The long answer is philosophy and ideology. The USSR followed a sub-ideology of communism called Marxism-Leninism or Vanguardism. Vanguardists believe that communism is a utopian society where everyone contributes as much as they can and get as much as they need, without need for money. They call themselves communists because their goal is said communist utopia.
Vanguardists also believe that the way to achieve said communist utopia is via a vanguard party, which (violently) seizes the state in a revolution, and then runs the state in an authoritarian manner to reorganize society into one where communism is possible. The Vanguardist plan for achieving communism is to first do what is called “state capitalism”, i.e. the state owns all of the factories, businesses, etc directly and employs the people – this with the primary purpose of modernizing society to make socialism possible*.
State capitalism would then lead into socialism as the economy modernized, socialism in this case meaning that the workers owned and controlled the factories etc directly, rather than being employed by the state. Here’s where the waters get muddled a bit, because (especially post-Stalin) the USSR considered itself as having achieved socialism (even though according to the original definition they really hadn’t). As a result, they called their nations socialist, because that’s what they considered themselves to be achieved. They called themselves communists, because a communist economy was the ultimate long-term goal of their economy.
*Under traditional Marxist thinking, socialism is considered to be impossible until you have had capitalism for a while, because capitalism is good at industrializing and building up a modern economy, which socialism can then turn more fair. Marxism-Leninism was adapted for the (at the time) still pretty feudal and agrarian Russia, by having an authoritarian state rather than the market performing this capitalist step.
“Soviet” is the russian name for a council.
There is a form of democracy where you have a tier system of councils.
Each council as a distinct scope of governance down to a very small level.
Counsels send a representative to the higher level. The representative has an imperative mandate, meaning he can be recalled at any time should the council conclude their interests aren’t properly represented by that person.
Its quite an elaborate form of democratic decision making, but ofc you can debate its pros and cons.
A soviet republic is a tree structure of these councils.
The USSR wasn’t the only one btw, there was once a [Soviet Republic of Saxony](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Republic_of_Saxony?wprov=sfla1) in Germany.
Now multiple of those united under their common ideology of socialism (and a new top tier soviet) and were thus called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Communism doesn’t really have anything to do with it, maybe you might be able to have a Union of Soviet Capitalist Republics.
Please correct me wherever I am wrong (anybody who sees it) this is just my understanding as someone who never received any education on this matter.
Communism was the end goal of the communist party, hence the name of the party. That goal was only deemed achievable in relatively distant future, linked to major advances in technological and societal development. Socialism was considered the roadway to building communism, hence the name of the state, which was indeed socialist in practice. “Soviet” means “council” in Russian, it was a form of parliamentary representation.
Communism was their idealized end goal. Of course there’s no such thing as government sponsored communism, as when you take communist ideology and enforce it with government, you get socialism.
You can call your country whatever you want it to be. There’s nobody forcing a country to name itself consistent with it’s functional government, or an accurate description of the country.
As an example, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. I don’t think anyone would argue it’s Democratic, nor a Republic.
Another example, the United States of America. America should consist of all of North and South America. But nobody is telling Uncle Sam to rename itself to the United States of the Middle Bit of North America. God Bless the US of MBNA!
China, in it’s native tongue, is directly translated as “Middle Country”. That’s not exactly accurate on the international stage, but no one’s pushing to change the name.
Uzbekistan might be majority Uzbek, but there are more than Uzbek’s living there.
A name’s a name. It’s just what people called the country.
Latest Answers