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by Koshkin 977 days ago
> Haven't heard of anything like that.

(Speaking of ignorance.) The parent knows what they're talking about. "The people's democracies" was indeed the term that was customarily used within the Soviet block to include countries that did not belong to said block but otherwise lived under similar regimes.
1 comments
ivan_gammel 977 days ago
I have not heard of equivalence between „Soviet“ and „People’s democracy“ before. In fact those terms are mutually exclusive. Either your country has multi-party system, at least formally, or it is a Soviet republic.
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Koshkin 977 days ago
Not to disagree, but that’s what they were using.
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thriftwy 977 days ago
"People's democracy" is actually the regime when there's a single ruling party system but it calls itself democratic because it is comprised of, you know, the people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_democracy_(Marxism–...

As opposed to regular plain old democracy.

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ivan_gammel 977 days ago
It is literally in the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article:

People's democracy is a theoretical concept within Marxism–Leninism and a form of government which developed after World War II and allows in theory for a multi-class and multi-party democracy on the pathway to socialism.

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Koshkin 977 days ago
Incidentally,

The German Democratic Republic had a plural multi-party system. The largest by members and parliament seats were the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), followed by Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) and the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany (LDPD).

(The was also National-Democratic Party [1].)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Democratic_Party_of_G...

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