by Carlos Martinez

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) – a workers' and peasants' state – lasted a mere seventy years. It has been gone for a quarter of a century. Existing socialist states face many of the same external pressures that the Soviet Union faced; future socialist states will too. In addition to interference from the imperialist world, the socialist experiments thus far have faced a number of internal problems: how to maintain economic growth in the face of constantly changing needs and expectations; how to maintain revolutionary momentum through the second, third and fourth generations of the revolution; how to balance a revolutionary internationalist foreign policy with the need to maintain peaceful coexistence with the capitalist world; how to avoid economic and diplomatic isolation and to take advantage of the latest global developments in science and technology.

158 pages, LeftWord Books, New Delhi, 2018