Soviet Bloc in the context of "War of independence"

Wars of national liberation, also called wars of independence or wars of liberation, are conflicts fought by nations to gain independence. The term is used in conjunction with wars against foreign powers (or at least those perceived as foreign) to establish separate sovereign states for the rebelling nationality. From a different point of view, such wars are called insurgencies or rebellions. Guerrilla warfare or asymmetric warfare is often utilized by groups labeled as national liberation movements, often with support from other states. The term "wars of national liberation" is most commonly used for those fought during the decolonization movement. Since these were primarily in the third world, against Western powers and their economic influence, and a major aspect of the Cold War, the phrase has often been applied selectively to criticize the foreign power involved.

Some of these wars were either vocally or materially supported by the Soviet Union, which claimed to be an anti-imperialist power, supporting the replacement of Western-backed governments with local Communist or other non pro-Western parties. In January 1961 Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev pledged support for "wars of national liberation" throughout the world. On the other hand, the Soviet involvement was often viewed as a way to increase the size and influence of the Soviet Bloc, and thus a form of imperialism itself. The People's Republic of China criticized the Soviet Union as being social imperialist. In turn, China presented themselves as models of independent nationalist development outside of Western influence, particularly as such posturing and other long-term hostility meant they were regarded as a threat to Western power and regarded themselves as such, using their resources to politically, economically and militarily assist movements such as in Vietnam. When the nation is defined in ethnic terms, wars fought to liberate it have often entailed ethnic cleansing or genocide in order to rid the claimed territory of other population groups.

The People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) was a partially recognised state in Southeast Asia which existed from 1979 to 1989. It was a satellite state of Vietnam, founded in Cambodia by the Vietnamese-backed Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation, a group of Cambodian communists who were dissatisfied with the Khmer Rouge due to its oppressive rule and defected from it after the overthrow of Democratic Kampuchea, Pol Pot's government. Brought about by an invasion from Vietnam, which routed the Khmer Rouge armies, it had Vietnam and the Soviet Union as its main allies.

The PRK failed to secure United Nations endorsement due to the diplomatic intervention of China, the United Kingdom, the United States and the ASEAN countries. The Cambodian seat at the United Nations was held by the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, which was the Khmer Rouge in coalition with two non-communist guerrilla factions. However, the PRK was considered the de facto government of Cambodia between 1979 and 1992, albeit with limited international recognition outside of the Soviet Bloc.

Authoritarian socialism, or socialism from above, is an economic and political system supporting some form of socialist economics while rejecting political pluralism. As a term, it represents a set of economic-political systems describing themselves as "socialist" and rejecting the liberal-democratic concepts of multi-party politics, freedom of assembly, habeas corpus, and freedom of expression, either due to fear of counter-revolution or as a means to socialist ends. Journalists and scholars have characterised several countries, most notably the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and their allies, as authoritarian socialist states.

Contrasted to democratic socialist, social democratic, anti-statist, and libertarian forms of socialism, authoritarian socialism encompasses some forms of African, Arab and Latin American socialism. Although considered an authoritarian or illiberal form of state socialism, often referred to and conflated as socialism by critics and argued as a form of state capitalism by left-wing critics, those states were ideologically Marxist–Leninist and declared themselves to be workers' and peasants' or people's democracies. Academics, political commentators and other scholars tend to distinguish between authoritarian socialist and democratic socialist states, with the first represented in the Soviet Bloc and the latter represented by Western Bloc countries which have been democratically governed by socialist parties - such as Britain, France, Sweden and Western social-democracies in general, among others. Those who support authoritative socialist regimes are pejoratively known as tankies.

Reprivatization refers to the process of restoring properties seized or otherwise nationalized from privately held owners by a government to privately held status. This may include returning seized property or compensating uncompensated former owners, or reprivatizing state held enterprises to new owners, especially banks, which were privately founded but came under state control due to economic crisis or other factors. The latter scenario is sometimes referred to as privatization, though scholars have specifically referred to the sale of nationalized Mexican and Korean banks to private shareholders as reprivatization. The terms reprivatization and privatization are sometimes used to describe similar processes. The term privatization is more often used to describe the transfer of property under long-term government control to private owners, while reprivatization implies the property being returned to privately held status came under government control on a circumstantial basis. Both terms have been used in connection with larger privatization schemes in the former Soviet Bloc, particularly the process of assigning new property rights.

Reprivatization to private owners has been sought by any number of parties whose property has been nationalized, including the traditional nobility in certain areas of Europe, Holocaust survivors, their descendants, and other survivors of persons who died in Nazi death camps and whose property was confiscated by the Nazis or by later Communist states and disposed of in various ways; and by corporations.

Urban planning in the Soviet Bloc countries during the Cold War era was dictated by ideological, political, social as well as economic motives. Unlike the urban development in the Western countries, Soviet-style planning often called for the complete redesigning of cities.

This thinking was reflected in the urban design of all communist countries. Most socialist systems exercised a form of centrally controlled development and simplified methods of construction already outlined in the Soviet guidelines at the end of the Stalinist period. The communist planning resulted in the virtually identical city blocks being erected across many nations, even if there were differences in the specifics between each country.