Moskaus Verteidigung des „realen Sozialismus"
Moscow's defense of "real socialism"

Summary/Abstract: The unsigned editorial in partisan Moscovite journal "Communist", reproduced below with minor reductions, deals with allegations, particularly those coming from the reform-communist party and addressed to the Soviet Union, saying that the realities of the USSR, the sp-called "Real Socialism", do not correspond to the image of a communist society as designed by the classics of Marxism. The purpose of the statements of the Communist may be to provide party propagandists with ideological equipment; The article also unintentionally contains the admission that the ever-widening gap between ideal and reality is increasingly troubling the party leadership. The method used by the author of the article mainly amounts to a kind of "reinterpretation" of the meaning of Marxist theory. Particularly noteworthy in this context is the claim that between the proclamation of an ideal and its realization is a "historical distance, which is filled with struggle and building activity. But it was precisely this circumstance that critics of "real socialism" took advantage of by pointing to today's, in many respects still "unfinished states". But these differences between theory and reality would take so long for communism to be realized throughout the world. SOURCE: Socialističeskij ideal i real’nyj socializm [Das sozialistische Ideal und der reale Sozialismus], in: Kommunist, Nr. 11; 1, Juli 1979, S. 11-24)

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