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People's democracy, also known as new democracy or democracy of the new type, was introduced in the immediate post-World War II years by the Soviet Union to describe the political, ideological and economic system being established in Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, North Korea, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia.

Leninist road to socialism
The publication of Aleksandr Sobolev's article "People's Democracy as a Form of Political Organization of Society" in 1951 prior to the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, dismissed the interpretation that the people's democracies were developing a distinct, national socialist model (a view held by Soviet philosophers such as Eugen Varga and Eastern European leaders such as Klement Gottwald and Georgi Dimitrov). Dimitrov's position (a view supported by several Soviet theoreticians, such as Boris Mankovsky for instance) of the people's democracies being dictatorships of the proletariat differing in form to the Soviet system, but same in content, was repudiated for being a leftist error. The main gist of the theory was that the people's democracy, while different outwardly, would develop in a trajectory very similar to the Soviet experience. Sobolev countered, claiming that from a deep reading in the classics of Marxism–Leninism and from an analysis of the Soviet experience, the knowhow of the Soviet Union was valid in for the people's democracies in their transition from capitalist to the socialist mode of production.

Sobolev, similar to other writers of the subject, wrote of the "people's democratic revolution" of undergoing to separate phases; a democratic and a socialist. However, the difference between Sobolev and the others was that he used Vladimir Lenin's theory of a socialist revolution growing out of a bourgeoisie democratic revolution. Using Lenin's and Stalin's writings as the base of his analysis, Sobolev contended that people's democracy was a new liberation movement and of organizing people's power. The first phase of the people's democratic revolution was bourgeoisie democratic in much of it content, but differed from its previous ones because of its anti-fascist and anti-imperialist character. This posture forced the revolution to go beyond the limits of the previous bourgeoisie revolutions, and broke with the traditional limits set by the bourgeoisie and transferred the powers from them to the working class. This new system of people's power was "something like the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry", with the proletariat in the drivers seat (making it similar to the Russian Revolution in which the proletariat were the minority, but were the leaders of revolutionary transformation). While circumstances differed from state-to-state by 1947–48 the people's democratic revolution had evolved into a socialist revolution in which, in all cases, the dictatorship of the proletariat had been established and the final remnants of the bourgeoisie state had been destroyed. These states were in the first phase of socialist construction, "and fulfilled all appropriate functions of such states".

The main discontinuity between Solobev and the other theorists was how Solobev divided the people's democratic revolution; one non-socialist and one socialist. Others, such as V. F. Kotok, contended that parliamentary democracy (and the institutions of the bourgeoisie) had been abolished in 1946, and that the people's democratic revolution had a strong socialist character from the onset, while Mankovsky in "The Essence of the European People's Democratic State" had not differentiated clearly between the first and second phase of the people's democratic revolution. These analyses (and others similar) were accused of left-wing deviationism, and their theories were compared to Leon Trotsky's doctrine of permanent revolution.

Poland
The theoretical aspects of people's democracy in Poland was conceived by Hilary Minc, a member of the Politburo of the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP) who served as First Deputy Premier, in 1949. He claimed that the people's democracies of Eastern Europe developed out of the Soviet Union's defeat of Hitlerism and were based around the Soviet experience in constructing socialism. He notes that the road to socialism doesn't necessarily need to be the same as the Soviet Union, quoting Vladimir Lenin;"'All nations will come to Socialism – this is inevitable, but they will not all reach it in the same way; every one will contribute its specific nature in one or another form of democracy, in one or another variant of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in one or another tempo in the Socialist transformation of the various aspects of social life.'" The main reason for the differences was (1) that, unlike the Soviet Union, the proletarian state in Poland was established with the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany and not a popular revolution like the October Revolution, (2) the Polish revolutionary struggle was mainly a national liberation struggle against German occupation and (3) the establishment of a people's democratic society in Poland, unlike in the Soviet Union, was considered a long term process. Unlike what occurred in the Soviet Union, the organizations of the bourgeoisie and other class enemies were not "smashed" immediately, instead after World War II up until 1948 when the last non-communist party was dissolved parties who advocated a return to capitalism were active in Polish civil society. It was believed that the international situation forced the Polish communists to collaborate with the "bourgeoisie" and "anti-communist forces" in Poland. However, the different "roads" accomplished the same objectives; the nationalization of "large and medium industry, banks and transportation" and the expropriation of landowners. As Minc noted;"'both in respect to the fulfilment of historical tasks and in respect to the driving class forces, the Socialist upheaval accomplished in the people's democracy is the same type as the October Revolution and possesses all of the traits of a proletarian Socialist revolution.'" Despite this, the Polish people's democracy (developed from a socialist revolution, or revolutionary process), exercised the dictatorship of the proletariat in a different way then did the Soviets due to different historical circumstances. Bolesław Bierut, the PUWP General Secretary, stated that the difference laid on "all-sided aid of the Soviet Union and the help based on the experience and achievements attained by the victorious dictatorship of the proletariat in the U.S.S.R."