ABSTRACT
"Developed socialism" is the second stage in the transition from socialism to communism, and was attained by the USSR in the "early 1960s" and in certain countries of Eastern Europe by the "mid-1970s." The need to re-establish Soviet primacy in the world communist movement arose from the disarray that had characterized the communist world under Nikita Khrushchev. Even before his 1956 denunciation of Joseph Stalin, Khrushchev had encouraged diversity among communist leaders by replacing much of the former political dependence on Stalin with a system of semi-autonomous institutional and economic arrangements including the Warsaw Pact and a revitalized Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. The central issue in the debate over developed socialism was whether to declare a new stage of communist evolution. More than an esoteric dispute about ideology, however, this was in fact a debate about the proper role of Stalin in the historical and political development of the USSR.
