System and they have generally worked within a democratic framework. Socialists have also been more willing than communists to settle for partial improvements for workers rather than holding out for a total change.
In the period after World War II, most of Eastern Europe was governed by communists,
with military help from the U.S.S.R. By 1989, communism in Eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union had become more of a bureaucratic sink than a shining ideology,
and over the next two years these communist regimes collapsed. The Eastern
European states tend now to look to democratic socialism, combined with free markets,
as a model; the remnants of the Soviet Union have made stabs at economic change,
but many have also been occupied with working out ethnic and nationalistic conflicts.
Communism and socialism have been strong forces in the Third World. China, Cuba,
Vietnam, and North Korea still have more or less communist governments today, while
a number of Third World states have socialist governments.