The lecture deals with the analysis of the concept of socialism in Yugoslav and Soviet political economy textbooks. The concept of socialism will be presented in relation to classic Marxist theory and in relation to the mentioned textbooks. The most famous definition of socialism is that it is the transitional period between capitalism and communism. The lecture will show why this definition is not precise enough and in what sense it causes certain misunderstandings. The debate about socialism as a system which, according to Marx, should immediately follow the abolition of capitalism and the socialist revolution gained momentum precisely in the post-revolutionary period of Russian Marxism. The initial efforts of the early Soviet government were aimed at pointing out that socialism is impossible to achieve in one country, that construction at work is only a prerequisite for socialist construction, and that the long-term perspective lies in the spread of the revolution to the West. With the consolidation of bureaucratic power in the late 1920s, these efforts and this perspective were revised in favor of the idea of building socialism in one country. Mutatis mutandis, the Yugoslav authorities also acted in the direction of this idea and the justification of this process in academic circles. Three decades after the collapse of the Soviet and Yugoslav states, as well as their theoretical production, it is necessary to approach the analysis of the so-called socialist system in order to point out the defects, to be able to analyze those ideological tendencies that the Soviet and Yugoslav political systems, each in their own way and for their own interests, suppressed. Analysis of the concept of socialism is a step in that direction.

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