People's republic
A number of the short-lived socialist states that formed during World War I and its aftermath called themselves people's republics.
Decades later, following the Allied victory in World War II, the name "people's republic" was adopted by some of the newly established Marxist–Leninist states, mainly within the Soviet Union's Eastern Bloc.
A number of republics with liberal democratic political systems such as Algeria and Bangladesh adopted the title, given its rather generic nature, after popular wars of independence.
[citation needed] The collapse of the European empires during and following World War I resulted in the creation of a number of short-lived non-Marxist–Leninist people's republics during the revolutions of 1917–1923.
[5] In the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, the West Ukrainian People's Republic was formed in eastern Galicia under the political guidance of Greek Catholic, liberal and socialist ideologies.
Its supporters clashed with the Bavarian Soviet Republic, founded five months later, before revolutionary activity was put down by elements of the German Army and the paramilitary Freikorps.
[12] In the 2010s, Ukraine's pro-Russian separatist movements during the Russo-Ukrainian War declared the oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk to be people's republics, but they did not receive diplomatic recognition from the international community.
[20] The European states that became people's republics at this time were Albania,[21] Bulgaria,[22] Czechoslovakia,[23] Hungary,[24] Poland,[25] Romania[26] and Yugoslavia.
[37] During the postcolonial period, a number of former European colonies that had achieved independence and adopted Marxist–Leninist governments took the name people's republic.
Following the Revolutions of 1989, the people's republics of Central and Eastern Europe (namely Albania,[45] Bulgaria,[46] Hungary,[47] and Poland[48]), as well as Mongolia,[49] dropped the term people's from their names due to the term's association with their former communist governments, and became known simply as republics, adopting liberal democracy as their system of government.
