People's Republic of the Congo - good or bad?

[Unclebananahead]

I've been sparring with the cappies on YouTube, and one person brought up the People's Republic of the Congo. Anyone know anything? Wikipedia (which I trust only up to a point) has scant information.

[Kléber]

One of many bourgeois nationalist military dictatorships that emulated the Soviet Union. Since 1963 in this case. The once pro-Soviet Congolese Labor Party still rules but has transitioned to neoliberal politics. Pascal Lissouba, who became President in 1992, resisted the attempts of French imperialism to diplomatically re-colonize the Republic of Congo, and was deposed by a French-backed rebellion supported by an Angolan invasion in 1997. The current leadership is rumored to be very corrupt and accused of vast personal property holdings in France, and its last two "elections" were notoriously rigged.

[Unclebananahead]

Okay, so it sounds as though there was little to nothing socialist about it. Was there any sort of application of planned economics whatsoever? I mean, were all industries still under private control?

[bailey_187]

According to the CIA fact book "In the early 1980s, rapidly rising oil revenues enabled the government to finance large-scale development projects with GDP growth averaging 5% annually, one of the highest rates in Africa." (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cf.html)

However, it began to move towards market reforms in the 90s and faced civl war etc

It seems to be one of many non-proletarian based nationalist movements of the 20th century that turned to the Soviet Union due to the fact that the Soviet Model, in terms of allowing for economic development was superior and very attractive. As porgressive as this can be, these movements tended not to be very devoted to maintaining the Soviet model and gave it up when the USSR ended.