  By any measure, semisimple modules form one of the most important classes of
modules and play a distinguished role in the module theory and its
applications. One of the most fundamental results in this area is the
Wedderburn-Artin theorem. In this paper, we establish natural generalizations
of semisimple modules and give a generalization of the Wedderburn-Artin
theorem. We study modules in which every submodule is isomorphic to a direct
summand and name them {\it virtually semisimple modules}. A module $_RM$ is
called {\it completely virtually semisimple} if each submodules of $M$ is a
virtually semisimple module. A ring $R$ is then called {\it left} ({\it
completely}) {\it virtually semisimple} if $_RR$ is a left (compleatly)
virtually semisimple $R$-module. Among other things, we give several
characterizations of left (completely) virtually semisimple rings. For
instance, it is shown that a ring $R$ is left completely virtually semisimple
if and only if $R \cong \prod _{i=1}^ k M_{n_i}(D_i)$ where $k, n_1, ...,n_k\in
\Bbb{N}$ and each $D_i$ is a principal left ideal domain. Moreover, the
integers $k,~ n_1, ...,n_k$ and the principal left ideal domains $D_1, ...,D_k$
are uniquely determined (up to isomorphism) by $R$.
