When Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov expressed concern that the Yalta Agreement's wording might impede Stalin's plans in Central Europe, Stalin responded "Never mind. We'll do it our own way later."[3] After Soviet forces remained in Eastern and Central European countries, with the beginnings of Communist puppet regimes installed in those countries, by falsified elections, Churchill referred to the region as being behind an "Iron Curtain" of control from Moscow.[4]
The initial problem in countries occupied by the Red Army in 1944–45 was how to transform occupation power into control of domestic development.[5] Because Communists were small minorities in all countries but Czechoslovakia,[6] they were initially instructed to form coalitions in their respective countries.[7] Soviet takeover of control at the outset generally followed a process:
a general coalition of left-wing, Anti-fascist forces;
a reorganised 'coalition' in which the Communists would have the upper hand and neutralise those in other parties who were not willing to accept their supremacy;
It was only in the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia that former partisans entered their new government independently of Soviet influence. It was the latter's publicly stubborn independent political stances, its insistence on specifically not being a puppet regime, that led to the Tito–Stalin split and the other moves towards a "Titoism" that quickly made SR Yugoslavia unique within the context of overall Eastern Bloc politics.
Property relocation
By the end of World War II, most of Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union in particular, suffered vast destruction.[9] The Soviet Union had suffered a staggering 27 million deaths, and the destruction of significant industry and infrastructure, both by the Nazi Wehrmacht and the Soviet Union itself in a "scorched earth" policy to keep it from falling in Nazi hands as they advanced over 1,600 kilometres (1,000mi) to within 24km (15mi) of Moscow.[9] Thereafter, the Soviet Union physically transported and relocated east European industrial assets to the Soviet Union.[9]
This was especially pronounced in eastern European Axis countries, such as Romania and Hungary, where such a policy was considered as punitive reparations (a principle accepted by Western powers).[10] In some cases, Red Army officers viewed cities, villages and farms as being open to looting.[11] Other Eastern Bloc states were required to provide coal, industrial equipment, technology, rolling stock and other resources to reconstruct the Soviet Union.[12] Between 1945 and 1953, the Soviets received a net transfer of resources from the rest of the Eastern Bloc under this policy roughly comparable to the net transfer from the United States to western Europe in the Marshall Plan.[12]
The red area of Germany (above) is Soviet controlled East Germany. The Soviets ceded the portion to the east of the Oder–Neisse line (light beige) to Poland, while a portion of the isolated easternmost section of German East Prussia, the Kaliningrad Oblast, was annexed directly into the USSR
Most of Germany east of the Oder–Neisse line, which contained much of Germany's fertile land, was transferred to what remained of unilaterally Soviet-controlled Poland.[13] At the end of World War II, political opposition immediately materialised after occupying Soviet army personnel conducted systematic pillaging and rapes in their zone of then divided Germany,[14] with total rape victim estimates ranging from tens of thousands to two million.[15][16][17]
Factories, equipment, technicians, managers and skilled personnel were forcibly transferred to the Soviet Union.[14] In the non-annexed remaining portion of Soviet-controlled East Germany, like in the rest of Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe, the major task of the ruling regime was to channel Soviet orders down to both the administrative apparatus and the other bloc parties pretending that these were initiatives of its own.[18]
The SED won a first narrow election victory in Soviet-zone elections in 1946, even though Soviet authorities oppressed political opponents and prevented many competing parties from participating in rural areas.[19] Property and industry were nationalised under their government.[20][21] If statements or decisions deviated from the prescribed line, reprimands and, for persons outside public attention, punishment would ensue, such as imprisonment, torture and even death.[18]
Indoctrination of Marxism–Leninism became a compulsory part of school curricula, sending professors and students fleeing to the west.[22] Applicants for positions in the government, the judiciary and school systems had to pass ideological scrutiny.[22] An elaborate political police apparatus kept the population under close surveillance,[22] including Soviet SMERSH secret police.[20] A tight system of censorship restricted access to print or the airwaves.[22]
What remained of SED opposition parties were also infiltrated to exploit their relations with their "bourgeois" counterparts in western zones to support Soviet unity along Soviet lines, while a "National Democratic" party (NDPD) was created to attract former Nazis and professional military personnel in order to rally them behind the SED.[23] In early 1948, during the Tito–Stalin split, the SED underwent a transformation into an authoritarian party dominated by functionaries subservient to Moscow.[24] Important decisions had to be cleared with the CPSU Central Committee apparatus or even with Stalin himself.[18]
By early 1949, the SED was capped by a Soviet-style Politburo that was effectively a small self-selecting inner circle.[24] The German Democratic Republic was declared on 7 October 1949, within which the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs accorded the East German state administrative authority, but not autonomy, with an unlimited Soviet exercise of the occupation regime and Soviet penetration of administrative, military and secret police structures.[25][26]
Poland
Eastern Poland (grey) was annexed directly into the USSR, while most of Germany east of the Oder–Neisse line (pink) was ceded to what remained of Poland (white), both of which would constitute the newly created People's Republic of Poland
After the Soviet invasion of German-occupied Poland in July 1944, Polish government-in-exile prime minister Stanisław Mikołajczyk flew to Moscow with Churchill to argue against the annexation of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact portion of eastern Poland by the Soviet Union.[27] Poland served as the first real test of the American President Roosevelt's Soviet policy of "giving" to Stalin assuming noblesse oblige,[28] with Roosevelt telling Mikołajczyk before the visit, "Don't worry. Stalin doesn't intend to take freedom from you" and after assuring U.S. backing, concluding "I shall see to it that your country does not come out of this war injured."[29]
The Soviet Union then compensated what remained of Poland by ceding to it the portion of Germany east of the Oder–Neisse line, which contained much of Germany's fertile land.[13][27] An agreement was reached at Yalta that the Soviets' Provisional Government made up of PKWN members would be re-organised "on a broad democratic basis" including the exiled government, and that the re-organised government's primary task would be to prepare for elections.[34][35]
Pretending that it was an indigenous body representing Polish society, the PKWN took the role of a governmental authority and challenged the pre–World War II Polish government-in-exile in London.[30] Doubts began to arise whether the "free and unfettered elections" promised at the Yalta Conference would occur.[36] Non-Stalinists and partisans, including those that fought the Nazis, were systematically persecuted.[30] Hopes for a new free start were immediately dampened when the PKWN claimed they were entitled to choose who they wanted to take part in the government, and the Soviet NKVD seized sixteen Polish underground leaders who had wanted to participate in negotiations on the re-organisation in March 1945 brought them to the Soviet Union for a show trial in June.[35][36]
A propaganda photo of a citizen reading the PKWN Manifesto, issued on 22 July 1944Line waiting to enter a store, a typical view in Poland in the 1950s and 1980s.
While underground leaders were sentenced to long prison terms, assurances that political prisoners would be released and that Soviet forces and security would leave failed to be supported by concrete safeguards or implementation plans.[37] Polish government-in-exile figures, including Stanisław Mikołajczyk then returned to a popular reception, and were able to lure several parties to their cause, effectively undermining Bloc politics.[38]
When the Mikołajczyk's People's Party (PSL) continued to resist pressure to renounce a ticket of its own outside the party bloc, it was exposed to open terror,[36] including the disqualification of PSL candidates in one quarter of the districts and the arrest of over 80,000 PSL activists,[39] followed by vote rigging that resulted in Gomułka's candidates winning a majority in the carefully controlled poll.[40][41][42]
Mikołajczyk lost hope and left the country. His followers were subjected to unlimited ruthless persecution. Following the forged referendum, in October 1946, the new government nationalised all enterprises employing over 50 people and all but two banks.[36][43] Public opposition had been essentially crushed by 1946, but underground activity still existed.[44]
Fraudulent Polish elections held in January 1947 resulted in Poland's official transformation to a non-democratic Communist state by 1949, the People's Republic of Poland. Resistance fighters continued to battle Soviet forces in the Ukrainian annexed portions of eastern Poland, the Soviet response to which included the arrest of as many as 600,000 people between 1944 and 1952, with about one third executed and the rest imprisoned or exiled.[45]
After occupying Hungary, the Soviets imposed harsh conditions allowing it to seize important material assets and control internal affairs.[46] During those occupations, an estimated 50,000 women and girls were raped.[47][48] After the Red Army set up police organs to persecute class enemies, the Soviets assumed that the impoverished Hungarian populace would support Communists in coming elections.[49]
The Communists were trounced, receiving only 17% of the vote, resulting in a coalition government under Prime Minister Zoltán Tildy.[50] Soviet intervention, however, resulted in a government that disregarded Tildy, placed Communists in important ministries, and imposed restrictive and repressive measures, including banning the victorious Independent Smallholders, Agrarian Workers and Civic Party.[49] Stalin's authoritarian regime repeatedly wrestled small concessions from opponents in a process named "salami tactics".[51] Battling the initial postwar political majority in Hungary ready to establish a democracy,[52]Mátyás Rákosi invented the term, which described his tactic slicing up enemies like pieces of salami.[53]
In early 1947, the Soviets pressed Rákosi to take a "line of more pronounced class struggle."[44] The People's Republic of Hungary was formed thereafter. At the height of his rule, Rákosi developed a strong cult of personality.[54] Dubbed the “bald murderer,” Rákosi imitated Communist political and economic programs, resulting in Hungary experiencing one of the harshest dictatorships in Europe.[52][55] He described himself as "Stalin's best Hungarian disciple"[54] and "Stalin's best pupil."[56] Repression was harsher in Hungary than in the other satellite countries in the 1940s and 1950s due to a more vehement Hungarian resistance.[52]
Approximately 350,000 Hungarian officials and intellectuals were purged from 1948 to 1956.[52] Thousands were arrested, tortured, tried, and imprisoned in concentration camps, deported to the east, or were executed, including ÁVH founder László Rajk.[57][58] Gati describes "the most gruesome forms of psychological and physical torture...The reign of terror (by the Rákosi government) turned out to be harsher and more extensive than it was in any of the other Soviet satellites in Central and Eastern Europe."
On 5 September 1944, the Soviet Union declared war on Bulgaria claiming that Bulgaria was to be prevented from assisting Germany and allowing the Wehrmacht to use its territory.[59] On 8 September 1944, the Red Army crossed the border and created the conditions for the coup d'état the following night.[59] The government was taken over by the "Fatherland Front" where the Communists played a leading role and an armistice followed.[59] The Soviet military commander in Sofia assumed supreme authority, and the Communists and their allies in the Fatherland Front whom he instructed, including Kimon Georgiev, took full control of domestic politics.[59] An armed resistance guerilla movement, known as the Goryani Movement, began immediately after Soviet occupation in 1944 and lasted until the late 1950s. It is known to be the longest as well as the first anti-Soviet armed resistance in the Eastern Bloc. The movement eventually subsided following the quelling of the 1956 uprising in Budapest, which lead to the realisation that no help would come from Western powers.
On 8 September 1946, a national plebiscite was organised in which 96% of all votes (91% of the population voted) for the abolition of the monarchy and the installation of a republic.[60] In October 1946 elections, persecution against opposition parties occurred, such as jailing members of the previous government, periodic newspaper publication bans and subjecting opposition followers to frequent attacks by Communist armed groups.[49] Thereafter, the People's Republic of Bulgaria was formed and Vasil Kolarov was appointed by the Parliament as a President (chairman) of the Republic though in fact Georgi Dimitrov, who took the post of a prime-minister, became the first man in power of the newly formed republic. The nine-year-old king Simeon II of Sax-Cobourg-Gotta was sent to exile accompanied by his mother the Queen Jovana of Savoy and his sister princess Maria-Louisa.
On 6 June 1947, parliamentary leader Nikola Petkov, a critic of Soviet rule,[49] was arrested in the Parliament building, subjected to a show trial, found guilty of espionage, sentenced to death,[61] and hanged on 23 September 1947. The Bulgarian secret police arranged for the publication of a false Petkov confession.[62] The confession's false nature was so obvious that it became an embarrassment and the authorities ceased mentioning it.[62]
In 1943, Czechoslovakian leader in exile Edvard Beneš agreed to Stalin's demands for unconditional agreement with Soviet foreign policy, including the expulsion of over one million Sudeten ethnic Germans identified as "rich people" and ethnic Hungarians, directed by the Beneš decrees.[63] Beneš promised Stalin a "close postwar collaboration" in military and economic affairs, including confiscation and nationalisation of large landowners' property, factories, mines, steelworks and banks under a Czechoslovakian "national road to socialism".[63] While Beneš was not a Moscow cadre and several domestic reforms of other Eastern Bloc countries were not part Beneš' plan, Stalin did not object because the plan included property expropriation and he was satisfied with the relative strength of Communists in Czechoslovakia compared to other Eastern Bloc countries.[63]
Beneš traveled to Moscow in March 1945.[64] After answering a list of questions by the Soviet NKVD, Beneš pleased Moscow with his plans to deport two million ethnic Sudeten Germans and 400,000 to 600,000 Hungarians, and to build a strong army that would closely coordinate with the Red Army.[64] In April 1945, the Third Republic, a national front coalition ruled by three socialist parties, was formed. Because of the USSR's strength (they held 114 of 300 seats) and Beneš' loyalty, unlike in other Eastern Bloc countries, the Kremlin did not require Bloc politics or "reliable" cadres in Czechoslovakian power positions, and the executive and legislative branches retained their traditional structures.[65]
However, the Soviet Union was, at first, disappointed that their party did not take advantage of their position after receiving the most votes in 1946 elections.[66] While they had deprived the traditional administration of major functions by transferring local and regional government to newly established committees in which they largely dominated, they failed to eliminate "bourgeois" influence in the army or to expropriate industrialists and large landowners.[67]
The existence of a somewhat independent political structure and Czechoslovakia's initial absence of stereotypical Eastern Bloc political and socioeconomic systems began to be seen as problematic by Soviet authorities.[68] While parties outside the "National Front" were excluded from the government, they were still allowed to exist.[67] In contrast to countries occupied by the Red Army, there were no Soviet occupation authorities in Czechoslovakia upon whom the USSR could rely to assert a leading role.[67]
Hope in Moscow was waning for a victory in the upcoming 1948 elections.[44] A May 1947 Kremlin report concluded that "reactionary elements" praising western democracy had strengthened.[44] Following Czechoslovakia's brief consideration of taking Marshall Plan funds,[67] and the subsequent scolding of their parties by the Cominform at Szklarska Poręba in September 1947, Rudolf Slánský returned to Prague with a plan for the final seizure of power, including the StB's elimination of party enemies and purging of dissidents.[69]
As the Red Army battled the Wehrmacht and Romanian forces in August 1944, Soviet agent Emil Bodnăraș organised an underground coalition to stage a coup d'état that would put Communists—who were then two tiny groups—into power.[37] However, King Michael had already organised a coup, in which Bodnăraş also had participated, putting Michael in power.[37] After Soviet invasions following two years of Romania fighting with the Axis, at the February 1945 Yalta Conference and the July 1945 Potsdam Conference, the western allies agreed to the Soviet absorption of the areas.[31]
Michael accepted the Soviets' armistice terms, which included military occupation along with the annexation of Northern Romania.[37] The Soviets' 1940 annexation of Bessarabia and part of Northern Bukovina to create the important agricultural region of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic[70] (while other Romanian territories were converted into the Chernivtsi Oblast and Izmail Oblast of the Ukrainian SSR) became a point of tension between Romania and the Soviet Union, especially after 1965.[71] The Yalta Conference also had granted the Soviet Union a predominant interest in what remained of Romania, which coincided with the Soviet occupation of Romania.
The Soviets organised the National Democratic Front, which was composed of several parties including the Ploughmen's Front.[37] It became increasingly Soviet dominated.[37] In February 1945, Soviet proponents provoked a crisis to exploit support by the Soviet occupation power for enforcement of unlimited control.[37] In March 1945, Stalin aide Andre Vyshinskii traveled to Bucharest and installed a government that included only members subservient to the National Front.[37]
This included Ploughmen's Front member Dr. Petru Groza, who became prime minister. Groza installed a government that included many parties, though Communists held the key ministries. The potential of army resistance was neutralised by the removal of major troop leaders and the inclusion of two divisions staffed with ideologically trained prisoners of war.[37] Bodnăraş was appointed General Secretary and initiated re-organisation of the general police and secret police.[37]
Over western allies' objections, traditional parties were excluded from government and subjected to intensifying persecution.[37] Political persecution of local leaders and strict radio and press control were designed to prepare for an eventual unlimited Communist totalitarianism, including the liquidation of opposition.[59] When King Michael attempted to force Groza's resignation by refusing to sign any legislation ("the royal strike"), Groza enacted laws without Michael's signature.
In early 1947, Bodnăraş reported that Romanian leaders Gheorghiu-Dej and Maurer were seeking to bolster the Romanian economy by developing relations with Britain and the United States and were complaining about Soviet occupying troops.[44] Thereafter, the PCR eliminated the role of the centrist parties, including a show trial of National Peasants' Party leaders, and forced other parties to merge with the PCR.[72] By 1947, most non-Communist politicians were either executed, in exile or in prison. In December, Groza and Gheorghiu-Dej forced Michael to abdicate at gunpoint, and hours later the Communist-dominated legislature proclaimed Romania a "People's Republic."
On 29 December 1944, the National Liberation Movement drove the German occupiers out of Tirana. The LNC, as it was popularly called, was dominated by the two-year-old Albanian Communist Party, led by Enver Hoxha. From this day onward, unlike the other countries in what became the Eastern Bloc, Albania was an out-and-out Communist dictatorship. The LNC wasted little time eliminating almost all potential opposition and isolating the country from the non-Communist world. It swiftly took control of the police, the court system and the economy, while eliminating several hundred political opponents through a series of show trials conducted by judges without legal training.[73][74]
In December 1945, elections for the Albanian People's Assembly were held. However, voters only had the choice of approving or rejecting a single list from the Democratic Front (Albania), the successor to the LNC.[73] In 1946, Albania was declared the People's Republic of Albania and, thereafter, it broke relations with the United States and refused to participate in the 1947 Marshall Plan.[73]
Yugoslavia, the second-largest of the post-war countries, and the sole Communist state with open access to the Mediterranean, was only aligned with the Soviet Union for 3 post-war years (1945-1948). Its leader, Josip Broz Tito, broke with the Soviets with the Tito–Stalin split of 1948. The country subsequently came under threat of invasion by the Warsaw Pact, with the Yugoslav People's Army planning defenses against both Eastern and Western Bloc attacks. Throughout the Cold War period, the country steered an independent course, founding the Non-Aligned Movement in collaboration with Ghana, Egypt and India.
At the end of World War II, Yugoslavia was considered a victor power and had neither an occupation force nor an allied control commission.[75] Communism was considered a popular alternative to the west, in part because of the popularity of the Yugoslav Partisans during World War II and opposition to former royalist Chetnik leader Draža Mihailović and King Peter.[75] A cabinet for the new Democratic Federal Yugoslavia was formed, with 25 of the 28 members being former Communist Yugoslav Partisans led by Josip Broz Tito.[75] The League of Communists of Yugoslavia formed the National Front of Yugoslavia coalition, with opposition members boycotting the first election because it presented only a single government list which could be accepted or rejected, without opponents.[75] Censorship, denial of publication allocations and open intimidation of opposition groups followed.[75] Three weeks after the election, the Front declared that a new Republic would be formed, with a new constitution put in place two months later in January 1946 initiating the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia.[76] The Communists continued a campaign against enemies, including arresting Mihailović, conducting a controversial trial and then executing him, followed by several other opposition arrests and trials.[76] Thereafter, a pro-Soviet phase continued until the Tito–Stalin split of 1948 and the subsequent formation of the Non-Aligned Movement.
Notes
↑ Hirsch, Donald; Kett, Joseph F.; Trefil, James S. (2002), The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p.316, ISBN0-618-22647-8, Eastern Bloc. The name applied to the former Stalinist states of eastern Europe, including Yugoslavia and Albania, as well as the countries of the Warsaw Pact
↑ Satyendra, Kush (2003), Encyclopaedic dictionary of political science, Sarup & Sons, p.65, ISBN81-7890-071-8
↑ Schissler, Hanna The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949–1968
↑ When members of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) reported to Stalin that looting and rapes by Soviet soldiers could result in negative consequences for the future of socialism in post-war East Germany, Stalin reacted angrily: "I shall not tolerate anybody dragging the honor of the Red Army through the mud." (Wolfgang Leonhard, Child of the Revolution ,Pathfinder Press, 1979, ISBN0-906133-26-2
↑ Norman M. Naimark. The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949. Harvard University Press, 1995. ISBN0-674-78405-7) Accordingly, all evidence of looting, rapes and destruction by the Red Army was deleted from archives in the Soviet occupation zone.(Wolfgang Leonhard, Child of the Revolution, Pathfinder Press, 1979, ISBN0-906133-26-2.)
↑ The political process contrasted with that in western German zones occupied by Britain, France and the United States, where minister-presidents were chosen by freely elected parliamentary assemblies. (Turner, Henry Ashby The Two Germanies Since 1945: East and West, Yale University Press, 1987, ISBN0-300-03865-8, page 20)
↑ In a congratulatory telegram, Stalin emphasised that, with the creation of East Germany, the "enslavement of European countries by the global imperialists was rendered impossible." (Wettig, Gerhard, Stalin and the Cold War in Europe, Rowman && Littlefield, 2008, ISBN0-7425-5542-9, page 179)
↑ Potichnyj, Peter J. (1980), Poland and Ukraine, past and present, CIUS Press, p.329, ISBN0-920862-07-1
↑ Cohen, Saul Bernard, Geopolitics: The Geography of International Relations, Rowman & Littlefield, 2008, ISBN0-7425-5676-X, page 211
↑ 11 February 1945 Potsdam Report, reprinted in Potsdam Ashley, John, Soames Grenville and Bernard Wasserstein, The Major International Treaties of the Twentieth Century: A History and Guide with Texts, Taylor & Francis, 2001 ISBN0-415-23798-X
↑ Mark, James, "Remembering Rape: Divided Social Memory and the Red Army in Hungary 1944–1945", Past & Present – Number 188, August 2005, page 133
↑ Naimark, Norman M., The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949. Cambridge: Belknap, 1995, ISBN0-674-78405-7, pages 70–71
1 2 3 4 Granville, Johanna, The First Domino: International Decision Making during the Hungarian Crisis of 1956, Texas A&M University Press, 2004. ISBN1-58544-298-4
↑ Baer, Helmut David, The Struggle of Hungarian Lutherans Under Communism, Texas A&M University Press, 2006 ISBN1-58544-480-4, page 16
1 2 Sugar, Peter F., Peter Hanak and Tibor Frank, A History of Hungary, Indiana University Press, 1994, ISBN0-253-20867-X, page 375-77
↑ Gati, Charles, Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest, and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt, Stanford University Press, 2006 ISBN0-8047-5606-6, page 9-12
↑ Matthews, John P. C. , Explosion: The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Hippocrene Books, 2007, ISBN0-7818-1174-0, page 93-4
↑ Tőkés, Rudolf L. (1998), Hungary's Negotiated Revolution: Economic Reform, Social Change and Political Succession, p. 317. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. ISBN0-521-57850-7
↑ Gati, Charles (September 2006), Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt, Stanford University Press, ISBN0-8047-5606-6 (page 49)
The Cold War (1948–1953) is the period within the Cold War from the incapacitation of the Allied Control Council in 1948 to the conclusion of the Korean War in 1953.
The Potsdam Conference was held at Potsdam in the Soviet occupation zone from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to allow the three leading Allies to plan the postwar peace, while avoiding the mistakes of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. The participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They were represented respectively by General Secretary Joseph Stalin, Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, and President Harry S. Truman. They gathered to decide how to administer Germany, which had agreed to an unconditional surrender nine weeks earlier. The goals of the conference also included establishing the postwar order, solving issues on the peace treaty, and countering the effects of the war.
The Warsaw Pact (WP), formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance (TFCMA), was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republics of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955, during the Cold War. The term "Warsaw Pact" commonly refers to both the treaty itself and its resultant defensive alliance, the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO). The Warsaw Pact was the military and economic complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon), the regional economic organization for the Eastern Bloc states of Central and Eastern Europe.
Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountains, whilst its western boundary is defined in various ways. Most definitions include the countries of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Romania while less restrictive definitions may also include some or all of the Visegrád group, the Baltic states, the Balkans and the Caucasus. A majority of nations situated in Eastern Europe are former socialist republics of the Soviet Union.
A satellite state or dependent state is a country that is formally independent but under heavy political, economic, and military influence or control from another country. The term was coined by analogy to planetary objects orbiting a larger object, such as smaller moons revolving around larger planets, and is used mainly to refer to Central and Eastern European member states of the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War, as well as to Mongolia and Tuva between 1924 and 1990, all of which were economically, culturally, and politically dominated by the Soviet Union. While primarily referring to the Soviet-controlled states in the Central and Eastern Europe or Asia, in some contexts the term also refers to other countries under Soviet hegemony during the Cold War, such as North Korea, Cuba, and some countries in the American sphere of influence, such as South Vietnam. In Western usage, the term has seldom been applied to states other than those in the Soviet orbit. In Soviet usage, the term applied to states in the orbit of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan, whereas in the West the term to refer to those has typically been client states.
The Yalta Conference, held 4–11 February 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union to discuss the postwar reorganization of Germany and Europe. The three states were represented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and General Secretary Joseph Stalin. The conference was held near Yalta in Crimea, Soviet Union, within the Livadia, Yusupov, and Vorontsov palaces.
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc (Combloc), the Socialist Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc, was the coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were aligned with the Soviet Union and existed during the Cold War (1947–1991). These states followed the ideology of Marxism–Leninism, in opposition to the capitalist Western Bloc. The Eastern Bloc was often called the "Second World", whereas the term "First World" referred to the Western Bloc and "Third World" referred to the non-aligned countries that were mainly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America but notably also included former pre-1948 Soviet ally Yugoslavia, which was located in Europe.
The Polish Workers' Party was a communist party in Poland from 1942 to 1948. It was founded as a reconstitution of the Communist Party of Poland (KPP) and merged with the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) in 1948 to form the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR). From the end of World War II the PPR led Poland, with the Soviet Union exercising moderate influence. During the PPR years, the centers of opposition activity were largely diminished, and a socialist system was established in the country.
The Cold War originated in the breakdown of relations between the two main victors in World War II: United States and the Soviet Union, and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc, in the years 1945–1949.
The Polish government-in-exile, officially known as the Government of the Republic of Poland in exile, was the government in exile of Poland formed in the aftermath of the Invasion of Poland of September 1939, and the subsequent occupation of Poland by Germany, the Soviet Union, and the Slovak Republic, which brought to an end the Second Polish Republic.
Stanisław Mikołajczyk was a Polish politician. He was a Prime Minister of the Polish government-in-exile during World War II, and later Deputy Prime Minister in post-war Poland until 1947.
The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, known from 1948 to 1960 as the Czechoslovak Republic or Fourth Czechoslovak Republic, was the Czechoslovak state from 1948 until 1989, when the country was under communist rule, and was regarded as a satellite state in the Soviet sphere of interest.
The Tito–Stalin split or the Soviet–Yugoslav split was the culmination of a conflict between the political leaderships of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, under Josip Broz Tito and Joseph Stalin, respectively, in the years following World War II. Although presented by both sides as an ideological dispute, the conflict was as much the product of a geopolitical struggle in the Balkans that also involved Albania, Bulgaria, and the communist insurgency in Greece, which Tito's Yugoslavia supported and the Soviet Union secretly opposed.
The Hungarian People's Republic was a one-party socialist state from 20 August 1949 to 23 October 1989. It was governed by the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, which was under the influence of the Soviet Union. Pursuant to the 1944 Moscow Conference, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin had agreed that after the war Hungary was to be included in the Soviet sphere of influence. The HPR remained in existence until 1989, when opposition forces brought the end of communism in Hungary.
During World War II, the Soviet Union occupied and annexed several countries effectively handed over by Nazi Germany in the secret Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. These included the eastern regions of Poland, as well as Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, part of eastern Finland and eastern Romania. Apart from the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and post-war division of Germany, the USSR also occupied and annexed Carpathian Ruthenia from Czechoslovakia in 1945.
During the Cold War, the Iron Curtain is a political metaphor used to describe the political boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union (USSR) to block itself and its Satellite States from open contact with the West, its allies and neutral states. On the east side of the Iron Curtain were the countries that were connected to or influenced by the Soviet Union, while on the west side were the countries that were NATO members, or connected to or influenced by the United States; or nominally neutral. Separate international economic and military alliances were developed on each side of the Iron Curtain. It later became a term for the 7,000-kilometre-long (4,300 mi) physical barrier of fences, walls, minefields, and watchtowers that divided the "east" and "west". The Berlin Wall was also part of this physical barrier.
After World War II, emigration restrictions were imposed by countries in the Eastern Bloc, which consisted of the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe. Legal emigration was in most cases only possible in order to reunite families or to allow members of minority ethnic groups to return to their homelands.
Eastern Bloc media and propaganda was controlled directly by each country's communist party, which controlled the state media, censorship and propaganda organs. State and party ownership of print, television and radio media served as an important manner in which to control information and society in light of Eastern Bloc leaderships viewing even marginal groups of opposition intellectuals as a potential threat to the bases underlying communist power therein.
Eastern Bloc politics followed the Red Army's occupation of much of Central and Eastern Europe at the end of World War II and the Soviet Union's installation of Soviet-controlled Marxist–Leninist governments in the region that would be later called the Eastern Bloc through a process of bloc politics and repression. These governments contained apparent elements of representative democracy to conceal the process initially.
Soviet involvement in regime change entailed both overt and covert actions aimed at altering, replacing, or preserving foreign governments. In the 1920s, the nascent Soviet Union intervened in multiple governments primarily in Asia, acquiring the territory of Tuva and making Mongolia into a satellite state. During World War II, the Soviet Union helped overthrow many puppet regimes of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan, including in East Asia and much of Europe. Soviet forces were also instrumental in ending the rule of Adolf Hitler over Germany.
References
Berthon, Simon; Potts, Joanna (2007), Warlords: An Extraordinary Re-creation of World War II Through the Eyes and Minds of Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, Da Capo Press, ISBN978-0-306-81538-6
Bideleux, Robert; Jeffries, Ian (2007), A History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change, Routledge, ISBN978-0-415-36626-7
Cook, Bernard A. (2001), Europe Since 1945: An Encyclopedia, Taylor & Francis, ISBN978-0-8153-4057-7
Crampton, R. J. (1997), Eastern Europe in the twentieth century and after, Routledge, ISBN978-0-415-16422-1
Miller, Roger Gene (2000), To Save a City: The Berlin Airlift, 1948–1949, Texas A&M University Press, ISBN978-0-89096-967-0
Grogin, Robert C. (2001), Natural Enemies: The United States and the Soviet Union in the Cold War, 1917–1991, Lexington Books, ISBN0-7391-0160-9
Pearson, Raymond (1998), The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire, Macmillan, ISBN978-0-312-17407-1
Turner, Henry Ashby (1987), The Two Germanies Since 1945: East and West, Yale University Press, ISBN978-0-300-03865-1
Wettig, Gerhard (2008), Stalin and the Cold War in Europe, Rowman & Littlefield, ISBN978-0-7425-5542-6
Italics indicates a current ruling party or communist state
An asterisk indicates a party no longer espousing communism
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