Eastern bloc
During the
Cold War, the term Eastern Bloc was used to refer to the
Soviet Union and its allies in
Central and
Eastern Europe . The
"Eastern Bloc" is also used as another name for the
Warsaw Pact or the
Comecon , also known as the Dinamo countries.
Yugoslavia was never part of the Eastern Bloc or the
Warsaw Pact. Although it was a Communist state, its leader,
Marshal Tito, came to power through his efforts as a partisan resistance leader during
World War II, and thus he was not installed by the Soviet
Red Army, and he owed the Soviet leadership no allegiance.
Encyclopedia
During the
Cold War, the term
Eastern Bloc was used to refer to the
Soviet Union and its allies in
Central and
Eastern Europe . The
"Eastern Bloc" is also used as another name for the
Warsaw Pact or the
Comecon , also known as the
Dinamo countries.
Yugoslavia was never part of the Eastern Bloc or the
Warsaw Pact. Although it was a Communist state, its leader,
Marshal Tito, came to power through his efforts as a partisan resistance leader during
World War II, and thus he was not installed by the Soviet
Red Army, and he owed the Soviet leadership no allegiance. The Yugoslav government established itself as a neutral state during the Cold War, and the country was one of the founders of the
Non-Aligned Movement.
Similarly, the
Stalinist Albanian government also came to power independently of the Red Army as a consequence of World War II. Albania broke with the Soviet Union in the early
1960s as a result of the
Sino-Soviet split, aligning itself instead with the
People's Republic of China and its anti-revisionist stance.
Nations within the Eastern Bloc were sometimes held in the Soviet sphere of influence through military force. Hungary was invaded by the Red Army in 1956 after it had overthrown its pro-Soviet government and replaced it with one that sought a more democratic communist path independent of Moscow; when Polish communist leaders tried to elect Wladyslaw Gomulka as First Secretary, they were issued an ultimatum by the Soviet military, demanding that Gomulka's election be canceled. Czechoslovakia was invaded in 1968 after a period of liberalization known as the
Prague Spring. The latter invasion was codified in formal Soviet policy as the Brezhnev Doctrine.
During the late
1980s, the Soviet Union gradually stopped interfering in the internal affairs of Eastern Bloc nations.
Mikhail Gorbachev's abrogation of the Brezhnev Doctrine in favor of the so-called "Sinatra Doctrine" had dramatic effects across Eastern Europe during this period. The Eastern Bloc eventually came to an end with the collapse of the pro-Soviet regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989 .
Even before this period, all the countries in the Warsaw pact did not always act as a block. For instance, the 1968 invasion of
Czechoslovakia was condemned by
Romania, which refused to take part in it.
See also
External links
- September-December 1991, in the last months of the USSR
- “Eastern Block” examines the specificities and differences of living in totalitarian and post totalitarian countries. The project is divided into chapters, each dedicated to one of the Eastern European countries – Slovak Republic, Poland, ex GDR, Hungary, Czech Republic and ex Yugoslavia.
