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During the Cold War, the terms Eastern Bloc, Communist Bloc or Soviet Bloc were used to refer to European annexed or expanded Soviet Socialist Republics of the USSR and Soviet Satellite states, including members of the Soviet-dominated organizations Comecon and the Warsaw Pact. Sometimes, the term also refers to a wider range of at least partially Soviet-allied communist nations, including those outside of Europe.
ral conferences regarding Post-War Europe were held with Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (and later Clement Atlee) and/or American President Franklin D. Roosevelt (and later Harry Truman) to plan military strategy and, later, to discuss Europe's postwar reorganization.
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During the Cold War, the terms Eastern Bloc, Communist Bloc or Soviet Bloc were used to refer to European annexed or expanded Soviet Socialist Republics of the USSR and Soviet Satellite states, including members of the Soviet-dominated organizations Comecon and the Warsaw Pact. Sometimes, the term also refers to a wider range of at least partially Soviet-allied communist nations, including those outside of Europe.
Allied Conferences Regarding Post-War Europe
Several conferences regarding Post-War Europe were held with Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (and later Clement Atlee) and/or American President Franklin D. Roosevelt (and later Harry Truman) to plan military strategy and, later, to discuss Europe's postwar reorganization. Very early conferences, such as that with British diplomats in Moscow in 1941 and with Churchill and American diplomats in in Moscow in 1942, focused mostly upon war planning and supply, though some preliminary postwar reorganization discussion also occurred. In 1943, Stalin met with Churchill and Roosevelt in Tehran. In Tehran, Churchill stated that Britain was vitally interested in restoring Poland as an independent country, but Britain did not press the matter for fear that it would become a source of interallied friction. In 1944, Stalin met with Churchill in Moscow. Beginning in late 1944, the Red Army occupied much of Eastern Europe during these conferences and the discussions shifted to a more intense focus on the reorganization of postwar Europe.
Yalta Conference
In February of 1945, at the conference at Yalta, Stalin demanded a Soviet sphere of political influence in Eastern Europe. Stalin eventually was convinced by Churchill and Roosevelt not to dismember Germany. Stalin also stated that the Polish government-in-exile demands for self-rule were not negotiable, such that the Soviet Union would keep the territory of eastern Poland they had already taken by invasion with German consent in 1939, and wanted the pro-Soviet Polish government installed. After resistance by Churchill and Roosevelt, Stalin promised a re-organization of the current Communist puppet government on a broader democratic basis in Poland. He stated the the new government's primary task would be to prepare elections.
The parties at Yalta further agreed that the countries of liberated Europe and former Axis satellites would be allowed to "create democratic institutions of their own choice", pursuant to the "the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live." The parties also agreed to help those countries form interim governments "pledged to the earliest possible establishment through free elections" and "facilitate where necessary the holding of such elections." After the re-organization of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland, the parties agreed that the new party shall "be pledged to the holding of free and unfettered elections as soon as possible on the basis of universal suffrage and secret ballot." One month after Yalta, the Soviet NKVD arrested 16 Polish leaders wishing to participate in provisional government negotiations, for alleged "crimes" and "diversions", which drew protest from the West.
Potsdam Conference
At the Potsdam Conference from July to August of 1945, though Germany had surrendered months earlier, instead of withdrawing Soviet forces from Eastern European countries, Stalin had not moved those forces. At the beginning of the conference, Stalin repeated previous promises to Churchill that he would refrain from a "Sovietization" of Eastern Europe. Stalin pushed for reparations from Germany without regard to the base minimum supply for German citizens' survival, which worried Truman and Churchill who thought that Germany would become a financial burden for Western powers. In addition to reparations, Stalin pushed for "war booty", which would permit the Soviet Union to directly seize property from conquered nations without quantitative or qualitative limitation, and a clause was added permitting this to occur with some limitations. By July of 1945, Stalin's troops effectively controlled the Baltic States, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, and refugees were fleeing out of these countries fearing a Communist take-over.
The term "Iron Curtain"
After Soviet forces remained in Eastern and Central European countries, with the beginnings of communist puppet regimes in those countries, Churchill referred to the region as being behind an "Iron Curtain" of control from Moscow in a speech he gave at Westminster College titled "Sinews of Peace". At first, many Western countries condemned the speech as warmongering, though many historians have now revised their opinions. The countries under Soviet control in Eastern and Central Europe were called the "Eastern bloc."
Countries annexed as Soviet Socialist Republics
After World War II, the Soviet Union annexed several countries as Soviet Socialist Republics within the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Many of these were originally countries effectively ceded to it in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, an agreement with Nazi Germany signed in August of 1939. While officially only a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact contained a secret protocol that divided the whole of eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. The eastern part of Poland Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Bessarabia in northern Romania were recognized as parts of the Soviet sphere of influence, Lithuania was added in a second secret protocol in September of 1939. After World War II, the Soviets annexed all of the European countries previously ceded to it by Germany under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact into the USSR, along with Bukovina in northern Romania.
Eastern Poland
Two weeks after the German invasion of western Poland, the Soviet Union invaded the portions of eastern Poland assigned to it by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, followed by co-ordination with German forces in Poland. Stalin had decided in August that he was going to liquidate the Polish state, and a German-Soviet meeting in September addressed the future structure of the "Polish region." Soviet authorities immediately started a campaign of sovietization of the newly-acquired areas. The Soviets organized staged elections, the result of which was to become a legitimization of Soviet annexation of eastern Poland. Soviet authorities attempted to erase Polish history and culture,, withdrew the Polish currency without exchanging roubles, collectivized agriculture, and nationalized and redistributed private and state-owned Polish property. Soviet authorities regarded service for the pre-war Polish state as a "crime against revolution" and "counter-revolutionary activity", and subsequently started arresting large numbers of Polish citizens.
During the initial Soviet invasion of Poland, between 230,000 to 450,000 Poles were taken as prisoner, some of which were executed. NKVD officers conducted lengthy interrogations of the prisoners in camps that were, in effect, a selection process to determine who would be killed. On March 5 1940, pursuant to a note to Stalin from Lavrenty Beria, the members of the Soviet Politburo (including Stalin) signed an order to execute 25,700 Polish POWs, labeled "nationalists and counterrevolutionaries", kept at camps and prisons in occupied western Ukraine and Belarus. This became known as the Katyn massacre. Major-General Vasili M. Blokhin, chief executioner for the NKVD, personally shot 6,000 of the captured Polish officers in 28 consecutive nights, which remains one of the most organized and protracted mass murders by a single individual on record During his 29 year career Blokhin shot an estimated 50,000 people, making him ostensibly the most prolific official executioner in recorded world history. After Polish railroad workers found the mass grave, the Nazi's used the massacre to attempt to drive a wedge between Stalin and the other Allies. In 1943, as the Soviets prepared to retake Poland, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels correctly guessed that Stalin would attempt to falsely claim that the Germans massacred the victims. As Goebbels predicted, the Soviets had a "commission" investigate the matter, falsely concluding that the Germans had killed the POWs. The Soviets did not admit responsibility until 1990.
After the Soviet re-invasion, Eastern Poland was annexed into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Northeastern Romania
On June 26, 1940, four days after France sued for an armistice with the Third Reich, the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum demanding Bessarabia, Bukovina, and the Hertza region from Romania. While Germany had given the Soviets Bessarabia in the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, it had not given them Bukovina. After the Soviets agreed with Germany that they would limit their claims in Bukovina to northern Bukovina, Germany urged Romania to accept the ultimatum. Two days after the Soviet entry, the Romanians caved to the Soviet demands and the Soviets occupied the territory. The event accompanied Religious persecution during the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina and Soviet deportations from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. These territories were converted (August 1940) into the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, Chernivtsi Oblast and Izmail Oblast of Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Eastern Finland
After unsuccessfully attempting to install a communist puppet government in Finland, in November of 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland. The Finnish defense defied Soviet expectations, and after stiff losses, Stalin settled for an interim peace granting the Soviet Union less than total domination by annexing only the eastern region of Karelia (10% of Finnish territory). The Soviets relocated 422,000 eastern Finns. After the Soviet re-invasion of Finland in the Continuation War, they signed a another peace treaty ceding to the Soviet Union roughly the same eastern Finnish territories as the prior interim peace treaty, which was annexed into the Soviet Union as the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic, and later directly into the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
After Stalin declared on September 25, 1939 that he was going to "solve the Baltic problem, and the Soviet Union thereafter, forced Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to sign treaties for "mutual assistance." In mid-June of 1940, when international attention was focused on the German invasion of France, Soviet NKVD troops raided border posts in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. Stalin claimed that the mutual assistance treaties had been violated, and gave six hour ultimatums for new governments to be formed in each country, including lists of persons for cabinet posts provided by the Kremlin. Thereafter, state administrations were liquidated and replaced by Soviet cadres, followed by mass repression in which 34,250 Latvians, 75,000 Lithuanians and almost 60,000 Estonians were deported or killed, some of which under Order ? 001223. Elections for parliament and other offices were held with single candidates listed, the official results of which showed pro-Soviet candidates approval by 92.8 percent of the voters of Estonia, 97.6 percent of the voters in Latvia and 99.2 percent of the voters in Lithuania. The resulting peoples assemblies immediately requested admission into the USSR, which was granted by the Soviet Union. After reconquest by the Soviet Union, they became the Soviet puppet states of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic.
In Estonia, a series of deportations of Estonians, Jews and others occurred in 1941, 1949 and at later times. Mass Soviet deportations took place in all of the Baltic States in march of 1949 in Operation Priboi.
Non-annexed countries
Eastern Germany
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. One portion of of the isolated Eastern Prussian portion of Germany, Königsberg, was annexed directly into the Russian SFSR section of the USSR. At the end of World War II, political opposition immediately materialized after occupying Soviet army personnel conducted systematic pillaging and rapes in their zone of then divided Germany, with with total rape victim estimates ranging from tens of thousands to two million. In former Axis countries, such as Germany, Romania and Hungary, Red Army officers generally viewed cities, villages and farms as being open to pillaging and looting. Soviet soldiers set fire to the city centre of Demmin while preventing the inhabitants from extinguishing the blaze, which, along with multiple rapes, played a part in causing over 900 citizens of the city to commit suicide.. 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 honour of the Red Army through the mud." Accordingly, all evidence of looting, rapes and destruction by the Red Army was deleted from archives in the Soviet occupation zone.
In a June 1945 meeting, Stalin told German communist leaders in the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany that he expected to slowly undermine the British position within their occupation zone, that the United States would withdraw within a year or two and that nothing then would stand in the way of a united Germany under communist control within the Soviet orbit. Stalin and other leaders told visiting Bulgarian and Yugoslavian delegations in early 1946 that Germany must be both Soviet and communist. Factories, equipment, technicians, managers and skilled personnel were forcibly transferred to the Soviet Union. 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 communist party was to channel Soviet orders down to both the administrative apparatus and the other bloc parties pretending that these were initiatives of its own. At the direction of Stalin, Soviet authorities forcibly unified the Communist Party of Germany and Social Democratic Party in the SED, claiming at the time that it would not have a Marxist-Leninist or Soviet orientation. The SED won a first narrow election victory in Soviet-zone elections in 1946, even though Soviet authorities oppressed political opponents and even prevented many competing parties from participating in rural areas, resulting in most of the party's support coming from these areas (while badly losing in cities with more election freedoms). Property and industry was nationalized under their government. 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. If statements or decisions deviated from the described line, reprimands and, for persons outside public attention, punishment would ensue, such as imprisonment, torture and even death. Indoctrination of Marxism-Leninism became a compulsory part of school curricula, sending professors and students fleeing to the west. Applicants for positions in the government, the judiciary and school systems had to pass ideological scrutiny. An elaborate political police apparatus kept the population under close surveillance, including Soviet SMERSH secret police, who labeled numerous opponents of communist policy as "fascists" and "war criminals", followed by some mix of detention, torture or death. A tight system of censorship restricted access to print or the airwaves. What remained of non-communist SED opposition parties were also infilitrated to exploit their relations with their "bourgeois" 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. In early 1948, during the Tito-Stalin split, the SED underwent transformation into an authoritarian party dominated by functionaries subservient to Moscow. Important decisions had to be cleared with the CPSU Central Committee apparatus or even with Stalin himself.
By early 1949, the SED was now capped by a Soviet-style Politburo that was effectively a small self-selecting inner circle. The German Democratic Republic was declared on October 7, 1949, within which the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs accorded the East German state administrative authority, but not autonmy, with an unlimited Soviet exercise of the occupation regime and Soviet penetration of administrative, military and secret police structures. In a congratulatory telegram, Stalin emphasized that, with the creation of East Germany, the "enslavement of European countreis by the gogal imperialists was rendered impossible." A new constitution was adopted that enshrined socialism and gave the SED power over a National Front of Democratic Germany among the different political parties, with "unity lists" put forth by the SED which ensured their control.
Western Poland
After the Soviet Union annexed eastern Poland directly into the USSR, it 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. While Stalin had promised at the Yalta Conference that free elections would be held in the sections of Poland not already incorporated into the Soviet Union, Polish Communists, led by Wladyslaw Gomulka and Boleslaw Bierut, were aware of the lack of support for their side, especially after the failure of a referendum for policies known as "3 times YES" (3 razy TAK; 3xTAK), where less than a third of Poland's population voted in favor of the proposed changes included massive communist land reforms and nationalizations of industry. Thereafter, vote rigging won them a majority in the carefully controlled poll. Following the forged referendum, the Polish economy started to become nationalized. Public opposition had been essentially crushed by 1946, but underground activity still existed. 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.
Hungary
After the Soviet occupation of Hungary began, an estimated 50,000 women and girls were raped. Hungary began the postwar period as a multiparty free democracy, and elections in 1945 produced a coalition government under Prime Minister Zoltán Tildy. However, the Soviet-supported Hungarian Communist Party, which had received only 17% of the vote, constantly wrested small concessions in a process named "salami tactics". Communist leader Mátyás Rákosi invented the term, which related to his tactic of communists slicing up these enemies like pieces of salami. In 1945, Soviet Marshal Kliment Voroshilov forced the freely elected Hungarian government to yield the Interior Ministry to a nominee of the Hungarian Communist Party. Communist Interior Minister László Rajk established the Hungarian State Security Police (Államvédelmi Hatóság, later known as the ÁVH), which employed methods of intimidation, false accusations, imprisonment and torture, to suppress political opposition. Rákosi described himself as "Stalin's best Hungarian disciple" and "Stalin's best pupil." Battling the initial postwar political majority in Hungary ready to establish a democracy, Rákosi invented the term "salami tactics", which related to his tactic of communists slicing up these enemies like pieces of salami.
In early 1947, the Soviets pressed Rákosi to take a "line of more pronounced class struggle." The People's Republic of Hungary was later formed. At the height of his rule, he developed a strong cult of personality around himself. Under Rákosi, an imitator of Stalinist political and economic programs, and dubbed the “bald murderer,” Hungary experienced one of the harshest dictatorships in Europe. Stalinist repression was harsher in Hungary than in the other satellite countries in the 1940s and 1950s, due to a more vehement Hungarian resistance. Approximately 350,000 Hungarian officials and intellectuals were purged from 1948 to 1956. Thousands were arrested, tortured, tried, and imprisoned in concentration camps, deported to the east, or were executed, including ÁVH founder László Rajk. Rajk was exeucted following a conversation between Rákosi and Stalin and show trials held thereafter. Repeated Collectivizations in Hungary occurred from the 1940s through the 1960s. Hungary's participation in the Soviet-sponsored COMECON (Council Of Mutual Economic Assistance), prevented it from trading with the West or receiving Marshall Plan aid. Nearly a decade after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which included a Soviet invasion of Hungary followed by the execution of leader Imre Nagy accompaned by much stricter state control, Goulash Communism was later introduced, which allowed for some easing of restrictinos.
Bulgaria
During World War II, in September of 1944, the Soviet Union declared war on Bulgaria, pretending that Bulgaria had to be prevented from assisting Germany and allowing the Wehrmacht to use its territory. Four days later, the Red Army crossed the border and created the conditions for a communist coup detat on the following night. Both the creation of a communist controlled "Patriotic Front" and an armistice followed. The Soviet military commander in Sofia assumed supreme authority, and the communists whom he instructed, including Kimon Georgiev, took full control of domestic politics. Thereafter, the People's Republic of Bulgaria was formed.
Czechoslovakia
In 1943, Czechoslovakian leader in exile Edvard Beneš agreed to Stalin's demands for unconditional agreement with Soviet foreign policy, including the expulsion of million of Sudeten ethnic Germans, identified as "rich people" oustide the democratic consensus, and ethnic Hungarians directed by the Beneš decrees. Beneš promised Stalin a "close postwar collaboration" in military and economic affairs, including confiscation and nationalization of large landowners' property, factories, mines, steelworks and banks under a Czechoslovakian "national road to socialism". Even though Beneš was not a Moscow cadre and several domestic "reforms" of other Eastern Bloc countries were not part of the plan, Stalin was satisfied with Beneš plan because it included the important characteristic of property expropriation and the relative strength of communists in Czechoslovakia compared to other Eastern Bloc countries.
The Third Republic, a national front coalition ruled by three socialist parties, came into being in April of 1945. The Soviet Union was, at first, disappointed that the communist party did not take advantage of their position after receiving a majority in 1946 elections. 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 under President Benes's command or to expropriate industrialists and large landowners. The existence of a somewhat independent political structure and Czechoslovakia's initial absence of stereotypical Eastern Bloc political and socioeconomic systems created problems for the Soviet Union. While parties outside the "National Front" were excluded from the government, they were still allowed to exist. In contrast to countries occupied by the Red Army, there were no Soviet occupation authorities in Czechoslovakia whom the communists could rely upon to aggressively assert a leading role.
By May of 1947, a Kremlin report concluded that "reactionary elements" praising western democracy had strengthened. Thereafter, with Soviet backing, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia assumed undisputed control over the government of Czechoslovakia in the Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948, ushering in a dictatorship. The public brutality of the Soviet-backed coup shocked Western powers more than any event before it, set in a motion a brief scare that war would occur and swept away the last vestiges of opposition to United States President Truman's Marshall Plan in the United States Congress.
Romania
The Yalta Conference had granted the Soviet Union a predominant interest in Romania, which coincided with the Soviet occupation of Romania. In March 1945, Dr. Petru Groza of the Ploughmen's Front, a party closely associated with the Communists, became prime minister, installing a government that included many parties, though, communists held the key ministries. 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 the Romanian general election elections of 1946, the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) employed widespread intimidation tactics and electoral fraud to obtain 80% of the vote. The PCR eliminated the role of the centrist parties, including a show trial of National Peasant Party leaders, and forced other parties to merge with the PCR. By 1948, most non-Communist politicians were either executed, in exile or in prison. The Communists declared a People's Republic in 1948.
Albania
In December of 1945, elections for the Albanian Peoples Assembly were held, with the only ballot choices being those of the communist Democratic Front (Albania), led by Enver Hoxha. Its successor, the National Liberation Front, 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. 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. Albania's close ties with Yugoslavia lasted only until the latter's rift with the Soviet Union in 1948. Albania was a founding member of the Warsaw Pact and was heavily dependent upon Soviet aid. It later withdrew from the pact in 1968.
Early events prompting stricter control
Marshall Plan rejection
In June 1947, after the Soviets had refused to negotiate a potential lightening of restrictions on German development, the United States announced the Marshall Plan, a comprehensive program of American assistance to all European countries wanting to participate, including the Soviet Union and those of Eastern Europe, called the Marshall Plan. Initially, Stalin planned to attempt to kill, or at a minimum hamper, the Plan through destructive participation in the July 1947 Paris talks regarding accepting aid. After he realized that this would be impossible, the Soviets rejected the Plan, and took a major hardline position against the United States and non-communist European nations, calling the United States both a "fascizing" power and the "center of worldwide reaction and anti-Soviet activity", with all countries aligned with it being branded enemies The Soviets also then blamed the United States for communist losses in elections in Belgium, France and Italy months earlier, in the spring of 1947.
However, of great concern to the Soviets was the Czechoslovak eagerness to accept the aid, as well as indications of a similar Polish attitude. In one of the clearest signs of Soviet control over the region, the Czechoslovakian foreign minister, Jan Masaryk, was summoned to Moscow and berated by Stalin for thinking of joining the Marshall Plan. Polish Prime minister Josef Cyrankiewicz was rewarded by Stalin for the Polish rejection of the Plan. Russia rewarded Poland with a huge 5 year trade agreement, 450 million in credit, 200,000 tons of grain, heavy machinery and factories.
Thereafter, Stalin sought to immediately take stronger control over the Eastern Bloc countries, abandoning the prior appearance of democratic institutions. When it appeared that, in spite of heavy pressure, non-communist parties might receive in excess of 40% of the vote in the August 1947 Hungarian elections, an all-out repression was instituted to liquidate any independent political forces. In that same month, total annihilation of the opposition in Bulgaria began on the basis of continuing instructions by Soviet cadres. Meetings of all communist parties were then held in Szklarska Poreba in late September 1947. The meeting's chair, Andreia Zhadanov, was in permanent radio contact with the Kremlin from whom he received instructions. A Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) report was read at the outset to set the heavily anti-western tone, and, with reference to the Eastern Bloc, it stated that "the Red Army's liberating role was complemented by an upsurge of the freedom-loving peoples' liberation struggle against the fascist predators and their hirelings." Although the Eastern Bloc countries except Czecholslovakia had immediately rejected Marshall Plan aid, Eastern Bloc communist parties were blamed for permitting even minor influence by non-communists in their respective countries during the run up to the Marshall Plan. Zhadanov also castigated communist parties in France and Italy for collaboration with those countries' domestic agendas,, while the French communist party was told that it must redirect its mission to "destroy capitalist economy" and that the Soviet Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) would take control of the French communist party.
Berlin blockade and airlift
In former German capitol Berlin, a sourrounded by Soviet-Occupied Germany, Stalin instituted a blockade from June of 1948 to May of 1949. The blockad was caused, in party, by early local elections of October 1946 in which the SED was rejected in favor of the Social Democrats, which gained two and a half time more votes than the SED. This included Berlin, where citizens overwhelmingly elected democratic members to its city council (with an 86% majority) — strongly rejecting the election's Communist candidates. After a large number of European governments and the United States announced they would permit the economic rebuilding of Germany and instituted a new currency for that end, Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade, preventing food, materials and supplies from arriving in West Berlin. The United States, Britain, France, Canada, Austrialia, New Zealand and several other countries began the massive "Berlin airlift", supplying Western Berlin with food and other supplies. The Soviets mounted a public relations campaign against the US policy change, communists attempted to disrupt the elections of 1948 preceding large losses therein, 300,000 Berliners demonstrated urged the international airlift to continue, and the US accidentally created "Operation Vittles", which supplied candy to German children. In May 1949, Stalin backed down and lifted the blockade of Berlin, permitting the resumption of normal shipments to West Berlin.
The fact the the Soviets' blockade contradicted the the six nation London Conference decisions and the Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948 convinced Western leaders that they must take swift and decisive measures to strengthen the portions of Germany not occupied by the Soviets. The blockade also helped to surmount any remaining difference between the French, British and Americans regarding West Germany, leading to a merger of all three countries' occupation zones into "trizonia".
Tito-Stalin Split
After disagreements between Yugoslavian leader Josip Broz Tito and the Soviet Union regarding Greece and the People's Republic of Albania, a Tito-Stalin split occurred, followed by Yugoslavia being expelled from the Cominform in June 1948 and a brief failed Soviet putsch in Belgrade. The split created two separate communist forces in Europe and put in jeopardy the Kremlin's claim to exclusive communist ideology. A vehement campaign against "Titoism" was immediately started in the Eastern Bloc, describing agents of both the West and Tito in all places engaging in subservisive activity.
Stalin then ordered the conversion of the Cominform into an instrument to monitor and control internal affairs of other Eastern Bloc parties. He briefly considered also turning the Cominform into an instrument for sentencing high-ranking deviators, but then dropped the idea as impractical. Instead, a move to weaken communist party leaders through conflict was started, with Soviet cadres in communist party and state positions in the Bloc were instructed to foster intra-leadership conflict and to transmit information against each other. This accompanied a continuous stream of accusations of "nationalistic deviations", "insufficient appreciation of the USSR's role", links with Tito and even "espionage for Yugoslavia", resulting in the persecution of many major party cadres, including those in East Germany.
The first country for this new approach was the People's Republic of Albania, where leader Enver Hoxha immediately changed course from favoring Yugloslavia to opposing it. In the People's Republic of Poland, leader Wladyslaw Gomulka, who had made pro-Yugoslavian statements, was deposed as party secretary-general in early September 1948 and subsequently jailed. In the People's Republic of Bulgaria, when it appeared that Traicho Kostov, who was not a Moscow cadre, was next in line for leadership, in June of 1949, Stalin ordered Kostov's arrest, followed soon thereafter by a death sentence and execution. A number of other high ranking Bulgarian officials were also jailed. Stalin and Hungarian leader Mátyás Rákosi met in Moscow to orchestrate a show trial of Rákosi opponent Lazlo Rajk, who was thereafter executed.
After Israel sided with the United States on various issues, Stalin decided that he wanted to reduce cadres of Jewish origin in the Eastern Block. Within one year, almost all East European parties were affected, though the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic's party was spared. Other show trials and executions of prominent figures occurred, such as Rudolf Slánský in Czechoslovakia.
Politics
Despite the initial institutional design of communism implemented by Joseph Stalin in the Eastern Bloc, subsequent development varied across countries. In the satellite states in Eastern Europe, after peace treaties were initially concluded, opposition was essentially liquidated, fundamental steps toward socialism were enforced and Kremlin leaders sought to strengthen control therein. The defining characteristic of communism implemented therein was the unique symbiosis of the state with society and the economy, resulting in politics and economics losing their distinctive features as autonomous and distinguishable spheres. Initially, Stalin directed systems that rejected Western institutional characteristics of market economies, democratic governance (dubbed "bourgeois democracy" in Soviet parlance) and the rule of law subduing discretional intervention by the state. The resulting states aspired to total control of a political center backed by an extensive and active repressive apparatus, and a central role of Marxist-Leninist ideology. However, the vestiges of democratic institutions were never entirely destroyed, resulting in the facade of Western style institutions such as parliaments, which effectively just rubber-stamped decisions made by rulers, and constitutions, to which adherence by authorities was limited or non-existent.
Initial political control
The initial problem in countries occupied by the Red Army in 1944-45 was how to transform occupation power into control of domestic development. Initially, western willingness to support "antifascist" action and for "democratization" with a socialist element helped with Soviet efforts to permit communists in their respective countries to initiate a process of gradual almost imperceptibly slow Sovietization. Because communists were small minorities in all countries but Czechoslovakia, they were initially instructed to form coalitions in their respective countries. Moscow trained cadres were put into crucial power positions to fulfill orders regarding sociopolitical transformation. Stalin felt that socioeconomic transformation was indispensable to establish Soviet control, reflecting the Marxist-Leninist view that material bases, the distribution of the means of production, shaped social and political relations. Elimination of the bourgeoisie's social and financial power by expropriation of landed and industrial property was accorded absolute priority.
These measures were publicly billed as "reforms" rather than socioeconomic transformations. To this end, Stalin stated that the Eastern European version of democracy was a mere modification of western "bourgeois democracy." Except for initially in Czechoslovakia, activities by political parties had to adhere to Bloc politics, with parties eventually having to accept membership in an "antifascist" bloc obliging them to act only in mutual consensus. Initially, Moscow cadres at the top would refuse to provide consensus for opposed changes, while the opposition was accused of insubordination to Soviet authorities, frequently followed by harsh punishment. When such measures did not produce the desired effect, occupation officers would directly intervene. Accordingly, elections -- which had been promised to the Western allies -- did not offer a difference in policy choices. Throughout all of eastern Europe except for Czechoslovakia, "societal organizations" such as trade unions and associations representing various social, professional and other groups, were erected with only one organization for each category, with competition excluded. Those organizations were managed by communist cadres, though during the initial period, they allowed for some diversity.
Consequently, the bloc system permitted the Soviet Union to exercise Eastern Bloc domestic control indirectly. Initially, concealment of the Kremlin's role was considered crucial to neutralize resistance and to make the regimes appear not only autochthonous, but also to resemble "bourgeois democracies". Accordingly, "bourgeois" politicians willing to follow communist bloc leadership and to support socioeconomic "reforms" were recruited. Similar non-communist officials were put in place in some administration positions, while a reliable communist cadre worked behind the scenes to control the apparatus and decision-making process. Crucial departments such as those responsible for personnel, general police, secret police and youth, were strictly communist run. From the outset, the multiparty system established by Soviet occupation authorities was planned to be temporary. Two kinds of alliances were envisaged: permanent "natural" alliances with related social fores such as peasants willing to submit to communist vanguard parties and temporary accords with bourgeois parties necessary for temporary objectives. Parties, such as Social Democrats, were seen as belonging to the permanent natural category, but would have to undergo Soviet transformations over the long term. Bloc politics eventually forced purported bourgeois politicians and parties to choose between unconditional political surrender and outright rejection. If they chose the former, they would alienate their followers and marginalize themselves, whil the latter case led to defamation as deviators from the "anti-fascist democratic consensus" and "traitors" to the people, followed by ensuring isolation, prosecution and liquidation. Moscow cadres distinguished "progressive forces" from "reactionary elements", and rendered both powerless through self-emasculation or future self-sacrifice. Such procedures were repeated endlessly until communists had gained unlimited power, and only politicians who were unconditionally supportive of Soviet policy remained.
Political restrictions
While the initial institution of communism destroyed most of the prior institutional and organizational diversity of the countries of eastern and central Europe, communist structures existed in different manifestations of strength that also varied over time. In addition to emigration restrictions, civil society, defined as a domain of political action outside the party's state control, was not allowed to firmly take root, with the possible exception of Poland in the 1980s. While the institutional design on the communist systems were based on the rejection of rule of law, the legal infrastructure was not immune to change reflecting decaying ideology and the substitution of autonomous law. While institutional changes creating some freedoms occurred, a change toward effective constitutionalism could not occur without the collapse of the communist political regimes. Market-oriented reforms could not work without functioning markets.
Initially, communist parties were small in all countries except Czechoslovakia, such that there existed an acute shortage of politically "trustworthy" persons for administration, police and other professions. Thus, "politically unreliable" non-communists initially had to fill such roles. Those not obedient to communist authorities were ousted, while Moscow cadres started a large-scale party programs to train personnel who would mee political requirements.
Comecon
In 1949, the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania founded the Comecon in accordance with Stalin's desire to enforce Soviet domination of the lesser states of Central Europe and to mollify some states that had expressed interest in the Marshall Plan, and which were now, increasingly, cut off from their traditional markets and suppliers in Western Europe. Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland had remained interested in Marshall aid despite the requirements for a convertible currency and market economies. In July 1947, Stalin ordered these communist-dominated governments to pull out of the Paris Conference on the European Recovery Programme. This has been described as "the moment of truth" in the post-World War II division of Europe.
Emigration restrictions and defectors
Emigration out of Eastern Bloc countries, except under limited circumstances, was effectively halted after 1950. Before 1950, over 15 million immigrants emigrated from Soviet-occupied eastern European countries to the west in the five years immediately following World War II. However, restrictions implemented during the Cold War stopped most East-West migration, with only 13.3 million migrations westward between 1950 and 1990. More than 75% of those emigrating from Eastern Bloc countries between 1950 and 1990 did so under bilateral agreements for "ethnic migration." About 10% were refugee immigrants permitted to emigrate under the Geneva Convention of 1951. Most Soviets allowed to leave during this time period were ethnic Jews permitted to emigrate to Israel after a series of embarrassing defections in 1970 caused the Soviets to open very limited ethnic emigrations. The fall of the Iron Curtain was accompanied by a massive rise in European East-West migration.
In East Germany, the term Republikflucht (fugitives from the Republic) was used for anyone wishing to leave to non-socialist countries. Credible estimates put the number of East Germans who left before the Berlin Wall was erected on 13 August, 1961 between 2.5 and 3 million, about a sixth of the GDR population. The numbers leaving the GDR following the construction of the Wall dropped sharply to several hundred a year as Republikflucht attempts to leave the Republic constituted a criminal act and carried severe penalties. Moreover, an attempt to flee the GDR via its fortified borders involved considerable personal risk of injury or death. Estimates for those killed attempting to escape over the Berlin Wall range from 136 to just over 200. About 75,000 people were caught and imprisoned. A propaganda booklet published by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in 1955 for the use of party agitators outlined the seriousness of 'flight from the republic', stating "leaving the GDR is an act of political and moral backwardness and depravity", and "workers throughout Germany will demand punishment for those who today leave the German Democratic Republic, the strong bastion of the fight for peace, to serve the deadly enemy of the German people, the imperialists and militarists".
Famous defectors include Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva, Mig-25 pilot Viktor Belenko, U.N. Undersecretary General Arkady Shevchenko, chess grand master Viktor Korchnoy, ballet stars Mikhail Baryshnikov, Natalia Makarova and Alexander Godunov. While media sources often reported high level defections, non-prominent defections usually went unreported. The number of non-public "black stream" defectors is not known. On June 15, 1970, twelve mostly Jewish defectors were caught attempting to escape via aircraft, and were assigned harsh sentences, including death sentence for the two leaders, which was later commuted to 15 years in a labor camp. At least six attempted skyjacking defection attempts were made from Armenia, the Soviet Union and Lithuania from 1970 to 1971. Many pilots were able to defect from communist countries to the west because they enjoyed access to aircraft.
Economies
The Eastern European satellite states were communist and depended upon the Soviet Union for significant amounts of materials. Because of the lack of market signals in such economies, they experienced misdevelopement by central planners resulting in those countries following a path of extensive rather than intensive development. Each system shared the distinctive themes of state-oriented economies with poorly defined property rights, a lack of market clearing prices and overblown or distorted productive capacities in relation to analogous market economies. Growth rates within the bloc began to decline. While most western European economies essentially caught up with the United States levels of per capita Gross Domestic Product, Central European communist countries did not, with per capita incomes significantly below their comparable western European counterparts, for example (Eastern bloc countries are in red):
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| Per Capita GDP in 1990 dollars | 1938 | 1990 |
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| Spain | $900 | $10,900 | | Portugal | $800 | $4,900 | | People's Republic of Romania | $700 | $1,600 | |
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| Per Capita GDP in 1989 Deutsche Marks | 1989 |
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| West Germany | 35,877 DM | | East Germany | 15,318 DM | |
While official statistics painted a relatively rosy picture, the East German economy had eroded because of increased central planning, economic autarky, the use of coal over oil, investment concentration in a few selected technology-intensive areas and labor market regulation. As a result, a large productivity gap of nearly 50% per worker existed between East and West Germany. However, this does not measure the quality of design of goods or service and, therefore, the actual per capita rate may be as low as 14 to 20 per cent." Average gross monthly wages in East Germany were around 30% of those in West Germany, though after accounting for taxation, the figures approached 60%. Moreover, the purchasing power of wages grossly differed, with only about half of East German households owning either a car or a color television set as late as 1990, both of which were standard possessions in West German households. The Ost Mark was only valid for transactions inside East Germany, and could not be legally exported or imported. In 1989, 11% of the East German labor force remained in agriculture, 47% was in the secondary sector and only 42% in services.
Communist Europe also effectively missed the information and electronics revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, though its development gap in this area compared to Western Europe was smaller than that of other developing countries. Meanwhile, Germany, Austria, France and other Western European nations experienced increased economic growth in the Wirtschaftswunder ("economic miracle") Trente Glorieuses ("thirty glorious years") and the Long boom. Overall, the inefficiency of systems without competition or market-clearing prices was costly and unsustainable, especially with the increasing complexity of world economics. The systems, which required party-state planning at all levels, ended up collapsing under the weight of accumulated economic inefficiencies, with various attempts at reform merely contributing to the acceleration of crisis-generating tendencies.
Revolts
Prague Spring and Warsaw Pact invasion
A period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia took place in 1968 called the Prague Spring. It began on January 5, 1968, when reformist Slovak Alexander Dubcek came to power, and continued until August 21, when the Soviet Union and members of its Warsaw Pact allies invaded the country to halt the reforms.
Decline
During the late 1980s, the weakened 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 Central and Eastern Europe during this period. The Eastern Bloc eventually came to an end with the collapse of the Soviet controlled governments in Eastern Europe in 1989 (see Revolutions of 1989). The collapse of those governments led to the rapid transition to market economy in countries like Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria.
Even before this period, all the countries in the Warsaw Pact did not always act as a unified bloc. For instance, the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia was condemned by Romania, which refused to take part in it.
Central and Eastern Europe
After 1989, the term Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) rather than Eastern Bloc came into wide use—from governmental cooperation, development organizations to businesses, but not to the extent of political parties.
Other countries
Other countries that were not Soviet Socialist Republics, not Soviet Satellite States or not in Europe were sometimes referred to as being in the Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc, including:
See also
External links
- September–December 1991, in the last months of the USSR
- “Eastern Bloc” 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.
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