By 1949 the Soviet Union had established Communist regimes in East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria. Albania and Yugoslavia had Communist governments, but these were the result of internal conditions and not imposed by the USSR. While the exact circumstances of the Soviet-imposed communist take-over differed from country to country, there was a common pattern to the process.
During the war, as Nazi and Fascist forces conquered or intimidated into alliance the nations of Eastern Europe, anti-fascist politicians fled to the Allied countries. Many Communist refugees went to the Soviet Union where they were organized, trained, and recognized by Stalin as the "legitimate" government-in-exile of their native country. Stalin intended to put these Moscow-trained Communists in power once the Eastern European countries were freed from fascist control. Eastern European Communist governments friendly to and dependent upon Moscow would greatly serve Soviet interests. The future security of the USSR would be better guaranteed by a "buffer" of communist countries along its frontiers with a seemingly hostile West. And, ideologically, the Marxist-Leninist proletarian revolution would be spread to the peoples of Eastern Europe.
Between 1944 and 1945 most of Eastern Europe was "liberated" from Fascist domination as the Soviet Red Army advanced eastward in its massive offensive against Germany. To assure that the Eastern Europeans were "protected" against the restoration of reactionary elements, Moscow ordered the Red Army to remain in occupation of the countries that it liberated. It would be on the background of this Soviet military occupation that the transition to communism would take place.
On liberation, the occupying Soviets began reconstruction of the governments according to the principles of the wartime Allied agreements (particularly Yalta). Yalta required the immediate establishment of provisional governments broadly representative of all democratic elements of the population. This was to be followed by the establishment through free elections of permanent governments responsive to the will of the people as soon as possible. In Eastern Europe Stalin would use the "Yalta process" to the Soviet advantage.
Between 1945 and 1947 the Soviets oversaw the creation of provisional governments made up of "United Front" coalitions of the surviving prewar "democratic" parties (Christian Democrats, socialist parties, peasant parties, and Communists). Conservatives, nationalists, and fascists were excluded. In each case the Moscow-oriented Communists were placed in control of key government ministries: defense (army), interior (security police), information (press, radio), and economic reconstruction. The "Yalta elections" were held, but the Communist control of police and information assured the victory of the Communists, socialists, and other leftist or liberal elements. Thus, the Soviet-installed governments were given "legitimacy."
In March 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, on a visit to the United States, made a speech in which he warned of an “Iron Curtain” that was descending across Europe. Behind the Iron Curtain, Churchill said, once-free peoples and states were being enslaved by Soviet communism. The West, he urged, must be vigilant and stand up to Soviet ambitions. Churchill’s speech was a “wake up call” that Western and Soviet interests were moving in dangerously divergent directions. Beginning in 1947, as the Cold War tensions increased between East and West, the Soviets consolidated hard-line Communist control over Eastern Europe. In June the US announced the inauguration of the Marshall Plan for European economic recovery and invited all European states, including the USSR and the Eastern European countries, to participate. Stalin quickly saw the Marshall Plan for what it was: an American effort to undermine the spread of communism. In reaction, he created the Cominform, a revitalization of the former Comintern, the Moscow-directed international organization of communist parties. The Eastern European states were ordered to purge the non-Communist and independent partisan ("Titoist")[1]Communist elements from the governments. The result of these purges was the establishment of Communist dictatorships in the various "People's Democratic Republics," as the new states were called. The encouraging exception to this process was Czechoslovakia. There, the voters had resisted Moscow's pressure and elected a constituent assembly that was overwhelmingly democratic in its makeup. In February 1948, the Czech Communists, supported by Moscow and the Red Army, threatened a coup d'état and forced the resignation (and reported "suicide") of the popular leader Jan Masaryk. The "fall" of Czechoslovakia to the Communists was alarming to the West and indicative of the means the USSR would use to further its interests. By 1948 all of Eastern Europe was solidly under Moscow's control. The two exceptions were Yugoslavia and Albania.
Between 1947 and 1950 the Eastern European "satellites" experienced socialist reconstruction under Communist rule. The Communist Party (under a different label in some countries) became the only legal political party. All other political parties and non-Communist trade and labor unions were abolished. Opposition political and labor leaders were arrested and imprisoned. Communist control over the military and police was strengthened. The governments nationalized all capital (banks), industry, and distribution and communications systems. Agriculture was collectivized according to the Soviet model. Rapid industrialization through five-year plans under centralized economic planning was implemented. The state assumed control of education and public information. Perhaps the greatest single threat to the consolidation of Communist control was the popularity and influence of the Roman Catholic Church. The governments, therefore, cautiously sought either to neutralize or bring the Roman Catholic Church under state control. By 1950 the process was complete, and the Eastern European countries were securely under Communist domination.
As the states of Eastern Europe were brought under Communist control, political and economic development assured a close and dependent relationship with the Soviet Union. In each country, command of the armed forces was coordinated with the command of the occupying Red Army. Eastern European internal security organizations (secret police) were coordinated with the Soviet internal security system. Economic planning was coordinated with the plans and goals of the Soviet Union, thus making the Eastern European economies dependent upon the USSR. The Eastern European political leadership consisted of hardline Stalinists who looked to the Kremlin for policy goals and direction.
By 1950 Eastern Europe was firmly within the Soviet orbit, but it was not a comfortable relationship. The new governments did not have popular support and put priority in preserving their authority. In spite of intensive propaganda to the contrary, the economic promise of communism proved lacking as centralized planning stifled market forces, producing shortages of foodstuffs and manufactured goods. The Catholic Church resisted the political efforts to neutralize its influence. In spite of the arrest of some of its more outspoken leaders, the Church continued to be a source of subdued but effective opposition to the new regimes. Peasants would not accommodate themselves to agricultural collectivization, and laborers resented the increased demands on individual productivity.
It was clear that any weakening of communist authority could mean the outbreak of violent popular resistance. As Soviet security was seen tied to a dependent Eastern Europe, it was, therefore, in the interest of the Soviet Union to preserve the new regimes against any internal threat. The strong hand of Soviet interest would remain dominant in Eastern Europe until the 1980s.
As indicated above, the exceptions to the rule of Soviet control over Eastern Europe were Yugoslavia and Albania. During the German occupation of Yugoslavia, 1941 – 1945, the Communist Josef Broz, calling himself Tito, emerged as the most effective leader of Yugoslav partisan guerrilla resistance to the Nazis. As the Germans withdrew from Yugoslavia, Tito's Communists established political control over the country reorganizing it as a republic. Since Soviet troops did not "liberate" Yugoslavia, Moscow's ability to influence events in that country was limited. While outwardly friendly with the USSR, Tito rejected Stalin's efforts to bring Yugoslavia into conformity with Kremlin policy and did not collectivize lands nor socialize all business and industry. He also followed an independent foreign policy of neutrality. In 1948 an angry Stalin bitterly denounced Tito and Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform (the postwar successor to the Comintern, the Soviet-directed international union of Communist parties).
The story was similar in Albania. During the war, Albania, briefly under Italian control (1939 – 1941) was occupied by the Germans in 1941. Communist partisans led by Enver Hoxha waged a guerrilla war against the Germans and when the Germans withdrew in 1944, Hoxha and the Communists proclaimed a republic (Albania had formerly been a monarchy) and established an authoritarian socialist regime on the Stalinist model. Unlike Yugoslavia, Hoxha’s relationship with the Soviets was close and Albania was admitted to the Cominform. Still, as the Red Army did not occupy the country, Albania could exercise greater autonomy than did Moscow’s other satellites. In 1961 Albania, distressed with the Soviet Union’s de-Stalinization policy, withdrew from the Cominform and sought a close relationship with communist China.
Sources for the Soviet Domination of Eastern Europe, 1945 – 1950
Ambrose, Stephen. Rise to Globalism. New York: Penguin Books, 1991.
Applebaum, Anne. Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe. New York: Anchor, 2012.
Gaddis, John Lewis, The Cold War. New York: Penguin, 2005.
Ganley, Albert et al. After Hiroshima: America since 1945. New York: Longman, 1985.
Kennan, George F. Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin. Boston: Little Brown, 1961.
Langer, William L. et al. An Encyclopedia of World History. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1968.
Merriman, John. A History of Modern Europe. New York: Norton, 1996.
Palmer, Robert R. et al. A History of the Modern World. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002.
Paterson, Thomas et al. American Foreign Policy: A History since 1900. Boston: D. C. Heath, 1991.
Taubman, William. Khrushchev: The Man and His Era. New York: Norton, 2003.
[1] "Titoist:" This was the label Stalinist Communists would use for those Eastern European Communists who did not follow policy directives coming from Moscow. The term comes from Stalin's contempt for Josef Tito of Yugoslavia.