Scholars study World War I and World War II probably more than any other war in history. Both wars are commonly associated with their Western Fronts, but the events on the Eastern Front were just as vital to the outcome of the war. Studies of World War I often neglect the Eastern European experience.[555] The West was filled with trenches, but the East had open areas, lengthy pastures, and mountain ranges that saw combat and movement. In this chapter, we will see World War I, the interwar years, and World War II from the Eastern European viewpoint.
The international peace that the European powers dreamed of after Napoleon’s defeat in 1815 was a failed experiment.[556] While tensions in the Balkans had been simmering for years, a diplomatic visit would bring the world into war and destruction.[557] In June 1914, the archduke of Austria, Franz Ferdinand, and his wife Sophie visited Sarajevo, Bosnia. As they drove through the streets in their vehicle, someone shot them dead.[558] Just four weeks later, all of Europe would be at war with each other.
Gavrilo Princip belonged to Young Bosnia, a political group that wanted to bring the South Slavs of the Balkan states together and create a coalition of states under independent rule. Ironically, this Serbian nationalist shot the archduke on the same day—June 28th—that the Serbians were defeated in 1389 at the Battle of Kosovo. Princip was one of several men who planned to execute Franz Ferdinand that day. When Princip caught up to Franz Ferdinand’s car, he pointed and shot his gun, hitting both the archduke and his wife.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, and their children, 1910.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Austro_Hungarian_Empire_Before_the_First_World_War_Q81810.jpg
Gavrilo Princip was caught and arrested, and he stood trial for the murders. The court ruled he was too young for execution, so he was sentenced to twenty years in prison. He started his prison sentence while the war he helped to spark broke out across Europe.
The murder of the archduke and his wife created an international incident: the July Crisis of 1914. The Great Powers of Europe were interested in preserving peace, so they pressured The Girl in Kherson Austria-Hungary to find a way to deal with the assassination with as little bloodshed as possible. Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for knowing about the assassination and hiding it. However, the government was split on how to proceed: should Austria-Hungary go to war with Serbia, or should they find a diplomatic resolution?
Serbia’s ally, Russia, jumped in the fray. Tsar Alexander II of Russia had been assassinated in 1881. This was not so long before the assassination of the Austrian archduke and his wife that Russians didn’t remember it. Still, Russia wanted to retain the influence it had in Eastern Europe through its relationship with Serbia. Nicholas II of Russia promised to support Serbia in the event of war.
Since Austria-Hungary was facing a war against both Russia and Serbia, it called on its ally of Germany. Germany was concerned about how powerful Russia was becoming.
France had a peace alliance with Russia, which pitted it against its other ally, Germany. The French sided with the Russians, leaving Germany open to attack on both sides. Germany spent the 19th century beefing up its defenses, so it was one of the most militarized nations in the world. It had a plan of attack for a war on both sides; it was known as the Schlieffen Plan.[559] The idea behind this German military strategy was to attack France and eliminate it first. The French military was not as strong as the Russian military, so the Germans could crush the French relatively quickly. Once France pulled out of the war, then Germany could put all of its resources into defeating Russia.
The powers of Europe couldn’t avoid the inevitable anymore. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28th, 1914—a month to the day after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife.[560] Russia followed suit, declaring war on Austria-Hungary. Germany issued its declarations of war against Russia and France, and France declared war on Germany.
The war devolved into two sides, and every Eastern European country and territory was involved in some way.[561] Russia, Serbia, and their allies joined the Allied Powers, and Germany, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and their allies formed the Central Powers. This conflict would change the history of warfare. World War I would be the first major conflict to use new military technology on a large scale. There were new weapons like machine guns and artillery weapons, which led to a massive loss of life on all sides.
Europe split into two sides during the Great War: the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente. This map shows how the war stretched across all of Europe. Soon, it would be a world war.
historicair (French original)Fluteflute & User:Bibi Saint-Pol (English translation), CC BY-SA 2.5 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_Europe_alliances_1914-en.svg
The Schlieffen Plan would commit Great Britain to the war.[562] Although Britain had its own alliances, it was appalled at Germany’s first military movements. According to the Schlieffen Plan, Germany would move through Belgium to get to France. Days after the first declaration of war, on August 3rd, 1914, Germany invaded Belgium, and Great Britain declared war on Germany. The nations of Europe also pulled their colonies and protectorates into the fight, making the war a truly global conflict.
Germany’s Schlieffen Plan didn’t work. Instead of just facing French forces, Germany faced French, British, and Belgian armies as its forces moved from Belgium into France.[563] British and French soldiers stopped the German advance at the First Battle of the Marne, after which the Western Front reached a stalemate. Each side dug in—quite literally, as they fought battles from the safety of the trenches—with neither side making much progress. This unexpected development meant that Germany didn’t knock France out of the war as quickly as it had planned. This allowed Russia to make valuable gains on the Eastern Front.
Despite the setbacks on the Western Front, Germany spent the first years of the war racking up victories on the Eastern Front. By August, Germany had delivered Russia a resounding defeat in the Baltic, and it occupied Russian-held Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania.[564] The Germans intended on Germanizing the Baltic and Slavic populations of these states. In combination with the territories they already had, it would make Germany the most powerful empire in Eastern Europe.
While the Germans kept Russia in check, Russia was not by any means losing the war. In September 1914, Russia tried to invade East Prussia, but the Germans pushed them back. While Russia suffered many defeats by the Germans, it still chipped away at the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman defenses.[565]
Nationalism, which stoked the fire that created the mess of the Great War (another name for World War I), actually became an enemy.[566] Many people did not identify with the borders they lived in. For example, the Poles lived in Russian, Austrian, and German lands, but they still retained their identity as Poles. Jews lived everywhere, forming communities throughout Eastern Europe. Some soldiers took their enlistment seriously, serving with honor in the army they joined. Others were torn between their loyalties to themselves and the state, and they abandoned the fight.
The war brought people on every side to the brink of madness, starvation, and death. In 1915, a coalition of forces from Bulgaria, Austria, and the German Empire defeated the Serbians.[567] They escaped through the Albanian mountains in the dead of winter. The trip over the mountains was a disaster. Many Serbs died of exposure or violence from attacks by Albanians or Austrians. When the Serbian soldiers reached the Adriatic Sea, British and French ships picked them up and brought them to Greece. After they recovered, they returned to the fighting.
Austria-Hungary almost lost the war to the Russians in the Brusilov offensive, which lasted between June and September 1916.[568] This would become the most significant Allied offensive of World War I. The Allied forces would acquire more territory than at any other time during the war. Russia was the star of the offensive, knocking Austria-Hungary out of the war. However, these victories were overshadowed by the coming of revolution at home.
Between the end of 1916 and the beginning of 1917, Russian success on the battlefield declined. They were running out of men and resources. By February 1917, Russia was embroiled in a revolution, which pulled it out of the war effort.[569] Without Russia to stop them, the German army occupied Eastern Europe from the Baltic Sea to Ukraine.[570] With less pressure on the Eastern Front, Germany could focus on the stagnant Western Front.
It was around this time that the United States joined the Allies.[571] This would completely change the course of the war. Since the American soldiers hadn’t been at war for years, they invigorated the Allied war effort. The first American soldiers started arriving in the early months of 1917, although it took some time to get the war effort up and running.[572] The Germans believed they could win the war if they took the Western Front before the United States could send all of its troops, and they launched the Spring offensive in 1918.[573]
Germany threw almost everything it had into the offensive. They deployed thousands of soldiers, along with thousands of pieces of weapons and artillery. But even with this massive undertaking, the German army still couldn’t defeat the Allies. The German Spring offensive ended in July 1918. The Allies responded with an offensive of their own, knocking Germany out of the war. In November 1918, the German Kaiser abdicated.[574] On November 11th, the armistice was signed, and the war ended.
Australian soldiers guard German prisoners of war, April 1918.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_German_Spring_Offensive,_March-july_1918_Q6569.jpg
While World War I destroyed Eastern Europe’s landscape, it also brought considerable positive changes.[575] It tore apart the four empires—the German Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Russian Empire—and made room for new states.
The Russian Revolution
By 1917, Russia was losing the war. The war front and the home front suffered from poor morale and general dissatisfaction with the state. Tsar Nicholas II (r. 1894–1917) was an ineffectual leader who suffered many losses on the war front.
The Russian failure on the battlefield reflected at home.[576] Russian citizens had no food or supplies, and they lived in poor living conditions. The people itched for more say in their government so that they could change the realities of their daily lives for the better.
In February 1917, a series of workers strikes in Petrograd turned into a rebellion. The February Revolution involved both blue-collar and white-collar workers protesting the state of the country, the state of the government, and the state of their day-to-day lives. As the protests continued, more joined in the revolution—even the soldiers sworn to protect the royal family.
An image of protestors in the February Revolution, 1917.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Feb_1917.jpg
Tsar Nicholas II abdicated from the throne in favor of a provisional government that would rule until order could be restored.[577] The leader of this provisional government, Alexander Kerensky, appeased the populace by promising a switch from a monarchy to a democracy.
In November, Vladimir Lenin and his radical socialist party, the Bolsheviks, overthrew the provisional government and gained control of Russia. They established a communist state and took steps to secure their power over the country.
First, though, Russia needed to get out of the war. After negotiating with the Central Powers, Lenin signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, agreeing to terms that were unfavorable to Russia.[578] Lenin didn’t care, as he wanted to leave the war behind and reform the country.
The Push for Independent States
Another result of World War I is that the conflict broke down the borders of empires. Other nationalist movements couldn’t grow under oppressive foreign rule, but they could when that state was taken away.
The Polish cry for independence and their own state gained traction. Poles appealed to the Western powers to get the job done. A Polish soldier named Józef Haller united Polish soldiers on both sides of the war under his command, and he brought them to the Western Front to help the Allies.[579] This gallant effort impressed the Western powers enough to support Poland in their quest for a nation of their own, which it would achieve at the end of World War I.[580]
Surprisingly, the new state of Czechoslovakia wasn’t formed in Eastern Europe at all.[581] It was the brainchild of Tomas Masaryk, a professor in Prague. Masaryk was of both Czech and Slovak descent, and he came up with the idea of a state. He traveled to the Allied powers for their opinions and support. In Philadelphia, a meeting of Americans of Czech and Slovak descent agreed on what the new state should be. In May 1918, an American document formed the state of Czechoslovakia. After the war was over, Masaryk became its first president.
The idea of a united Czech and Slovak state came from Tomas Masaryk, who served as Czechoslovakia’s first president.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tom%C3%A1%C5%A1_Garrigue_Masaryk_1925.PNG
Other new states grew from the chaos of the Great War.[582] Serbians and other Slavic groups agreed on a new state in July 1917 called Yugoslavia. There was finally a united Southern Slavic country. Unfortunately, it came too late for the Serbians. They would lose about 25 percent of their population during the war.
Latvia has another interesting origin story. The Latvians were split among the Germans and the Russians, just like the state they would soon call home. The Latvians who fought in the Russian army remained loyal, but the rest pushed for independence. Since the state was founded by soldiers, it was only fitting that they were the first members of the national army.
Plenty of new ideas came forth during this period that were on opposite ends of the spectrum, such as Vladimir Lenin’s communist state and US President Woodrow Wilson’s position on self-rule. In Eastern Europe, Wilson’s goals were hard to realize. By November 1918, the guns went quiet, and the war was over.
The Interwar Years, 1918–1939
The reality of postwar Eastern Europe was very different from Western Europe.[583] Several things were happening; after all, new states meant new conflicts. The new countries that came out of the war needed to get their bearings. Also, in this interwar period, a series of dictators would rise, including the two most familiar ones: Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler.
Known as the “Big Four,” the leaders of Great Britain, Italy, France, and the United States controlled the Paris Peace Conference. Pictured are British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau of France, and US President Woodrow Wilson (left to right). May 1919.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Big_four.jpg
The Allies met for discussions and compromises that would define post-World War I life at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.[584] The resulting Treaty of Versailles is made up of the agreements the Great Powers made.
New Countries and Borderland Disputes
It wasn’t just the victors of World War I that showed up at the Paris Peace Conference.[585] The rulers of new countries also came, wanting the West’s support for their new nations.
First, though, the restructured region of Eastern Europe had to end the warfare. Even though the war ended on November 11th, 1918, there were still two more years of skirmishes and battles in Eastern Europe. Mostly, these fights were over borderlands and who would run the governments of these new states.
The Bolsheviks Centralize Power in Soviet Russia
Although Lenin was more focused on securing his power after the Russian Revolution than paying attention to what he was signing, he approved of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918. When the war was over and the last of the Central Powers were defeated, Lenin and the Russian government threw out the treaty.
Now that they had a hold on the country, the Soviets spread out, invading new territories and trying to reclaim old ones. The Soviet Red Army invaded Germany, hoping to take control of the country while it was in the throes of rebellion. The Red Army also moved into newer states that were just getting started. They conquered Ukraine before moving on to Hungary. Hungary went along with the Russians temporarily; a Bolshevik activist, Bela Kun, established a communist government, which would soon fall.
Lenin was pleased with the results of the army’s movements, even if the power was only temporary. He wanted to throw his weight around to show that his Red Army could be the most powerful force in Eastern Europe.
Lenin and the Red Army started to get a little full of themselves. In August 1920, they invaded Poland.[586] They knew they would win. When they arrived in Warsaw, the Red Army brought a ready-made package of supporters and a new head of government.
The Soviets chose the wrong country. Poland had just gotten its state back, and the people of Warsaw were fervent nationalists. The Soviets were so convinced that the Poles would welcome them, but they were met with soldiers. The Polish army attacked the Red Army, pushing them back.
The Russians didn’t give up and moved on to other countries.[587] Both Belarus and Ukraine were fervently nationalist, but they didn’t stand a chance against the Red Army. The Soviets absorbed their territories into their dominion.
There was one country in Eastern Europe that didn’t want independence: Austria.[588] The former dual monarchy Austria-Hungary had been divided up at the end of the world war.[589] Hungary lost most of its territory, and it was reduced down to a third of what it once was.[590] Hungary lost Transylvania to Romania, and it didn’t know how to handle its independence. It had spent so long under Ottoman rule that the Hungarians didn’t want to rule themselves. They tried to join with Germany, but the Great Powers put a stop to it, refusing to allow Germany or Hungary to reach for any more power.
Poland was on the opposite end of the spectrum from Hungary. It enjoyed its new borders a little too much. Poland wanted a larger state, and it earned many enemies in the process. They crossed into Lithuania, Germany, and Czechoslovakia, ruining their diplomatic relationships with them for a time.[591]
Eastern Europe also came into conflict with its Western neighbors.[592] When the Great Powers were carving out the new territories, they made the new Eastern European countries protect their minority populations. The new territories resented the interference, especially when the West didn’t hold itself to the same standard. Conflicts in Eastern Europe were inevitable. However, if they kept fighting like they were, they wouldn’t be able to prevent another war from happening.
Resettlement and Ethnic Cleansing
In the aftermath of the Great War, another smaller conflict broke out between Greece and Turkey. This little-known conflict is significant because it uprooted minority populations to create a more homogenous state. Almost half a million Macedonian Muslims arrived in Turkey, and over one million Greek Christians went to Greece. Bulgaria also had the same arrangement with Greece, so they also uprooted and resettled groups.
It is important to note that most of the people who were brought back to their “homeland” had never seen it before. Several ethnic groups were forced to move to places they had never been to or seen before. This process was not always peaceful. Ethnic cleansing was also used by some countries to force ethnicities to leave, especially if they resisted resettlement.
Dictatorships Take Over Eastern Europe
Most countries in postwar Eastern Europe were enthusiastic about their change in status. Self-determination had been something they could only dream about, and now, it was their reality. These new countries embraced social reforms, like improvements to the education system and land ownership, as well as other changes like a representative government. These democratic states were short-lived, as these new states were prone to dictatorships.
Less than ten years after the end of World War I, Poland became one of the first dictatorships in Eastern Europe. In 1926, Marshal Józef Piłsudski took control of the country, becoming Poland’s first dictator.
Dictators toppled governments in other European countries. Sometimes they took strange paths. Karlis Ulmanis was a teacher in the United States before he came to power in Latvia. The Iron Guard Movement (a military fascist movement) gained traction in Romania, ending with the prime minister’s assassination. Yugoslavia became a kingdom, and the king installed autocratic rule in 1929.
Albania also became a monarchy. Ahmed Zogu was from a powerful tribe in Albania. He joined the political scene before he led a coup in 1925. Three years later, he gave himself a new name: King Zog I. He was known for his repressive regime. He found allies in the Italian fascist government. However, it turns out they weren’t really friends because the Italians led a coup in 1939 and ousted King Zog from power.
One state that didn’t fall into the dictator trap was Czechoslovakia. The state adopted Western ideas and supported democracy.[593] That’s not to say that there wasn’t internal conflict.[594] The Slovaks felt like they were second-class citizens in the new country. Other members of minority populations weren’t happy either.
Joseph Stalin
In January 1924, Vladimir Lenin died.[595] His successor, Joseph Stalin, is known for his oppressive dictatorship and his brutal policies, specifically his attack on Russian farmers and the use of labor camps, which changed the face of Russia.[596]
When Stalin ascended to power, he was trying to reform society and move away from agricultural production.[597] He saw himself as a visionary that would bring the Soviet Union (the USSR) into the 20th century.
Stalin targeted wealthy farmers called kulaks. If he suspected that the kulaks were hiding food, not producing enough, or some other perceived crime against the state, Stalin had them deported to prison camps (gulags) in Siberia and Kazakhstan.[598] As he was dispatching farmers, Stalin still forced others to keep up with production, insisting that they double or even triple their output. Russian farmers acted out with small feats of resistance. They harvested their food slower or hid some rations.
Prisoners at the Intalag gulag coal mine in northwestern Russia, ca. 1955.
Rights: Kauno IX forto muziejus / Kaunas 9th Fort Museum, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Political_prisoners_at_Intalag,_USSR.jpg
Stalin’s regime is closely associated with the Terror Famine or Holodomor. To terrify the population, Stalin sent the army through the countryside to steal grain and other food items. Even if the farmers had already given their rations to the state, their supplies were still taken. Stalin ordered the army to close down any farms where they found hidden food or if the farmers resisted. The regime even hired people to scour the countryside to look for people who were hiding food from the state.
As a result of the Terror Famine, millions died of starvation and disease. Many resorted to cannibalism to stay alive. Unsurprisingly, the Soviets denied their role in the Terror Famine for decades. They hid what they were doing from the press, and they engaged in acts of repression and terror to keep it from getting out.
Known as the “Red Train,” government officials would arrive to take all of the first harvests for the state. 1932.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HolodomorVyizdValky.jpg
Joseph Stalin also adopted the Russification techniques of his ancestors. When he came to power, he promised to protect the various nationalities in Soviet lands. Honestly, he didn’t think it would matter once the people were working again. They would have a common goal to work toward, and their ethnicity would be the last thing they were thinking about.
Still, he followed through. He created departments to work in ethnic groups’ interests. However, as he centralized his control over the government, he eliminated the differences between the people. Stalin arrested minorities, like Poles and Germans, who he thought were working against the state. To get rid of them, he deported them to the hinterland deep inside Russian borders.
Adolf Hitler
While several conditions aligned to bring Europe into the Great War, this was not the case for World War II. Every reason for the outbreak of World War II goes back to one person: Adolf Hitler.[599] Hitler usurped power in Germany in 1933, and he was upset at the Treaty of Versailles’s punitive conditions against Germany.[600] He believed that Germany deserved to be one of the Great Powers of Europe and that the other powers didn’t take Germany seriously. Hitler went against the Treaty of Versailles and built up Germany’s defenses.
Another point of contention for Nazi Germany was the fate of Eastern Europe. Even though Germany lost the Great War, they technically were victorious in Eastern Europe. The Germans wanted to keep the lands they had acquired in Eastern Europe, but the postwar treaties forced Germany to release them. It even had to let go of some lands that were German before World War I even started.
Since Hitler believed that parts of Eastern Europe were German by right, he just took them.[601] His plans centered around Eastern Europe; his strategy included adding Czechoslovakia, Belarus, the Baltic region, Poland, Ukraine, and the western lands of Russia to the Third Reich.[602] Hitler’s goal was to take as much land as possible for the German “master race” to live in and reproduce.[603]
The other powers of Europe thought Hitler would just go away if they gave him what he wanted.[604] This appeasement policy only went so far, though, as Hitler was not the type to go away quietly.
First, Hitler targeted Czechoslovakia.[605] The Sudetes mountain range helped defend the country against attackers, and Hitler wanted access to it. He granted citizenship to Germans living in the mountain ranges (the Sudetens), and he demanded that Czechoslovakia hand it over. Naturally, the new country refused.
On September 29th, 1938, the Munich Conference attempted to quiet the tensions brewing in Eastern Europe.[606] In attendance were representatives from England, France, Germany, and Italy. All the representatives agreed that Czechoslovakia should give the Sudetenland to Germany. Unsurprisingly, the country most affected didn’t have any representatives at the meeting.
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain thought that capitulation would have satisfied Hitler, but he was wrong. It got so much worse.
Hitler didn’t just take the Sudetenland; he took the whole country, breaking the Munich Agreement of 1938.[607] He invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939, occupying the regions of Moravia and Bohemia. He then set about Germanizing the population. After his successful takeover of Czechoslovakia, Hitler moved on to taking Klaipeda, a port city in Lithuania. The Lithuanians gave Hitler what he wanted.
After seeing what Hitler was doing, the nations of Europe stopped appeasing him.[608] He soon approached Poland, eyeing their port city of Danzig.[609] Poland had powerful allies in England and France, so they told Hitler no. He didn’t take it well.
1939: Hitler, Stalin, and the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact
When Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin signed the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact on August 23rd, 1939, all of Eastern Europe waited to see what would happen.[610] The two men were as different as could be. They tormented each other publicly, and they could never agree on anything. Yet, the pact they signed would alter the face of Eastern Europe forever.
Hitler sent his foreign minister to Moscow to represent his interests. At the Kremlin, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, and Joseph Stalin went over the treaty, and Stalin watched as the foreign ministers signed it. With the signing of this contract, Hitler and Stalin became totalitarianism personified. This type of government structure demands enthusiastic devotion and service to the state.
The nonaggression pact covertly stated that Hitler and Stalin laid claim to parts of Eastern Europe and that each would have their own zone of influence.[611] The men divided Poland in half, with Hitler taking the west and Stalin taking the east.[612] Stalin also claimed the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia, and Finland, while Hitler would get Lithuania.[613]
When the treaty was made public knowledge, Hitler and Stalin weren’t kidding anyone. Everyone knew that there was some secret mission behind it. They had plans for Eastern Europe. Hitler and Stalin would stick to their zones, getting rid of all the Slavs and Jews that lived there so that their own nationalities could live there.
The Nazis and the Soviets Terrorize Eastern Europe
During World War I, many German soldiers refused to admit that the war was over, and they believed Germany had won.[614] These soldiers were the Freikorps, who were known for their violent bloodlust. They occupied the Baltic states, but the new Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania defeated the Freikorps. The soldiers retreated back to Germany, and soon enough, they would find another home for their delusions: the Nazi Party.
Since Hitler had come to power, he had progressively pushed the limit on how long his neighbors would tolerate him.[615] He targeted Eastern Europe, agreeing to split control of the region with Stalin. Hitler had engaged with Poland before he signed the nonaggression pact. He wanted to formalize his alliance with the Soviet Union before he made any moves that would make the Soviets back out of the agreement. The pact was signed on August 23rd, 1939. Nine days later, on September 1st, 1939, Adolf Hitler invaded Poland.[616]
Hitler picked a fight with the Polish, using a flimsy excuse to invade the country. Poland wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of Nazi weapons and military discipline. England and France had had enough of Hitler’s antics, so they declared war on Germany. The Polish desperately tried to defend themselves, but the Red Army showed up too.
The rest of the invasion started to look like a conqueror had arrived. Hitler ordered a slaughter to break the Polish spirit.[617] The Nazis formed execution squads, the Einsatzgruppen, which unleashed terror on the country. The Einsatzgruppen moved from town to town, executing anyone who wasn’t an ethnic German. Within three months of the invasion, almost sixty thousand Poles were dead.
The Nazis split up the Polish territories, occupying half of the country. (Hitler annexed the other half.) In Nazi-occupied Poland, the soldiers deported Poles and Jews so that there would be space for imported Germans to live. Some Jews tried to escape the Nazis by fleeing to the Soviet side of the country. Because of the nonaggression pact, they were turned away or brought back into the German side of the country.
The Soviets combined their part of Poland with their holdings in modern-day Belarus and Ukraine. They firmly established their own rule, deporting anyone who could be an enemy. Anyone who whispered a word against the Soviet regime or occupation was sent to prison camps in Siberia. The Soviets quickly dispatched their Polish prisoners of war to Russia, where they were murdered.
Both Stalin and Hitler were ecstatic about the fall of Poland, and they started to reorganize Eastern Europe according to the terms of the nonaggression pact. Stalin sent Germans living in his territories back to Germany. By December 1939, Hitler and Stalin also arranged for the deportation of the Germans living in the Baltic states, which destroyed communities that were centuries old.
Meanwhile, the Soviets moved into the lands assigned to them in the nonaggression pact. They incorporated parts of Romania into their Soviet satellite states. The Soviets also invaded the Baltic states. While Stalin was there, he forced all three states to allow him to build bases for the Red Army in their territories. In exchange, he would protect them. Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia knew that Stalin wouldn’t take no for an answer.
The first resistance that Stalin and the Red Army met was in Finland. The people of Finland protested against Soviet control and occupation, and the two nations went to war. The Finns pushed the Red Army out during the Winter War, but they were not completely successful. In March 1940, Stalin accepted Finland’s surrender, but he did not occupy the country.
In the Baltic states, however, Stalin executed a hostile takeover. He appointed puppet governments and banned any non-communist activity. He eliminated the high command of the armies, installing Soviets in their place. The Soviets also held rigged elections to make sure their candidates were elected to positions in the government. The people of Poland were coerced into voting; if they didn’t, they were accused of being an enemy of the state. Even with rigged elections, the Soviets still lied about the results. Once Soviet agents were in charge of the government, they joined the Soviet Union.
Communist agents completely took over Baltic society. They made their own curriculum in schools, took possession of businesses, and controlled the press. The Soviets targeted anyone who didn’t completely support their rule, and they deported thousands of dissidents from the Baltic states.
The Eastern Front of World War II
A little over twenty years after World War I ended, Europe was at war again. The Eastern Front in this war would look much different than the Great War. The totalitarian governments changed what war looked like. It set the stage for a gruesome war, one that destroyed the people and the landscape of Eastern Europe. Years of expansion and terror couldn’t have prepared the countries of Eastern Europe for what was coming.
At War with the German Reich
In September 1939, Adolf Hitler invaded Poland, exacting a bloody, brutal occupation. [618] Two days after the invasion of Poland, Great Britain and France were at war with Germany.[619] The Nazi invasion destroyed the Polish state, but the Poles played a vital role in the war effort.[620] Polish soldiers and pilots joined the British army and participated in key victories. Polish scientists also discovered how to decipher the German Enigma—a code that was supposed to be unbreakable. They gave the code to the British, who used it to sabotage German movements.
Hitler’s bid for Poland was successful, and it helped him acquire more territory. In 1940, he moved into Western Europe, conquering France, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands.[621] When Hitler signed the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact with Stalin, he had no plans to see it through to the end of the war. Once Hitler amassed the lands he wanted, he planned to back out of his agreement with the USSR. The alliance was a means to an end, and the pact was outliving its usefulness.
Hitler in the Balkans
As Adolf Hitler was contemplating how to publicly break ranks with Joseph Stalin, he was delayed by events in the Balkans.[622] By the end of 1940, Italy, which was a part of the Axis powers, had moved into the Balkans for their own land grab.[623] In early 1941, Yugoslavia broke its alliance with Nazi Germany.[624] The original government had capitulated to the Axis powers. Revolutionaries led a coup d'état, and the new government was opposed to joining the Axis. The Führer reacted in the typical “Hitler” way: he invaded the Balkans.[625] In April 1941, Hitler took Yugoslavia and Greece, splitting Yugoslavia among Bulgaria, Hungary, and Italy.[626]
Hitler used his successes in Eastern Europe to convince other powers to join Germany in its Axis alliance. Wanting to keep Hungary in the fold, Hitler annexed the territories of Czechoslovakia with Hungarian residents to Hungary. The regent of Hungary, Admiral Miklos Horthy, thought working with Hitler was a good idea.
The German Reich at its greatest extent, 1942. The lands held and administered by Germany are labeled in blue
Goran tek-en, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_War_II_in_Europe,_1942.svg
In an attempt to gain allies, Hitler forced Romania to grant northern Transylvania to Hungary. He played against the Soviets, promising Romania more land when the Soviets were defeated. After getting Romania and Hungary on his side, Hitler used his German connections to manipulate Bulgaria. Meanwhile, plans moved forward for Operation Barbarossa—the invasion of the Soviet Union.[627] Hitler built himself a command center in Poland so that he could supervise the military movements of the Eastern Front.[628]
Soviet Successes: The Battle for Moscow and the Siege of Stalingrad
In June 1941, he was ready to invade the Soviet Union.[629] On June 22nd, 1941, German, Italian, Finnish, Hungarian, Slovakian, and Romanian troops invaded the Soviet Union. This would be the largest land invasion ever seen.
Stalin couldn’t believe Hitler had broken their nonaggression pact, even though he had been warned about it beforehand. Shocked by the behavior of who they considered an ally, the Soviet forces stumbled through the first armed engagements.
The Soviet satellite states couldn’t have been happier, and they welcomed the Germans when they arrived. Of course, they didn’t know about the Commissar Order. On June 6th, 1941, before Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Hitler’s high command issued an order that instructed the army to kill any supporter or promoter of Bolshevism. In other words, it was a blanket order to kill any Soviet they could find.
The Soviets quickly regrouped. On September 8th, 1941, the German army sieged the city of Leningrad (modern-day St. Petersburg). However, the Germans did not find an easy success, as they sieged the city for almost three years. As the siege of Leningrad commenced, Hitler’s forces also attacked Moscow and invaded Crimea. Soviet forces successfully defended Moscow from October 1941 to January 1942.
Hitler was confident despite the setbacks, but the German troops in Russia couldn’t advance. They suffered through the hellish winter of 1941, for which they were unprepared. December 1941 also saw the United States enter World War II, and American troops joined Allied forces in pushing the Nazis out of Western Europe. However, Hitler was still able to advance on the Eastern front. In 1942, the Germans moved toward Stalingrad, traveling up the Volga River toward modern-day Volgograd.[630] The Siege of Stalingrad was also a long, drawn-out affair, becoming one of the bloodiest conflicts of the war.[631] During the eight-month-long campaign, over two million died, including 800,000 civilians from warfare and starvation.
The Red Army ended the siege of Stalingrad in February 1943, taking the fight to the Eastern Front. The Soviets captured tens of thousands of Nazi soldiers at Stalingrad, which was a huge blow to the German cause. This was the point of no return; the Nazis were losing the war. In 1943, the USSR began its western advance, encroaching on Germany. The Soviets pushed the Germans back farther west, moving the Eastern Front closer to Europe.
A photograph from the Battle of Stalingrad, October 1942.
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-B22436 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-B22436,_Russland,_Kampf_um_Stalingrad,_Ruinen.jpg
The following year delivered two final blows to Nazi Germany. The British and American campaign at D-Day freed most of France and Belgium from Nazi control.[632] The same year, the USSR invaded Eastern Europe. The Soviets completed multiple advances to liberate Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria from Nazi control.
The Allies invaded Nazi Germany from both sides in 1945, taking all Nazi territory except for Berlin by April. Trapped in a bunker, Hitler committed suicide before he could be taken by the enemy. Before he killed himself, he put Admiral Karl Dönitz in command. Dönitz surrendered to the Allied forces in May 1945.
The Human Cost of World War II
The Germans used the lands they invaded for their resources, importing food and supplies from them.[633] This wasn’t the only way the Nazi regime would forever alter the landscape; Hitler used extermination as a war tactic, killing millions in Eastern Europe.[634] Towards the end of the war, as their enemies closed in, the Nazis got desperate, exacting cleansing campaigns across the territories they occupied.[635]
As part of Hitler’s war of extermination, almost no one was safe from his wrath.[636] The Germans deported millions of Eastern Europeans as prisoners of war and slave labor. It is estimated that six million Soviets were taken as prisoners of war, and about one-half starved to death in prisoner camps. Hitler also designed the Hunger Plan to cut off supplies and starve the populations of Eastern Europe to death. The only demographic that was safe were ethnic Germans. Everyone else had to go. In the lands he had conquered, Hitler had already started the process of ethnic cleansing. The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, one of Hitler’s high-ranking officers in the SS—and the man who planned the mass murders of the Holocaust—was as good a reason as any.
A photograph of a Soviet soldier wearing the Star of David. He was a Nazi prisoner of war. August 1941.
Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-267-0111-36A / Friedrich / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-267-0111-36,_Russland,_russische_Kriegsgefangene_(Juden).jpg
Two Czech soldiers, Josef Gabcik and Jan Kubis, bombed Heydrich’s vehicle on May 27th, 1942, mortally wounding him.[637] Two days later, Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, openly condemned Jews for the assassination attempt. He ordered the arrest of hundreds of Jews in Berlin and threatened to execute them for any further attacks on German officials. German soldiers moved through Czech lands, executing anyone they suspected was involved with the attack. The village of Lidice, right outside of Prague, was completely annihilated. German soldiers burned the villages to the ground, murdering the men and boys. The women and children were sent to concentration camps.
Soldiers lead Polish women into the forest for execution, 1940.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palmiry_ostatnia_droga.jpeg
The Nazi campaign hit Poland the worst. Six million Polish died, including three million Jews. The Polish also built the most significant resistance. They drew on their experiences after the partition to secretly organize a resistance. By 1942, there were 300,000 supporters for the end of the Nazi occupation.
The Jewish Experience
If there was one demographic that suffered the most under the oppressive totalitarian governments, it was the Jews.[638] They had lived in relative peace in Eastern Europe for hundreds of years, and now, they were treated like they were the enemy.[639] Eastern Europe has a long history of anti-Semitism, but its most disastrous hour was the Holocaust.
The Shtetl Communities of Eastern Europe
Since the 17th century, Jews had made their home in Eastern Europe. They especially found a welcoming environment in Poland-Lithuania. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was more religiously tolerant, and it welcomed Jews who wanted to settle. Every Eastern European nation had Jewish communities, though.
The Jewish communities, from territory to territory, were incredibly rich and multifaceted, each with its own traditions. Jews organized into shtetls, which were small communities of Jewish inhabitants. About four-fifths of the Jews of Eastern Europe lived in small communities like this. Shtetls were self-sufficient, and the people made their living through handicrafts or through trade contacts. They also worked as merchants and business owners.
A painting of a Jewish wedding in a shtetl. Artist: Isaak Asknaziy, 1893.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%D0%98%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%B0%D0%BA_%D0%90%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%95%D0%B2%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B9%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D1%81%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%B4%D1%8C%D0%B1%D0%B0.jpg
When Russia took over its part of Poland after the partition, it was supposed to protect these communities. Instead, they passed anti-Semitic laws that restricted the movements of Jewish communities. Catherine the Great’s 1791 Pale of Settlement had banned Jews from moving into the interior of the Russian Empire. And that was just the beginning of multiple Russian laws that restricted Jewish life and movements. The shtetls started to suffer from these restrictions.
The Pogroms
The height of shtetl life stretched over the first half of the 19th century. They started to decline after 1840 because of Russian repression. Russian anti-Semitism reached an all-time high in the 1880s, as Jews were blamed for Alexander II’s assassination. Pogroms tore across the Russian landscape, attacking Jewish communities.[640] The government didn’t exactly order these pogroms, but they didn’t stop them.
The pogroms continued until the 20th century. In 1903, a newspaper published a story that a Christian child had been murdered. The populace immediately blamed the Jews, and violence swept across Ottoman-held Moldova. Hundreds of Jews were assaulted, and thousands of homes and businesses were attacked. The Kishinev pogrom of 1903 ended with the attackers getting a smack on the wrist—evidence of the reality Jews faced under Russian rule. Just two years later, the Russian Revolution of 1905 also brought more pogroms across the empire.
The Holocaust
After the pogroms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jews found two ways to process their realities. They spread the notion of Zionism, a movement that worked toward the Jews having their own country. Most Jews also immigrated to new places. Some went to Palestine as part of the Zionist movement, while others left for places like the United States, England, France, and Canada.
In January 1942, the Nazi high command met at the Wannsee Conference to plan the Final Solution, the plan to murder all of the Jews left in Europe.[641] Although there were over a thousand concentration camps, there were six main extermination camps in Eastern Europe. Two of them—Auschwitz and Majdanek—were concentration camps with gas chambers on site. The other four—Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, and Treblinka—were used purely for killing. The Holocaust took place in Eastern Europe, where around six million Jews were killed. While Jews made up most of the targets for extermination, the Germans also killed the Roma, enemies of the state, and the mentally and physically disabled, as well as other minority groups.
An illustrated map noting the locations of the six extermination camps in Poland.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WW2-Holocaust-Poland.PNG
The Final Solution fed into the Nazi ideology of worshiping the Aryan race. Jews were the enemy, and a perfect world without Jews was what the Aryan race needed in order to thrive. The Germans received their first experiences in systematic murder in Germany, as doctors experimented on the physically disabled. What they learned—how to kill quickly and efficiently—would help shape the Final Solution.
The Nazis used the Einsatzgruppen during their campaigns to eliminate the Jewish population. In 1939, the Einsatzgruppen followed the German army into Poland. Poland had the largest population of Jews, so some were rounded up and deported. When they were shipped to concentration camps, Germans confiscated their money, valuables, and property. Jews were also sent to ghettos, which were cramped living spaces with poor sanitation and ventilation.
The Einsatzgruppen also followed the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. There, they were instructed to kill Jews or anyone they considered an enemy. Those people could be communists, Roma, or the physically or mentally disabled. The Einsatzgruppen was famous for hiring people from the local population to help them murder Jews.[642] They also used Soviet prisoners of war.
Hitler’s allies either deported Jews themselves or had their own persecution policies. Hitler’s hatred of the Jewish population made itself known in his dealings with Hungary.[643] At first, Hungary was a Nazi ally. The Hungarian government believed that Hitler’s strong-arm methods could help them recover their pre-World War I territories. In September 1938, Hitler returned the part of Czechoslovakia that was formerly part of Hungary. Two years later, he granted Hungary possession of Transylvania. In March 1941, Hungary and Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia and divided the lands among themselves. Hungary’s extended territories included a significant Jewish population; many were only ethnic Jews who had converted to Christianity, some for generations. However, it mattered little to Hitler.
The Hungarian government was like-minded with Hitler in his Jewish policies. Hungary had been passing anti-Semitic laws since the late 1930s. Jews were forced into labor and banned from public and economic life. These laws restricted the movements and activities of Jews, but violent reprisals against Jewish communities didn’t begin until the 1940s when Hungary was deep in its alliance with the Nazis. Hungarian Jews were exiled to other lands, where they were assassinated, and Hungarian soldiers slaughtered Jews as enemies to the war effort.
Hungarian Jews, who had recently arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau, are selected for labor or extermination, May/June 1944.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Selection_on_the_ramp_at_Auschwitz-Birkenau,_1944_(Auschwitz_Album)_1b.jpg
As the Nazis started losing the war, Hungary tried to backtrack its alliance with Hitler.[644] Through their alliance, Hungarian soldiers were among the tens of thousands of casualties during the later phase of the war. Hungary’s head of state, Miklos Horthy, purposely disobeyed Hitler’s orders. When Hitler pressed his ally to eliminate hundreds of thousands of Jews in Hungarian lands, Horthy refused. Hitler’s army invaded Hungary in March 1944 to force Horthy to remain committed to their alliance. When he gained control of the country, Hitler replaced Horthy with someone easier to control, and he deported the Jewish population to extermination camps. About half a million of the six million Jews who died during the Holocaust were Hungarian.
The Resistance
Populations targeted by the Germans engaged in inspiring acts of resistance, especially after Germany started losing to the Soviets.[645] Perhaps the most famous example was the Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943. On April 19th, 1943, residents of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Poland, used guerilla tactics to attack the German soldiers before hiding. [646] The Germans thought they could crush the rebellion in a matter of days. It took them over a month. The Germans tried to flush out the resistance by cutting off the utilities to the buildings. When that didn’t work, they burned the ghetto down.
Many Gentiles helped Jews resist or hide from the Germans.[647] Those who did risked their lives. If the Germans found anyone hiding a Jewish family, they would kill everyone. Sometimes, the easiest thing to do was run away. Many Jews who were able fled for the woods. About twenty thousand Jews lived in communities that hid in forested areas throughout the war.
Chapter 10 – The Postwar Years, the Fall of Communism, and the Post-Communist World
After World War II ended in 1945, Eastern Europe surveyed the devastation, questioning where it would go from here.[648] The Allied Powers questioned how Europe would be restructured after the fall of Nazi Germany. The United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union came to terms with how postwar Europe would look. The map was completely reimagined, with the United States and the Soviet Union claiming their own areas of influence.
Finding New Countries, Finding New Homes
The shifting borders of Eastern Europe between 1938 and 1948. This would become the Eastern Bloc.
See page for author, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:EasternBloc.png
In November 1943, Joseph Stalin furiously fought to keep the territories he received from his alliance with Hitler. After stages of grandstanding and arguing, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill recommended redrawing the borders of Europe. In order for Russia to keep its territories, Eastern Europe needed new borders, at least in some cases, showing the delicate nature of state-building.
In February 1945, the three main Allied powers—England, the United States, and the USSR—were represented at the Yalta Conference.[649] In attendance were British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. They met in Crimea to settle what the postwar world would look like.
Among the many agreements made at that conference was the division of Germany and Poland. After Germany’s defeat, the country would be split into zones occupied by the US, France, the USSR, and Great Britain. However, Joseph Stalin refused to compromise on Poland. He claimed that the country had been used more than once to threaten and invade Soviet borders. Stalin didn’t want to return the part of Poland he controlled, but he upheld the legality of free elections. Churchill and Roosevelt gave in, supporting a new Polish government that would be an ally to the USSR, thus creating a USSR zone of influence.
The men agreed to meet at a later date but not before Roosevelt and Churchill received Stalin’s agreement to join the United Nations, an international organization geared toward maintaining international peace.
The following month, Stalin made his position on Poland crystal clear. Instead of supporting a free democratic process, he sent Soviet troops to crush any criticism of the new provisional Polish government. Two years later, the “free” elections he promised were nothing more than making postwar Poland into a Soviet client state.
In July 1945, the Potsdam Conference negotiated how to resettle certain communities.[650] Germans from all over Eastern Europe were resettled with a guarantee from the Great Powers that they would be, above all, respected. The war was over, and Stalin was in a much better position to press his claims for a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.[651] His troops were everywhere, and they were victorious. The new US president, Harry S. Truman, was less likely to bend than Roosevelt, who had died in April 1945—only weeks after his return from the Yalta Conference.
The conference ended on a sour note. In March 1946, Winston Churchill gave his iconic speech, referring to Eastern Europe as covered with an “iron curtain.” This would mark the beginning of the Cold War, a decades-long phase of tensions between the democratic United States and the communist Soviet Union.[652]
Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin at the Potsdam Conference in February 1945.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yalta_Conference_(Churchill,_Roosevelt,_Stalin)_(B%26W).jpg
Of course, the peaceful resettlement of Europe was easier in theory.[653] On the ground, wartime grievances and long-standing feuds came out. Resettling became an excuse for violence. The Polish violently drove Germans out of their new territory. Poles were terrorized out of Ukraine, Lithuania, and Belarus.
Those who were displaced were piled into refugee camps until they were told where they could go. Stalin was very spirited in his demands that his people return to their homeland. Of course, no one knew he was doing that so that he could accuse them of conspiring against the state and then have them deported or executed. Until the end of the decade, the Great Powers helped Eastern Europeans resettle their populations. Many emigrated, starting new lives.
Some of the displaced couldn’t return home. The widespread destruction of the war meant that people’s homes and livelihoods were gone. The Jewish survivors of World War II often didn’t have homes anymore. On top of that, anti-Semitism was still alive in Eastern Europe, and several Eastern European states persecuted Jewish communities.
The Stalinization of Eastern Europe
After winning victory after victory at the end of the war, Stalin started thinking about the future. Without Germany to compete with, he wanted to expand Soviet influence across all of Eastern Europe. As the Western nations saw Eastern Europe limp back to a sense of normalcy, they tried to intervene to help Eastern Europe recover.[654]
They were immediately met with hostility, and tensions escalated on both sides. In February 1946, Joseph Stalin made his antagonism towards the West known.[655] In a speech, he stated that he fully expected the West and the East to go to war with each other. Later that month, the American diplomat George Kennan sent Washington a private dispatch—the “Long Telegram”—advising the United States on the conditions on the ground in the Soviet Union. He suggested that the US use a containment policy to keep Soviet influence from spreading.
In 1948, US President Harry Truman signed the Truman Doctrine.[656] This legislation promised US support to European countries under communist rule or under communist pressure. However, Joseph Stalin itched for control over the whole region of Eastern Europe, and he expanded his influence through a process called Stalinization.
The recovering nations of Eastern Europe were at the whim of international politics. No matter what promises were made, the Soviet Union openly broke with the West.[657] Now, there were two spheres of influence—known as blocs—looming over Europe. One, the Western Bloc, was controlled by Europe and the United States. The other, the Eastern Bloc, was Stalin’s sphere of influence, and it was dominated by the Soviet Union. Winston Churchill’s iconic 1946 speech would perfectly sum up postwar Europe; he stated that “an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” It marked the beginning of the Cold War, the long phase of tensions between the democratic West and the communist Soviet Union.
At first, Stalin told everyone what they wanted to hear.[658] He agreed with the democratic process. He wanted the nations of Eastern Europe to have independence. However, the whole time, he was planning to add a collection of satellite states to the Soviet Union. Stalin itched for control over the whole region of Eastern Europe, and he established communist regimes through a process called Stalinization.[659], [660] Yet, Stalin was still Stalin, and he didn’t trust any foreign communists.
Stalinization happened slowly, with Stalin’s agents slowly taking control of the state.[661] When Stalin sent non-Soviet communists back home, they would gain the favor of state institutions by, for instance, securing army and government positions. Once they had these in place, the communists then used them to eliminate any protest against communist regimes.
The agents would engage with the population, passing popular reforms to get their support. When they had the support of the population, the communists took control of the government. By slowly infiltrating the political scene, the Soviet Union could spread its influence in a much more sustainable way than by invading and subduing a population.
Stalin had control of most of Eastern Europe by 1948, the same year US President Harry Truman signed his Truman Doctrine, which was legislation promising American support to European countries under communist rule or pressure. The only two countries Stalin couldn’t infiltrate were Finland and Austria. Three countries—Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland—fell in line with the Western Bloc to establish democracy as soon as the war was over. These governments didn’t last, and they soon became client states of the Soviet Union. However, all three countries would flirt with democracy throughout the Cold War.
The Stalin-Tito Split of 1948
The first direct challenge to Stalin’s authority would come from Yugoslavia.[662] The leader of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, refused to cower to Stalin’s demands. When Stalin tried to force Tito to fix Yugoslavia’s economy to benefit the Soviet Union, Tito refused. If anyone was going to benefit from Yugoslavia’s economy, it was going to be Yugoslavia. When Stalin suggested signing an alliance with Bulgaria, Tito said no.
Stalin was so furious that he withdrew his agents from Yugoslavia. He tried to get Tito to toe the line by using other powerful communists. In retaliation, Tito had Stalin’s supporters in Yugoslavia arrested. The US heard about Yugoslavia’s defiance, and it sent help to Tito. He would never return to Stalin’s sphere of influence.
Daily Life in Postwar Eastern Europe
Much planning and delegation had gone into restructuring Europe after World War II. But what did daily life look like for most Eastern Europeans?[663]
Twentieth-century Eastern Europe would have to constantly reevaluate itself. After the war was over, constant warfare and skirmishes over territories defined the Eastern European experience. For those who lived under the Soviet Bloc, Stalin resisted any kind of Western items or ideas. Communist rhetoric often focused on complete devotion to the state. To keep people in line, these nations had a secret police force. Communist nations ruled through fear or repression and were usually led by someone who had a cult of personality.
Nikita Khrushchev, the “De-Stalinization” of Eastern Europe, and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956
In 1953, Nikita Khrushchev would bring the Soviet Union a new type of leadership, as he broke away from Stalinization.[664] In the aftermath of Stalin’s death, Khrushchev openly condemned Stalin’s policies, initiating a phase of modernization throughout the Soviet Union. A sense of general unrest spread throughout Eastern Europe, with rebellions against Soviet control breaking out during the 1950s and 1960s.[665]
Of course, Khrushchev’s administration wasn’t without its blunders. His modernization campaign didn’t mean that the Soviet Union was releasing its hold on the Eastern Bloc. In 1956, the Hungarian Revolution temporarily established a democratic government.[666] The student-led protest ignited into a larger movement for overthrowing the Soviet regime. Revolutionaries, led by Imre Nagy, overthrew Hungary’s communist government, expanding more freedoms to the general population, including democratic elections and a multi-party government structure.
This was too much for Nikita Khrushchev.[667] It was one thing to modernize and relax some of the more violent aspects of Stalinization, but this was an open rebellion against Soviet control. He launched a military occupation of Hungary; he captured Imre Nagy and restored Soviet control over the government. In 1958, Nagy was executed for his role in the Hungarian Revolution, but his efforts were not in vain. Until the fall of communism, Hungary practiced self-government more than her neighbors.[668]
The Berlin Wall
Since the end of the war, Berlin had become a four-sector city. The Allied nations—Britain, the US, the Soviet Union, and France—divided Berlin between them, each occupying a part of the city.[669] This system of control had been one of the points agreed upon at the Yalta Conference. Berlin was essentially split in half, with West Berlin under a democratic government and East Berlin under communist rule.
However, East Germany had a problem; all of its young, trained professionals flocked to Berlin, escaping the communist government into the Western side of the city. The country would soon be left with no professionals or skilled workers to keep the economy running.
The Soviets approved of a wall separating Berlin that would keep the people of Soviet-controlled East Germany from escaping to West Germany.[670] Construction began in 1961; it was so secret that almost no one knew about it until it was already up. People who tried to cross the wall were shot on sight. The Berlin Wall would come to symbolize the oppressive regime of communism and the divide between Western and Eastern Europe.
The Cuban Missile Crisis
As the Cold War continued, the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union fractured even further. Each side was obsessively suspicious of the other and on the alert for any violation of the unsteady peace they managed to carve out after World War II. The United States was particularly alarmed by the Soviet Union’s alliance with communist Cuba.[671] Having a communist nation so close to home completely went against everything for which the democratic West stood.
After President John F. Kennedy’s botched invasion of Cuba to end communist rule, Nikita Khrushchev promised to protect its ally with nuclear weapons. Cuba started building sites for Soviet missiles. The United States Navy surrounded Cuba to block any Soviet deliveries of nuclear weapons. Khrushchev denounced the barricade around the island of Cuba as “an act of aggression” against the Soviet Union and promised that the US could not stop any deliveries between the Soviet Union and Cuba.
Each side dug in their heels, with no end in sight. Finally, Khrushchev backtracked. The showdown between the two powers risked nuclear war, something that neither side wanted. Kennedy and Khrushchev came to an agreement; the Soviets would withdraw their weapons from Cuba, and the United States would withdraw their weapons from Turkey. The Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest that the US and the Soviet Union came to armed conflict during the Cold War.
Prague Spring, 1968
The 1960s also brought a shift in personal politics in the Soviet Union.[672] The generation who knew nothing of war, invasion, Hitler, or Stalin came of age. They didn’t adhere to party lines, only to their sense of justice between right and wrong. Rebellions spread throughout the Eastern Bloc; while some gained traction, others were immediately crushed.
Perhaps the most significant period of rebellion in the Eastern Bloc was Prague Spring, a revolution overthrowing communism in Czechoslovakia.[673] In January 1968, the new first secretary of the Communist Party, Alexander Dubček, refused to toe the party line. Among his first actions were to protect more freedom of the press and split Czechoslovakia into two nations: a Czech one and a Slovak one. This would guarantee Czechoslovakia’s Slovak population independence and self-rule. These changes were dangerously close to democracy, and the Soviet Union didn’t like it.
According to the Warsaw Pact of 1955, the USSR and its satellite states entered a mutual defense agreement, which stated that an attack on one member of the bloc guaranteed that the other members would defend them. Dubček’s efforts were an attack on communism from the inside. In June 1968, six months after Dubček’s election, the people took to the streets, clamoring for even more rights and freedoms. The head of the Soviet government, Leonid Brezhnev, reacted by calling on other members of the Warsaw Pact. He gathered thousands of troops to crush the rebellion in Czechoslovakia. By the end of August, the Soviet Union had regained control of the country. It supervised a readjustment of the political system in Czechoslovakia and reappointed communists to their governmental positions. In April the following year, the Soviet Union deposed Alexander Dubček, ending the revolution.
Nuclear Disarmament
The Cuban Missile Crisis convinced every nation that had nuclear weapons, not just the US and the Soviet Union, that an international agreement was necessary to keep the peace.[674] In 1968, over sixty nations around the world—led by the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union—signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. It states that every nation would not help any other government use their nuclear weapons or sell them to others. After nearly three decades after the treaty was first signed, it was extended indefinitely in 1995.
The signing of this nuclear disarmament agreement ushered in a new diplomatic phase of the Cold War. The détente between the United States and the Soviet Union was facilitated by a change in American foreign policy.[675] Under Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the United States sought to establish an evenly distributed international balance of power instead of focusing on its rivalry with the Soviet Union and its efforts to contain communism.
However, this détente in international relations between the United States and the Soviet Union was only temporary. By the 1980s, both the United States and Great Britain denounced communism. President Ronald Reagan publicly antagonized the Soviet Union by pumping money into developing anti-ballistic missiles that could be launched into space.[676]
In 1985, the election of Mikhail Gorbachev would soften the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. After less than six months in power, Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan met at the Geneva Summit of 1985 to discuss nuclear disarmament.[677] Although neither could come to an agreement on a mutual disarmament treaty, it secured Gorbachev’s approach to policy.
When it came to promoting a common security policy, Gorbachev supported working with his rivals, not antagonizing them. Friendly, diplomatic relations was the real protection against attack by nuclear weapons, not the number of weapons their rival had in their possession. Reagan and Gorbachev would successfully come to an agreement the following year at the Reykjavík Summit of 1986, with both nations agreeing to reduce their nuclear arms holdings.[678]
The Collapse of the Soviet Union
When Mikhail Gorbachev was elected general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he was seen as a moderate candidate. While his reforms—perestroika and glasnost—modernized the Soviet Union, they also reduced the iron grip that the Soviet Union had over the Eastern Bloc.[679]
The key to power relied upon dominating politics and society while silencing opposition. Glasnost encouraged opposition, as it urged the people to campaign for issues important to them without the fear of the government locking them up or, worse, executing them.[680] It contributed to a more politicized society, one that stretched the boundaries of what it meant to be in the Eastern Bloc.
At the same time, perestroika upturned the Soviet economic model. For decades, the government had controlled the economy. To revitalize the economy, Gorbachev reduced government control over business and production. What resulted from the perestroika and glasnost reforms was a loosening of control over the countries in the Soviet Union, as well as a more active politicized population.
Between 1989 and 1991, the communist nations of Eastern Europe started to fall.[681] It started in November 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, which had become a cultural symbol of communism and the East-West divide. It represented repression, a stalwart barrier that blocked Europe’s path to healing.[682]
But how did this happen? It started with the people. A new generation arose, and they itched for more democratic power. More importantly, they turned over a new leaf. The people of Eastern Europe now used nonviolent protest.[683] There was only one violent episode: the coup against Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu in December 1989.
Generally, the call for the fall of communism came from the need and desire to become part of Western Europe again.[684] The countries in the Eastern Bloc were tired of being cut off from the world. Part of the reason for the push to independence was the decolonization movements of the 20th century. The Eastern European push was an extension of the spirit of revolution and the desire for self-rule found in other former colonies throughout the world.
One by one, states in the Soviet Bloc called for independence. In December 1991, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus all met, and they decided to do away with the Soviet Union. By Christmas later that month, Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned.
After the Fall of Communism: The 1990s Bring an Uncertain Future
Traditional histories of Eastern Europe end with the fall of communism. Over the past three decades, the region has endured changes in borders and identity.[685] After communism, the nations of Eastern Europe had to learn how they fit into the larger world while accepting their own past.
Joining NATO and the EU
After the fall of communism, Eastern European countries that were free from the yoke of the Eastern Bloc knew they needed to move forward, but to what degree? Did they want to affiliate themselves with Western Europe, or did they want to carve out a region all their own?
Joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) was a common goal for most Eastern European countries. Becoming part of an international community would help the countries that no longer felt secure after the fall of communism.[686]
Joining NATO and the EU was difficult, but it was worth it to some countries. They had to successfully establish market economies and democracies before they were admitted. Becoming part of the EU meant that the organization could regulate the economies of its members. However, the organization offered certain protections the countries of Eastern Europe couldn’t find elsewhere. Throughout its history, Eastern Europe had been victim to the expansionist designs of both Germany and Russia. Both NATO and the EU kept their nations from impeding on each other, so Eastern European countries felt protected and could possibly become equal players in the organization.
Only four Eastern European countries had joined NATO by 1999: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and East Germany (after it had rejoined with West Germany). Within ten years, Albania, Croatia, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, and the Baltics (Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia) were admitted.[687] Between 2004 and 2013, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Baltic states joined the EU.
Still, it wasn’t a perfect fit for every country. NATO and the EU tried to maintain harmonious relations between its members a little too much. When it did act, it alienated someone. For example, when NATO launched airstrikes to end the conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo, Serbia—the target of the airstrikes—refused to join.
Changing Economies and Demographics
One important question Eastern European countries had to answer was how to become self-sufficient.[688] The change from a communist economy to a capitalist economy was not an easy one. Should economic sectors receive subsidies to cushion the transition to such a drastically new economy? While the countries of Eastern Europe struggled economically, it was the workers who suffered. Some industries didn’t survive the fall of communism. Others did, but they struggled to find their footing in the new reality of post-communist life. As a result, there was a new phase of mass immigration that would affect the foundations of Eastern Europe.
A country is only as good as its people, and countries rebuilding themselves needed a strong professional and business class. Opportunities were lacking, so workers started leaving their home countries[689]. This would affect Eastern Europe’s development for decades all the way up to the present day. If Eastern Europeans weren’t leaving their homes for better opportunities abroad, they were forced out. The Yugoslav Wars created hundreds of thousands of refugees who sought sanctuary in neighboring Eastern European countries and abroad. They left their homes from persecution, and they encountered discrimination in their new homes.
Migration worked both ways in Eastern Europe. As more people returned home after displacement and exile, the question became what role they would play. In the year 2000, Vaclav Havel, the president of the Czech Republic, challenged Madeline Albright, who was the Czech-born American secretary of state, to immigrate back home and run for president. One imagines he was only half-serious, but she turned him down just the same.
The Baltic states repeated a pattern of exiles returning home and becoming president. After living in Canada since she was a teenager, Vaira Vike-Freiberga was elected president of Latvia twice, in 1999 and 2003. She would become the first female president of Latvia, as well as the first woman head of state in an Eastern European country.[690]
In 1998, Valdas Adamkus was narrowly elected as president.[691] He had been involved in the Lithuanian resistance movement against Nazi and Soviet forces during World War II. Since 1944, he had lived abroad in Germany and the United States. After spending nearly forty years in the US, enjoying a long career with the EPA (the Environmental Protection Agency), he returned to Lithuania. Adamkus joined the presidential race to mixed results; he won by a narrow margin in 1998. He didn’t win reelection in 2003, but he was called back to the position the following year when his successor was removed from office. During his tenure, which lasted until 2009, Adamkus improved the economy and encouraged friendly diplomatic relations with other Eastern European countries. He actively campaigned for Lithuania to join the international community during his first term. During the brief hiatus between his two terms, Lithuania joined NATO and the EU. More recently, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, president of Estonia from 2006 to 2016, was the son of Estonian refugees, and they spent several years living in the United States.[692]
Making Peace with the Past
The fall of communism also meant that the people finally learned the truth about their history.[693] The introduction of a free press exposed truths about Eastern European history that had been previously silenced. A perfect example is the existence of secret police that violated the privacy of those the state targeted for suspicious anti-communist behavior. While the Stasi (Ministry for State Security) in East Germany enlisted professional spies, the Securitate in Romania relied on the population to inform on their neighbors. When communism fell in East Germany, the Stasi had files on millions of people. Spouses and family members reporting on each other was a common occurrence.
Now that former state secrets were out in the open, Eastern European countries had to consider what the consequences would be. High-ranking government officials in communist regimes retained their positions after the fall of communist governments. Should these people be removed for what they did under the regime? Or could they still lead under a new political system?
One example of a public figure who successfully transitioned between governments was Simeon Borisov von Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the prime minister of Bulgaria from 2001 to 2005.[694] Simeon was the son of Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria; when Simeon was two years old, Adolf Hitler occupied Poland. Boris III was pressured into an alliance with Hitler, and the bullying started immediately. Hitler pushed Boris to send troops to the Eastern Front. He also pressured Boris to deport all Bulgarian Jews to Poland. When Boris denied Hitler’s requests the final time in 1943, he was poisoned to death. Simeon became a boy king at six years old.
A team of family members and regents helped Simeon navigate rulership, but they were stuck between the dominant personalities of Hitler and Stalin. When Bulgaria tried to remain neutral in 1944, the Soviet Union invaded. The Soviet army didn’t waste any time; they slaughtered the entire Bulgarian government and army generals and held the royal family hostage. In September 1946, the Soviet Union proclaimed Bulgaria to be a communist state, exiling the king, his sister, and his mother.
Simeon grew up in exile in Spain; when he was eighteen, he plotted a return to Bulgaria by forming a “government in exile,” which means that he wanted to reclaim the monarchy and rule outside of the country. When he realized this wouldn’t work, he settled into a life as a private citizen. He married, started a career, became a father, then a grandfather. In 1996, fifty years after his exile, Simeon returned to Bulgaria. He rejoined politics but in a much different way. He founded a new political party, running on his own ticket. In 2001, five years after his return, Simeon Borisov von Saxe-Coburg-Gotha became the prime minister of Bulgaria—the only monarch to achieve a position in a democratic government.
Emerging from Communism: Czechoslovakia and Belarus
For many Eastern Europeans, the cloak of communism was all they knew.[695] Some didn’t see the fall of their governments as liberating. Many didn’t know how to feel about independence from the Soviet Union or how they fit into the new state. Feelings of security were especially important to the people of Eastern Europe. Under the new system, they didn’t feel as if the state would take care of them.
This anxiety presented itself in different ways. Let’s look at what happened in Czechoslovakia compared to Belarus. In Czechoslovakia, as wide-scale demonstrations spread throughout Eastern Europe for the end of communist rule, the state peacefully considered more.[696] In November 1989, student protests in Prague and Bratislava started peacefully, but they quickly turned violent when the participants started criticizing the regime. Over fifty thousand protestors took to the streets, where they were beaten by the police to break up the demonstrations.[697] The violence sparked even more protests across Czechoslovakia. This period would become known as the Velvet Revolution.
The protest movement against the communist regime was so strong that communist leaders heard them out.[698] An interim government was set up to transition Czechoslovakia out of communist rule in December 1989.[699] The following June, Czechoslovakia held free elections, which upheld the provisional government. As the state started to introduce democratic institutions and create a new constitution, long-standing rivalries threatened to halt the peaceful transition of power.
Both Czechs and Slovaks formed their own nationalist movements in this period.[700] Slovaks never felt like they were truly part of the state, and they pushed for their own representation. This eventually morphed into a separatist movement, creating a new state for Slovaks. On January 1st, 1993, Czechoslovakia quietly and peacefully separated into two countries—the Czech Republic and Slovakia—in what is known as the “Velvet Divorce.”
While Czechoslovakia managed to pull off a relatively bloodless transition to democracy, freedom from oppressive Soviet rule would evade Belarus.[701] Over one-fifth of the country was destroyed by the Ukrainian Chernobyl disaster of 1986, leading to the mandatory and voluntary resettlement of hundreds of thousands of Belarussians.[702] In the aftermath of Chernobyl and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Belarus remained steadfast to its former relationship with Russia.[703] In 1994, a member of parliament, Alexander Lukashenko, was elected president. He has remained in power ever since, keeping power through communist methods, such as repression, silencing opposition, and controlling the press. In 2005, Lukashenko deployed Belarussian soldiers to violently put down a rebellion against his rule. Through passing laws that allow him to seek more terms and falsifying election results, Lukashenko has been called “Europe’s last dictator.”[704] Since 2011, Belarussian protestors have used social media to speak out against Lukashenko’s government. He keeps such a tight rein over the country that free speech doesn’t exist. Protestors are arrested for any statements against him, the Belarussian government, or representatives of the state. The brutality of his regime even made headlines in the 2021 Olympics when Belarussian sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya fled in exile to Poland; she feared reprisals back home after criticizing her country’s Olympic coaches.[705]
The Yugoslav Wars (1991–2001)
Perhaps the lowest point in post-communist Eastern Europe was the Yugoslav Wars, a series of conflicts in the former Yugoslavia that was characterized by brutal warfare, violence, and human rights violations, especially against women. Serbia dominated Yugoslavia, and its fervent nationalism made other minorities feel isolated and persecuted.[706] As Eastern Europe moved into the 21st century, the states of the former Yugoslavia seemed like they would never recover.
Yugoslavia Breaks Apart
The former Yugoslavia was made up of six nations and two territories.[707] The modern-day states of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia were once Yugoslavia. The provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo were included as provinces of Serbia. This union of states brought together several ethnicities and religions that would soon struggle to coexist.
As communism declined in the late 1980s, nationalism returned. Under Slobodan Milošević, Serbian nationalism reached its peak.[708] Every region of Yugoslavia had a Serbian population. Milošević used nationalism to target these areas and bring them all under Serbian control. In other words, he was trying to create a Serbian Yugoslavia. Parties in Yugoslavian states split into those who supported remaining in Yugoslavia (the Serbians) and others who wanted their own independent republics.[709] This type of nationalism used fear-mongering to turn ethnic groups against each other, leading to violent conflicts in the region.
1991: Slovenia and the Ten-Day War
Slovenia quickly adjusted to post-communist life. Just six months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it held free elections.[710] By that December, the new government supported what the people had already voted for—separation from Yugoslavia. At the time, Serbia dominated Yugoslavia, and it interfered in Slovenian politics. Serbian president Slobodan Milošević installed a blockade on Slovenia, cutting it off from supplies and trade. As a result, the state of Slovenia was the first to leave Yugoslavia, declaring independence on June 25th, 1991.[711]
On June 27th, Milošević sent the Yugoslav People’s Army (the national army of the state of Yugoslavia) into Slovenia to gain control of the country. The Slovenians had their own army, one that was much better prepared than the People’s Army. The Slovenian Army was trained in how to defend Slovenian borders from invasion. Over the next ten days, the Slovenian Army’s skirmishes with the Yugoslav People’s Army ended in victory. The Ten-Day War ended, and Slovenia remained independent from Yugoslavia.
1991–1995: Conflict in Croatia
Croatia also separated from Yugoslavia on June 25th, 1991, but it would descend into more chaos than Slovenia.[712] There was an ethnic element to the conflict in Croatia that made the revolution more violent. Croatia’s Serbian population refused to be a part of the separation of Croatia; they wanted Croatia to stay connected to Yugoslavia. The Croatian Serbs allied with the Yugoslav People’s Army and the Serbian state. They separated from Croatia and occupied 30 percent of the country to create their own Serbian state. The conflict in Croatia was violent and bloody, destroying the landscape. Croatian Serbs deported anyone in their territory that was non-Serbian.
By early 1992, the United Nations stepped in and ordered an end to the hostilities in Croatia. The conflict temporarily stopped, and the Croatian state used that time to beef up its military. In the summer of 1995, the Croatian Army launched two campaigns to return the area occupied by Serbs to Croatian rule. Thousands of Serbs fled to Bosnia and Serbia to escape the violence. Although the conflict was over by the fall of 1995, it took three years for Croatia to become united again. By January 1998, UN intervention successfully returned the contested area to Croatia.
1992-1995: Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovina
The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina would become the deadliest conflict of the Yugoslav Wars. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a small state between Serbia and Croatia, both of whom had tried to conquer the territory. By 1991, the two countries worked together, each planning to separate from Yugoslavia and occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina, splitting it between them. Serbia and Croatia knew they were taking on a multi-ethnic state. Bosnia’s population was made up of mostly Serbs (about 30 percent of the population), Croatians (about 17 percent of the population), and Muslims, also known as Bosniaks (about 40 percent of the population).[713] Both Serbia and Croatia agreed to section off part of the state for the Bosniak population.
The elections of March 1992 derailed any plans for splitting up Bosnia between its neighbors. More than half the country had voted for independence from Yugoslavia; Bosnia’s Serbian population was not pleased with the results. Just like in Croatia, Bosnian Serbs wanted to remain part of the Yugoslavian state.
Both the Yugoslav People’s Army and the Serbian government offered their support to the Bosnian Serbs. In April 1992, they rebelled against the government, sieging the capital of Sarajevo for nearly 1,500 days.[714] As the Serbs gained control of half of Bosnia, the Croatian and Bosniak populations each rebelled. Bosnia soon became a war zone, with all three parties fighting for dominance.
The international community was anxious to end the violence. Several countries set up embargoes against Bosnia, but the war continued. By 1994, Bosniak and Croat forces joined together to battle the Serbs. At first, the United Nations would not interfere, which is surprising given its dedication to ending the war crimes used during World War II. The UN only sent food, necessities, and medical supplies to the region. Eventually, it sanctioned NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) airstrikes between 1994 and 1995.[715] This was the first time that NATO would resort to military intervention in international affairs, but it wouldn’t be the last.
Bosnia was under external pressure to end the war.[716] The Serbian Army commanded almost three-quarters of the country, so they refused to compromise in peace talks. Finally, negotiations in Dayton, Ohio, the United States, were successful. Signed in December 1995, the Dayton Accords split Bosnia and Herzegovina into two sections of land: one for the Serbs and one for the Bosniaks and Croats. Over sixty thousand troops were pulled from several countries and sent to Bosnia to ensure the peaceful transition.
The Bosnian conflict is well known for its human rights violations and violence against women. Although each side experienced the loss of life, the Serbians enacted massive ethnic cleansing campaigns reminiscent of World War II. Homes were torched, and churches and mosques were destroyed. Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks all languished in jail cells and detention centers as prisoners of war. To create an ethnically Serbian state, Bosnian Serbs systematically raped Bosniak and Croatian women, holding them hostage so that they couldn’t abort their pregnancies.[717] At the concentration camp of Omarska, Serbian soldiers repeatedly raped women prisoners.[718]
The Serbians were not the only ones who used ethnic cleansing as a war tactic. After retaking the city in August 1995, Croatian forces eliminated Krajina’s Serbian population through murder and exile. Over half a million Serbs were executed or displaced.
Millions fled Bosnia from April 1992 to November 1995, finding safety in other countries or in refugee camps. It is estimated that over 100,000 died in the Bosnian War, and more than two million were exiled or displaced.[719] It wasn’t until the Srebrenica massacre in summer 1995 that the international community rallied to end the conflict.[720]
Due to the mass violence surrounding the town, the UN had passed a resolution protecting Srebrenica, located in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, from further attack.[721] In July 1995, the Bosnian Serbian army, led by General Ratko Mladić, moved into the town.[722] For the cameras, Mladić played nice, giving the children candy and assuring the population that nothing would happen to them.[723] After the cameras stopped rolling, Mladić and his men slaughtered eight thousand Bosnian Muslim men and boys, tossing their remains into mass graves.[724] After taking control of the city, he exiled the women and the rest of the children.
According to a war crimes tribunal, the violence in Srebrenica amounted to genocide. After years of escaping justice, Mladić was captured and convicted of crimes against humanity and genocide.[725] He is serving a life sentence to this day. It seems little consolation to the women of Srebrenica, many of whom were only able to recover the bodies of their loved ones through DNA analysis.[726]
1998–2008: Kosovo
Many countries and territories in Eastern Europe have diverse populations. In the 1990s, the majority of the population in the Serbian territory of Kosovo were Albanian Muslims.[727] This majority supported separating from Yugoslavia as well as shaking off Serbian rule.[728] Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milošević’s campaign to bring Kosovo, an area that was traditionally Serbian, under his control threatened the Albanian population. He banned the practice of Albanian religion and culture, enforcing Serbian traditions on the whole population.
Albanians who opposed Milošević’s policies and Serbian rule formed the Kosovo Liberation Army to take control of the territory.[729] In 1998, this radical group launched a terror campaign against the Serbian government, targeting members of the government and the police force.[730] Milošević sent in Yugoslavian and Serbian troops to retake Kosovo. They responded to violence with violence, and soon, the whole territory was embroiled in civil war.
Milošević’s forces used ethnic cleansing to terrorize Albanian communities. They massacred whole communities and burned them to the ground. The US and other European nations, namely France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and Russia, forced Yugoslavia to end the violence in Kosovo. Milošević promised to pull his troops out of Kosovo and allow Albanian refugees to return, but he went back on his word.
In 1999, Serbia was hostile to peace talks with Albanian representatives. Just as it had in the Bosnia conflict, NATO sent airstrikes to break up the conflict.[731] Instead, it just killed more civilians and created more refugees. Other casualties included Albanian communities that were slaughtered by Serbian and Yugoslav forces while NATO bombed the territory. In June, NATO and Milošević came to terms. He withdrew the military and allowed Kosovo’s displaced communities to return. The Kosovo conflict displaced most of the territory’s population, totaling up to 1.5 million people. Over one million of them were Albanian.
The violence between Serbians and Kosovo’s Albanian population would continue into the 21st century. Although Kosovo earned its autonomy in June 1999, there were more protests against Serbia in March 2004. The resulting violence displaced thousands of people. Four years later, Kosovo officially separated from Serbia. Although many Western countries recognize Kosovo as its own state, its Eastern European neighbors wouldn’t acknowledge Kosovo’s independence. Neither would the United Nations. Serbia still maintains that Kosovo is a Serbian territory. Further investigations in 2011 and 2016 tried members of the Kosovo Liberation Army for war crimes for the violent reprisals that took place in Kosovo.
2001: Macedonia
While the conflict in Macedonia did see some violence, it was relatively tame compared to Bosnia and Kosovo.[732] Since achieving independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, the people of Macedonia—which includes Macedonians, Albanians, Turks, and Roma—lived in peace. Although the transition to self-rule was peaceful, the 21st century would bring a renewed sense of nationalism among the Albanian population.
The end of the Kosovo conflict in 1999 brought more Albanians into Macedonian borders, which may have incited the protests of 2001.[733] In January 2001, radical Albanians formed their own army, using terror tactics to demand equal treatment by the Macedonian government. This campaign didn’t last long; NATO stepped in to return peace to Macedonia. Under NATO supervision, the Albanian army stood down and disbanded later that year. The Macedonian government made an important gesture and addressed the Albanian cause. It changed its constitution, naming the state’s minority populations as citizens.
The Downfall of Milošević
With the bloody conflicts that broke out in the former states of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milošević would not stay in power for long.[734] Due to the growing protests and opposition movements against his leadership, he did not win reelection as president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 2000. The following year, he was arrested and tried for war crimes for the events in Bosnia and Kosovo. The war crimes tribunal in the Hague lasted for years; he died in prison in 2006 before they were completed.
2014: Russia Annexes the Crimea
In the four decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has emerged as one of the dominant world powers. While the rest of Eastern Europe was finding their footing, with most developing into democratic states, Russia retains most of its Soviet characteristics. The country is fond of throwing its weight around, and it has resorted to modern methods to dominate its neighbors. It is especially fond of electronic attacks. Russian hackers shut down the Estonian government in 2007 after a statue of a Russian soldier was moved from a public square to a cemetery.[735] And who could forget the US election scandal of 2016?[736]
Russia Since the Fall of the USSR
After the fall of the USSR, Russia struggled to find its place in the international community. The presidency of Boris Yeltsin encouraged diplomatic relations with the United States, but neither country could agree on political matters.[737] In 1999, Yeltsin resigned in favor of his prime minister, Vladimir Putin, who became president of Russia.[738] He has been in control of the country ever since and forged a new path for Russia, one with decidedly autocratic characteristics.
Formally elected in 2000, Putin served as president until 2008. While engaging in diplomacy with the US, Putin also enhanced relationships with other prominent nations in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. He supported the campaign of his own successor, his prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev. Putin returned to his old post of prime minister when Medvedev was elected president in 2008. After a disastrous first term, Medvedev appointed Putin as his successor, and Medvedev returned to the prime minister post in 2012.
During his second term as president, Putin’s relations with the US soured as he negotiated Russia’s place as a world power. He set about crushing any opposition to his government, famously prosecuting the band Pussy Riot for speaking out against his administration in 2012. However, the defining moment of Putin’s second term, which proved what type of politician he was, was the Ukrainian crisis of 2014.
The Ukrainian Revolution of 2014
When Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula on the Black Sea, an area that belonged to Ukraine, it exposed the long-standing tensions between Ukrainians and Russians. Ukraine has a complicated history with several examples of foreign rule and domination. Remember the Mongol Horde? And the Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s rule over the territory?
Russia came into play during the Cossack rebellion of 1654.[739] Cossack chief Bogdan Khmelnytsky approached Russia to help with their war against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Russians agreed, promising self-rule when they won the conflict. After it was all over, Russia went back on their word; the Ukrainians were now under Russian rule. Originally, the commonwealth and Russia split Ukraine between them, but the fall of the commonwealth at the end of the 18th century brought Ukraine completely under Russian control.
The Ukrainians suffered under Russian rule, especially the Stalin regime. Stalin employed ethnic cleansing and deported everyone who wasn’t of Ukrainian descent to create an ethnically homogenous territory. Ukrainians never forgot the Terror Famine, which lasted from 1932 to 1933, that decimated the population. Ukraine even allied with Hitler during World War II to break the Soviet hold over the territory.
In 1954, as a gesture of goodwill, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gifted the Crimean Peninsula back to Ukraine on the three-hundred-year anniversary of the Cossack rebellion.[740] However, Ukraine was still under Soviet control. In 1991, when the USSR disintegrated, Ukrainians desired independence from their long-time overlords.
But even an independent Ukraine couldn’t shake its connections to Russia.[741] The country suffered economically in the first years of post-communist Eastern Europe, and it depended on Russia for its energy sources. In 2004, a beleaguered population protested against its government, charging it with serving its own interests and ignoring the plight of the people. The Orange Revolution gained traction, and one of their leaders, Viktor Yushchenko, even ran for president. In September of that year, his enemies stopped his campaign by poisoning him.
Yushchenko was incapacitated, so he couldn’t run in that election. The election was rigged, leading to a renewed round of protests in the streets over the next seventeen days. A new election was ordered, and Yushchenko won the presidency. It would seem that peace would come to Ukraine, but the members of Yushchenko’s party each rallied for their own interests. There was little compromise in the Ukrainian government. In 2010, Viktor Yanukovych became president, leading Ukraine with pro-Russian policies.[742]
Further unrest in Ukraine plagued Yanukovych’s presidency. In November 2013, Vladimir Putin reportedly pressured Yanukovych not to join a trade deal with the European Union.[743] Unwilling to support a Russian puppet regime, Ukrainians protested against the government in what would become the Ukrainian Revolution of 2014. Thousands of protestors lined the streets for weeks, calling for an end to Yanukovych’s presidency.[744] In January 2014, Yanukovych sent in the riot police, who violently attacked demonstrators to put down the protests. Over one hundred protestors and police were killed in the violence. Fearing for his safety, Yanukovych fled Ukraine for Russia, where he maintained his control over the government from abroad.
Russia, Ukraine, and the Crimean Peninsula
After the president left Ukraine, he was impeached, and a new interim government more aligned with Western interests replaced him.[745] As for Vladimir Putin, he continued to support Yanukovych’s presidency. He mobilized tens of thousands of troops near the Ukrainian border, sending soldiers into the country. Putin forbade them from wearing uniforms so that he could deny that he was staging a military occupation. He denied that he sent soldiers to Ukraine and silenced press coverage on the occupation.[746]
After the Russian military was in place, Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea. The international community was outraged. The annexation of Crimea went against the basis and protections provided by international law. In March 2014, voters approved a referendum to annex the Crimean Peninsula to Russia. Of course, the country was under military occupation, so the validity of the referendum was called into question. As for the Ukrainian government, they denied that the referendum was legal. As a result, both the United States and the European Union refused to recognize it. Protestors supporting Ukrainian policies and a pro-Russian government clashed in Ukraine, leaving over one million people dead and displaced.
Today, Russia still controls the Crimean Peninsula. Ukraine demands its return. Ukraine’s allies in the EU and the international community support the Crimean Peninsula’s return.