Forming of the Eastern Bloc
 Eastern Europe was more important to the Soviet
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Union than to the United States and United
Kingdom
Bloc of Communist countries = new important
element in the international relations
Exiles returning from Moscow played a crucial role
Communization = the process of the abolition of
the private ownership.
Sovietization = adoption of Soviet-like
institutions, laws, customs, traditions and the
Soviet way of life.
Forming of the Eastern Bloc
 in September 1947 was established the Communist
Information Bureau (Cominform) - responsible for
binding together the East European Communist
parties
 Politically, the countries in the region were governed at
first by coalition governments under varying degrees
of Communist/Soviet influence
 The Eastern European economies were subjugated to
the Soviet economy
 Council for Mutual Economic Assistance
(COMECON) was established in 1949
Poland
 most important Eastern European country for the
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Soviet Union
Lublin group x exile government in London
In the elections of January 1947 the Communists and
their allies won 384 out of 444 seats
The Peasant Party leader Mikołajczyk resigned and
fled into exile in London
After elections Communist government banned other
political parties and established a one-party state
Hungary
 1945 elections - Stalinists were trounced, receiving only
17 % of the vote - coalition government under Prime
Minister Zoltán Tildy
 “salami tactics” - Mátyás Rákosi invented the term,
which described his tactic slicing up enemies like
pieces of salami
 Repression was harsher in Hungary than in the other
satellite countries
 Approximately 350,000 Hungarian officials and
intellectuals were purged from 1948 to 1956
Yugoslavia
 Yugoslavia was only
aligned with the Soviet
Union for 3 post-war years
 Tito–Stalin split of 1948 –
Yugoslavia was expelled
from Cominform in 1948
and publicly denounced
 The split revealed the
limits of Soviet military,
political, and economic
power
Czechoslovakia
 Munich Agreement in 1938 - sense of
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scepticism toward the West
Elections 1946 – Communist Party of
Czechoslovakia (KSČ) emerged as the
largest single party (38 %) – new
coalition cabinet leaded by Klement
Gottwald
Czechoslovakia refused Marshall plan
in 1947 (forced by Soviets)
By February 1948 the communists had
forced the other coalition parties out
of the government
On February 25, President
Benes accepted the resignations of
the non-Communist ministers and
appointed a new government in
accordance with KSČ demands
Communist propaganda in Eastern Bloc
 the overpopulation of the potato beetle in Czechoslovakia
during the summer of 1950 meant a real economic threat
 Czechoslovak Government launched in 1950 the
propaganda campaign against the “American Bug”
 Government claimed this to be an artificially-induced
situation, caused by the United States of America that
intentionally disseminating the potato bug from airplanes
in order to harm Czechoslovak economy
 Outbreak of the Korean War was used for this propaganda
campaign and began to compare the fight with the potato
beetle to the war conflict in the Korean peninsula
Eastern Bloc in 1950s
 On 5th March 1953 Stalin died
 For a quarter century the
Soviet Union had been
dominated by him
 Although Nikita
Khrushchev gradually
emerged as the new leader of
the Soviet Union, he never
attained the authority Stalin
had had
 The role of the security police
was reduced, and thousands
of the political prisoners were
released
De-Stalinization
 At the 20th Congress of
Communistic Party of Soviet
Union (25 February 1956) he
pursued a course of reform
 Shocked delegates with famous
speech denouncing the “cult of
personality”
 Krushchev proceeded to make a
full-scale denunciation of
Stalinism, detailing in long
procession the crimes of the
dead tyrant
 Khrushchev made Stalin responsible for a great list of
tragedies – from the horrors of the 1930’s to the split with
Yugoslavia
 These changes did not mean that the Soviet Union was about
to become a liberal democracy – it was just to avoid the
bloody caprice of autocracy, avoid the repetition of mass
executions etc.
Influence of De-Stalinization in
Satellites
 News of De-Stalinization soon spread throughout the
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Communist world
Some of the satellite countries began to see a glimpse
of freedom for the first time in a decade
Especially in Poland and Hungary members of the
Communist Party were thrown into great dispute over
the course which the new line should take
Tito was rehabilitated and declared a “good
communist”
The new tensions were first expressed in the June 1953
demonstration in Czechoslovakia and East Germany
Situation in Poland 1956
 Workers rebellion in June
1956 at the industrial city
of Poznan against the
communistic government
 Demonstrates demanded
better social condition in
Poland
 Tens of people were died
and hundreds injured and
arrested
 After the protests, many
Polish communists
tended to a more
moderate program
 The new First Secretary of
the Polish Communist
Party was proposed
Wladyslaw Gomulka
 The minority of old-line
Polish Stalinist leaders
were gravely alarmed and
appealed to the Russian
government to intervene
 Khrushchev flew to
Warsaw to investigate the
matter and then ordered
the Soviet forces to retire
Hungarian Revolt of 1956
 There was the opposition among students, workers and
even the Party intellectuals against Hungarian Stalinists
who controlled the government
 A popular demonstrations against the Hungarian
government broke out in Budapest on 23 October and
soon turned into an armed rebellion
 Leader of the moderate faction in the Hungarian
Communist party
Imre Nagy was
made premier and negotiated
the withdrawal
of the Russian troops stationed
in the country
 The power of the Hungarian Communist party had
been completely broken by popular rebellion and
the revolutionaries were planning to establish a new
regime which would break the old ties with the
Soviet block
 Russians couldn’t tolerate it and on 4 November
reentered Hungary in massive strength to crush the
rebellion
 The Hungarian rebels were completely crushed and
the Communist regime reestablished
 4000 people died, thousands were injured, arrested
or deported to the Soviet Union. 200 000 fled the
Hungary
 Imre Nagy was with another leaders of the rebellion
executed in June 1958
Berlin Crisis 1958–1961
 Within fifteen years over two
million people had fled from
East Germany to the West
 The main point of exit for
escapees was the westernheld section of the city of
Berlin
 When exodus reached a high
point in the summer of 1961,
the Communist authorities
in East Germany took
matters into their own
hands.
 On 13th August 1961 the
border to West Berlin had
been shut and started
construction of Berlin Wall
Check Point Charlie in Berlin