Eastern Bloc

Eastern European countries—Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania—which remained under [Page 224]heavy Soviet influence during the Cold War. At the conclusion of World War II, the Soviet Union sought to establish permanent communist control over Eastern Europe. The Soviet efforts initially focused on five nations: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. These nations, governed by communist regimes largely subservient to the Soviet Union during the Cold War, comprised the Eastern bloc.

Because Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania had supported Germany during the war, Soviet forces occupied these nations after the war's conclusion. At first, each nation was permitted to elect its own representative government. However, by 1948, the Soviet Union had dissolved each government and outlawed all political parties except the communists. Past political leaders were deported and many were sent to prison camps in the Soviet Union. Even communist leaders who were not considered loyal to the Soviet Union were removed. Although the United States and Great Britain opposed the Soviet aggression, they were too consumed with the reconstruction of Western Europe to intervene.

In Czechoslovakia, the Soviets withdrew their forces in 1945 after the local communist party won the national elections. The communists in Czechoslovakia were fiercely loyal to the Soviet Union, so further military occupation was unnecessary. The opposite was true in Poland. The pro-Soviet Lublin group that had assumed control during the war appeared likely to lose the upcoming election. Therefore, Soviet forces were dispatched to crush the opposition.

Once these nations were firmly under communist control, their economies became inextricably linked to that of the Soviet Union. Bulgaria and Romania were converted into predominantly agricultural nations; their produce was intended to sustain the communist empire. Farmland was collectivized and individual ownership was virtually eliminated. Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland became centers for large industrial developments. Many of the major companies were nominally owned by both the Soviet Union and the home nations, but the profits were frequently funneled back to the Soviet Union.

As the Cold War unfolded, contact between the Eastern bloc and Western European nations was increasingly forbidden. Trade with nations outside the bloc was prohibited, and any deviation from the communist program issued in Moscow was quashed. In 1948, when Czechoslovakia asked to be included in the Marshall Plan, the U.S. program of aid to rebuild Western Europe, the Soviets quickly installed a new regime.

For nearly a decade, the Eastern bloc remained separated from the rest of Europe. When Soviet leader Joseph Stalin died in 1953, the Eastern bloc nations briefly regained a measure of autonomy. Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin's successor, released many of the political prisoners from the Eastern bloc nations and reduced the amount of Soviet troops stationed in these nations. More importantly, in 1956 he denounced Stalin as a failed leader. If Stalin was misguided, the leaders of the Eastern bloc reasoned, then many of his policies were also flawed. Khrushchev's amicable policy towards Yugoslavia reinforced this rationale. Stalin had belittled Yugoslavia for its refusal to enter the Eastern bloc. When Khrushchev recognized Yugoslavia, it indicated that a communist country could successfully exist outside the repressive Eastern bloc.

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