Stalin’s Eastern Bloc

As we know, it was the Red Army that had forced Germany back behind its eastern borders and, in doing so, occupied a swathe of East European countries: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. But what had they taken on? Were they likely to be friendly to the Soviet Union or hostile? This analysis seeks to answer that question.

The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had a strong ethnic German population but had been a part of Tsarist Russia and had undergone a process of Russification, only gaining their independence in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, however, ceded Soviet influence over Estonia and Latvia. German influence was to prevail in Lithuania though in fact the Soviet Union asserted its influence there too and Hitler felt he had to accept it until, of course, he invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and took control of the whole Baltic region. They were then brought back into the Soviet Union as the Red Army pushed the Germans back. So, nationalism was a strong force in the Baltic states and re-incorporation back into the Soviet Union was bitterly resented.

Poland was no friend of the Soviet Union. In the Nazi-Soviet pact, the Soviet Union had agreed to divide Poland with Germany. So, they would not want to be under Soviet control or even any form of influence. As we know, the Soviet Union had twice tried to annihilate a potential post-war Polish leadership. There was the mass murder of 4,500 captured Polish officers by the Red Army in the forests of Katyn just outside Smolensk at the beginning of the war when the Russians were co-operating with the Germans. And with the war coming to its end, the Red Army allegedly delayed its attack on Warsaw until the uprising of Poles had been crushed by the Germans, thereby allowing more potential leaders to be killed. at Yalta it was agreed that once Germany had been defeated, a coalition of ‘Lublin Poles’ and ‘London Poles’ would oversee free elections. But still they were not finished for after the war, and with Poland’s future still not properly settled, opposition leaders were arrested and murdered, over 100,000 party members arrested and locked up, including 142 election candidates.

In Romania there was little support for Communism either, and Romania had been a German ally in the war. But at the end of the war, Communists took a role in a coalition government and used key posts to gradually gain control of the police and security forces. This helped them to rig the elections held in 1946 and the Communists swept into power.

Hungary was another country with little support for Communism or the Soviet Union, and another country that had allied with Germany in the war. However, Communists won 17% of the vote in the post-war election and a Communist took charge of the Ministry of the Interior. This enabled the Communists to use the secret police to discredit other parties and persecute non-Communist politicians. In rigged elections in 1947, the Communists became the largest party and took over. They imprisoned opposition politicians as well as attacking church leaders.

As for East Germany, its people had been treated brutally as the Red Army pushed westward: its women raped, its men killed and those taken prisoner of war, treated very badly. Now it was occupied by the Soviet Union which was determined to make sure Germany continued to pay for the pain and damage it had itself inflicted on the Russian peoples.

Bulgaria, on the other hand, was historically close to Russia though it had reluctantly allied with Germany in the war. Czechoslovakia, the creation of the Paris peace treaties, was another country which had strong support for Communism. It had been betrayed by the West and invaded by Nazi Germany. And unlike in other countries in Eastern Europe, Soviet troops withdrew after the war. Its President, Edvard Benes, was prepared to cooperate with Stalin. There was a Communist-led ‘National Front’ coalition government until 1948 in which Communists had gradually taken control of key ministries.

So we can see that in the overwhelming number of countries, Stalin’s Soviet Union was seen as a hostile power, an occupying power. The peoples of Eastern Europe would not easily be won over. Repression and terror would be the only way in which control could be secured. But to complete the picture, we should include three countries that are interesting in that they stand as examples that there was an alternative to the East-West Cold War divide: Yugoslavia, Finland and Austria.

The exception in Eastern Europe was Yugoslavia. Though they had a Communist government led by Josip Tito, which sustained an independence from Moscow. The Communists had had a strong resistance movement during the war and had freed the country themselves. And in Tito, had a strong leader.

Finland, like the Baltic states, had been a part of Tsarist Russia, and had only gained independence via the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and had fought Stalin’s Soviet Union. After WW2, the Communist Party was legalised and played a minor role in the Finnish government until 1948, but it never became more than a minority party and Finland operated a multi-party democratic system. Finland retained control of its domestic affairs but accepted that its foreign policy must not be anti-Soviet. In a Treaty of Friendship with the Soviet Union in 1948, Finland expressed its wish to stand apart from the two rival camps and both countries declared that they would refuse to join any coalition that was directed against the other. The Soviet Union, until 1955, also had a military base in the country.

Austria, so closely allied to Germany and neighbouring Germany in the centre of Europe, is an even more interesting case. Like Germany, Austria was occupied by the Allies (the Red Army didn’t leave until 1955) and divided into four zones, Vienna also divided as Berlin was (and also deep in the Soviet zone). However, the country was always administered as a single unit. In the elections in November, 1945 the Communists gained only 5% of the vote and it went on to be seen as a model ‘Alpine democracy’.

Both Finland and Austria serve to show us that history, i.e. what happened, was not inevitable. Finland also serves to as an example of what the West had meant by a “sphere of influence”.