The Soviet Union and Eastern and Southern Europe, 1945-48

What did Stalin believe due to the percentages agreements and the Yalta Conference?

Eastern Europe and the states that the USSR had liberated from Nazi occupation would fall within a Soviet sphere of Influence

What was Stalin’s initial intent?

To establish a defence zone, or buffer zone, to the west of the USSR based on satellite states

(completed by 1948)

What did the USSR buffer zone of allies reinforce?

The defensive capability of the USSR against any possible future threats from the West

Why did Stalin impose communist regimes on Eastern Europe?

Not simply imposed forcibly across Eastern Europe

• common to align with left wings parties to control them

• opposition were often intimidated, and election results were manipulated to ensure a communist victory

What evidence was there to propose that there was a compliance towards the Communist Party in Eastern Europe?

Czechoslovakia - Communist Part emerged as the largest single part and won 38% of the votes in the relatively free elections held in May 1946

• communist offered a much better prospect than capitalism and the dominance of an economic elite associated with it

How did many perceive the communist powers?

freedom fighters - due to their struggle against Nazism

• promised employment and social mobility

Did everyone in Eastern Europe want Communist powers to take over?

No

• many peasants looked to the pro-agrarian parties to deliver land distribution

• responsive to the particular needs of the large numbers of rural peasants

What is a pro-agrarian party?

many Eastern European states had political parties that focused on representing the interests of the farming communities; the redistribution of land was a political priority for such parties

What does it mean when stating that ‘Stalin was committed to the ideological imperative of communist’?

he believed that the ideology could be fulfilled if both the USSR was powerful, and he, as its leader, was all-powerful

• committed to power before his commitment to ideology

• power = security

How does Poland reveal significant forward planning by Stalin?

• pro-Stalin Lublin Government was established - Stalin’s instrument of political control

• agreement at Yalta had partly facilitated this process, but Stalin simply failed to conform to the full range of Yalta agreements

• free elections at Yalta = Stalin was able to preserve the role of the Lublin Government

What Government was formed in Poland in June 1945?

Provisional Government of National Unity

• contained parities from both ends of the political spectrum

• Stalin’s pluralist approach - did not simply impose a pro-Soviet communist regime on Poland

• appeared to allow free multi-party elections but with a clear intent to ensure that the result he wanted would eventually emerge

Why was Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister Wladyslaw Gomulka significant?

became a victim of the factional rivalry within the Polish communist movement

• supported ‘home’ fraction and stood against the pro-Moscow faction

• 1948 - accused of ‘nationalist deviation’ and replaced by a compliant pro-Stalinist, Boleslaw Bierut

Poland was safely under Soviet influence

How did Stalin take control of Romania?

communism was popular in Romania - offered an alternative to the pre-war regime

• moreover, Red army occupied Romania

• Two factors made it relatively easy for Stalin!

How did Stalin take control of Bulgaria?

Process was rather different but equally effective

• Gradualism - manipulated elections and forced removal of opponents characterised the takeover

• strongest political opponent was the Agrarian Party (Nikola Petkov)

• despite winning 20% of popular vote in October elections: faced trumped-up charges and was executed - party was forcibly absorbed into the Bulgarian communist movement

• April 1947 - all other political parties had been banned

How did Stalin take control of Hungary?

Communist used tactic of allying with other political groups in order to challenge the power of their greatest opponent, the Smallholders party

• political opponent arrested and elections were manipulated and rigged in order to produce the desired outcome for communists

• Hungarian communists (similarly to Polish) did not display the degree of loyalty to Moscow that Stalin wanted - formed close links with Yugoslavia: non-Soviet regime in place

• 1949 - Hungarian communist leader, Laszlo Rajk - executed for ‘anti-Soviet’; activities

By 1949 all political opposition to the Moscow-backed Hungarian communists had disappeared

Why were Czechoslovakia communists popular?

(among rural peasants)

• gave land at the end of the war

What was Czechoslovakia Communist leader, Klement Gottwald’s fatal error?

showed willingness to accept Western economic aid in 1947

• growing opposition to communist leadership movement from non-communist groups (members involved resigned in 1948)

How did Czechoslovakia members opposed to communism resigning in 1948 significant?

• Decision advantaged the communists - enabled them to create an alternative right-wing group

Result: highly respected President Edvard Beneš agreed to support a communist-dominated government

• resigned in June 1948 - left the pro-Moscow communists in complete control

Why was Yugoslavia initially firmly embedded in the Soviet Camp?

Leader - Josip Broz Tito was a committed Stalinist

• firmly in place when the war ended and its leader was seen as an iconic nationalist

By 1948 why were Tito (Yugoslavia) and Stalin in conflict?

1948 - apparent that Soviet influence in Yugoslavia was limited

• conflict between Tito and Stalin was based on Stalin’s determination to impose Soviet control over Southern and Eastern European states (economic & foreign policies)

• had to confirm to Soviets policies and clearly be seen to be in line with Soviet interests

Yugoslavia simply refused to become Soviet puppets!

What happened with Yugoslavia in June 1948?

expelled from Cominform

• leaders accused of abandoning Marxist-Leninism - no longer conforming to an acceptable political position

• able to survive because the USA was willing to offer economic aid

Basically, any state that the USSR opposed was seen by the USA as its friend

Who was George Kennan?

US embassy in Moscow

• sent a lengthy dispatch to the US State Department in Washington - Long Telegram

What does historian John Gaddis claim that the Long Telegram was?

“fundamental in the shaping of the US policy towards the Soviet Union and ultimately determining the USA’s role as a global power’

When was Kennan’s Long Telegram sent?

22nd February 1946

What did Kennan’s Long Telegram argue?

• Soviet Union was inherently expansionist, paranoid, and committed to destroying capitalist states

• USSR viewed the West as hostile and menacing

• USA must be prepared to threaten the use of force and ensure unity among its allies

• urged the USA to adopt a proactive role, particularly in Europe - urgency for action!

How did the Soviet Ambassador (Nikolai Novikov) conclude about US foreign policy in September 1946?

• US foreign policy was based on economic imperialism

• aim of USA was to use its economic power to make states dependent upon it in order to establish its own global supremacy

What is economic imperalism?

the idea that the state could use its economic power to ensure that an economically weaker state becomes dependent upon it; this dependency would be used by the stronger state to exercise influence over the weaker one

What is Isolationism?

an approach to foreign policy favored by the USA before its intervention in the Second World War; it was based on minimal involvement in external affairs, beyond those seen to relate to US interests in places geographically close to the US

By early 1946, why was Isolationism no longer in the USA’s national interests?

USA’s security had become a powerful force in the emerging post-war international relations as had that of the Soviet Union

When was the Iron Curtain Speech delivered?

6th March 1946

What was the Iron Curtain Speech?

Winston Churchill (no longer Britain’s prime minister) delivered a direct attack on Soviet policies

How did the Soviets perceive the Iron Curtain Speech?

convinced Stalin that the USA was complicit in a plot with Churchill and Britain to carry out an anti-Soviet ideological assault

• impact of the speech felt more strongly by Stalin than it was by Truman - Ten days after Churchill’s speech, Stalin’s response was delivered

What was Stalin’s response to the Iron Curtain Speech?

Stalin’s response presented a benign Soviet Union peacefully seeking Eastern European allies in order to reinforce the USSR’s security

• traditional Soviet explanation for its policies towards Eastern Europe

• October 1946 - USSR had developed a robust analysis of the state of international relations which was to act as a further justification for Soviet policy in Eastern Europe

• Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov accused the USA of being an imperialistic power and effectively abandoned the Declaration on Liberated Europe, agreed at Yalta

What was the Paris Peace Conference in 1946?

September and October 1946

• leaders from France, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, USA

met up to draw up peace treaties for the defeated European powers

• Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Romania

Although settlements were not reached for Austria or Germany, treaties were drafted for the other countries and signed in 1947 - all treaties included clauses regarding territorial adjustments, reparations and anti-fascist requirements for the post-war government

What was the catalyst that triggered a fundamental reorientation of US foreign policy came in Europe?

Soviet Union released that its security could be furtherly enhanced by developing its portfolio of pro-Soviet states, and that meant expanding pro-Moscow communist-led regimes beyond Europe

When was the Truman Doctrine announced?

12th March 1947

How did the Truman Doctrine influence the dynamics of international relations from 1947?

International relations would be founded upon division, each side became suspicious of the other

• Truman Doctrine institutionalised this as the working basis of East-West relations from atleast the next 25 years

What did the Truman Doctrine state in 1947?

stated that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures

• Essentially pledged that the USA would provide economic and military aid to nations threatened by communist expansion

• marking a formal shift from American isolationism to a policy of containment

What were Truman’s motivations for introducing his Doctrine?

• blunt piece of diplomacy

• protect democracy and freedom - response to Soviet aggressive political and ideological expansionism in Eastern Europe

• presented communism as the enemy of the USA

• provoked the Soviet Union

• formed an important element of the USA’s aim of developing its global economic power

• first step in the creation of containment as the basis of USA foreign policy - allowed Marshall Plan to go forward in June 1947

When was Cominform introduced by Stalin?

September 1947

What is Cominform regarded as a response to?

Marshall Plan in June 1947

• USSR felt that there was a need to consolidate communist states in order to fend of what it saw as the rise of US imperialism through the Marshall plan

By 1947, what was Stalin convinced about relations with the USA?

convinced that the USA was not remotely interested in any model of international relations that was based on multiple spheres of influence that could co-exist

• previously believe that capitalist states would ultimate collapse, due to economic rivalry amongst them

• view now replaced by a certainty that the USA was engineering an anti-Soviet US-led global alliance

What was the Zhdanov Doctrine 1947?

Zhdanov (Soviet leader) viewed the world as being divided into two camps: the imperialism of the USA and the democrats led by the USSR

• this thinking was transferred to Soviet cultural policy and it forced artists, writers and intellectuals to reflect this worldview through their work

What was the purpose of Cominform?

To unite and coordinate the role and actions of communist groups throughout Europe in order that the Communist Party functioned as a united whole under the direction of Moscow

What was Cominform in 1947?

Soviet organization designed to tighten control over Eastern European satellite states and coordinate Communist parties across Europe

• aimed to counter the Marshall Plan, ensure loyalty to Moscow, and spread communist ideology

Why were there growing tensions after Potsdam?

• Gradual Sovietisation of Eastern Europe up to 1948

• Kennan’s ‘Long Telegram’ forms a basis for future US attitudes towards the USSR

• USSR consolidates its influence over Eastern European states through Cominform

• Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ speech

• Confrontation refined: The Truman Doctrine