erstwhile alliance with the United States and Great Britain was, for Stalin, an unwelcome but acceptable
price to pay. Although he initially had hoped to maintain a broadly cooperative relationship with the
United States and Britain after World War II, he was willing to sacrifice that objective as he consolidated
his hold over Eastern Europe.
The essay begins by describing the historical context of Soviet relations with the East European
countries, particularly the events of World War II. The wartime years and the decades preceding them
helped to shape Stalin’s policies and goals after the war. The paper then discusses the way Communism
was established in Eastern Europe in the mid- to late 1940s. Although the process varied from country to
country, the discussion below highlights many of the similarities as well as the differences. The essay then
turns to an event that threatened to undermine the “monolithic unity” of the Communist bloc in Eastern
Europe, namely, the acrimonious rift with Yugoslavia. The paper discusses how Stalin attempted to cope
with the split and to mitigate the adverse repercussions elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The final section
offers conclusions about Stalin’s policy and the emergence and consolidation of the East European
Communist regimes.
The analysis here draws extensively on newly available archival materials and memoirs from the
former Communist world. For many years after 1945, Western scholars had to rely exclusively on Western
archives and on published Soviet, East European, and Western sources. Until the early 1990s, the postwar
archives of the Soviet Union and of the Communist states of Eastern Europe were sealed to all outsiders.
But after the demise of Communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union
two years later, the former Soviet archives were partly opened and the East European archives were more
extensively opened. Despite the lack of access to several of the most crucial archives in Moscow — the
Presidential Archive, the Foreign Intelligence Archive, the Central Archive of the Federal Security Service,
and the Main Archive of the Ministry of Defense — valuable anthologies of documents pertaining to
Soviet-East European relations during the Stalin era, including many important items from the inaccessible
archives, have been published in Russia over the past decade.2 Many other first-rate collections of
declassified documents have been published or made available on-line in all of the East European
countries. It is now possible for scholars to pore over reams of archival materials that until the early 1990s
2 Of the many document collections that have appeared, two are particularly worth mentioning, both published as
large two-volume sets: T. V. Volokitina et al., eds., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskikh arkhivov, 1944-
1953, 2 vols., Vol. 1: 1944-1948 gg. and Vol. 2: 1949-1953 gg. (Novosibirsk: Sibir’skii khronograf, 1997 and
1999); and T. V. Volokitina et al., eds., Sovetskii faktor v Vostochnoi Evrope, 1944-1953: Dokumenty, 2 vols., Vol. 1:
1944-1948 and Vol. 2: 1949-1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1999 and 2002). The situation in the former East-bloc
archives is far from ideal (especially in Russia), but the benefits of archival research usually outweigh the all-toofrequent
disappointments and frustrations. For an appraisal of both the benefits and the pitfalls of archival research,
see Mark Kramer, “Archival Research in Moscow: Progress and Pitfalls,” Cold War International History Project
Bulletin, No. 3 (Fall 1993), pp. 1, 15-34.
3
seemed destined to remain locked away forever. In the West, too, some extremely important collections of
documents pertaining to Soviet policy in Eastern Europe in the 1940s and early 1950s have only recently
become available. Of particular note are declassified transcriptions of Soviet cables that were intercepted
and decrypted by U.S. and British intelligence agencies. This essay takes advantage of the documents that
are now accessible, without overlooking the valuable sources that were available before the collapse of the
Soviet bloc.
The Historical Setting
The Bolshevik takeover in Russia in November 1917 and the conclusion of the First World War a year later
radically altered the political complexion of East-Central Europe.3 Under the Versailles Treaty and other
postwar accords, many new states were created out of the remnants of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and
Tsarist empires. Some of these new entities – Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Estonia, and Latvia – had never
existed before as independent states. Others, such as Poland and Lithuania, had not been independent since
the pre-Napoleonic era. Germany, which since Bismarck’s time had been the most dynamic European
country, was relegated to a subordinate status by the allied powers. The new Bolshevik government in
Russia was able to maintain itself in power but was badly weakened by the vast amount of territory lost to
Germany in the closing months of the war (some of which was recovered after Germany’s defeat) and then
by the chaos that engulfed Russia during its civil war from 1918 to 1921. The extent of Soviet Russia’s
weakness was evident when a military conflict erupted with Poland in 1919-1920. The Soviet regime was
forced to cede parts of Ukraine and Belorussia to Poland, a setback that would have been unthinkable only
five years earlier.4 Although the Red Army reclaimed some of the forfeited territory after World War I
ended, the new Soviet state was still a good deal smaller along its western flank than the Tsarist empire had
been.5
During the interwar period, attitudes toward the Soviet Union differed widely among the countries
of Eastern Europe.6 The repressive policies and revolutionary rhetoric of the Bolshevik government, and
3 Aviel Roshwald, Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, the Middle East, and Russia, 1914-
1923 (New York: Routledge, 2001); Ruth Henig, Versailles and After, 1919-1933, rev. ed. (New York: Routledge,
1995); and Erwin Oberländer, ed., Autoritäre Regime in Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa, 1919-1944 (Paderborn,
Germany: F. Schöningh, 2001).
4 See the useful collection of documents on the postwar settlement signed in March 1921 in Bronisław Komorowski,
ed., Traktat Pokoju między Polską a Rosją i Ukrainą, Ryga 18 marca 1921: 85 lat później (Warsaw: Oficyna
Wydawnicza Rytm, 2006).
5 Dieter Segert, Die Grenzen Osteuropas: 1918, 1945, 1989 — Drei Versuche im Westen anzukommen (Frankfurt am.
Main: Campus, 2002), pp. 29-68.
6 For a solid overview of this period, see Joseph Rothschild, East-Central Europe between the Two World Wars
(Seattle: Washington University Press, 1974). Other useful accounts include Alan Palmer, The Lands Between: A
History of East-Central Europe Since the Congress of Vienna (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970); Hugh
4
the fierce competition for influence waged by the Germanic states and Tsarist Russia in Eastern Europe
since the late eighteenth century, shaped many people’s perceptions of the newly constituted USSR. Some
East European leaders in the 1920s and 1930s sensed a more ominous threat from the Soviet Union than
from Germany. Several nations, especially the Poles, had bitter memories – memories rekindled by the
1920 Russo-Polish War – of Russia’s armed intervention against them during their struggles for
independence in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The different religious, ethnic, and cultural
backgrounds of these peoples also had long separated them from their Russian neighbors. Moreover, the
violent tyranny of the short-lived Soviet republic in Hungary under Béla Kun in 1919 had aroused
widespread antipathy, particularly among Hungarians and Romanians, toward the Communist system that
had been established in Russia.
Among other peoples in the region, however, sentiments toward the Soviet Union were distinctly
warmer or at least not as hostile. The Czechs and the Serbs had traditionally relied on Russia as a
counterweight against German expansion, and the Bulgarians were still grateful for Russia’s assistance in
liberating them from the Turks in 1873. The influence of pan-Slavism continued to prevail among many
Serbs, Croats, Czechs, and Bulgarians, prompting them to look favorably upon their fellow Slavs in the
Soviet Union.
Nevertheless, even for these normally friendly East European nationalities, developments in the
interwar period had engendered discord with Moscow. In the case of Bulgaria, tensions had developed
after a foiled Communist assassination attempt against King Boris; in the case of Czechoslovakia, relations
had deteriorated as a result of the assistance given by the Czechoslovak Legion to the anti-Bolshevik forces
during the Russian Civil War and of Czechoslovakia’s subsequent participation in the French-sponsored
Little Entente. The entrenchment of Stalinism in the USSR, as the human toll of forced collectivization,
de-kulakization, purges, and deportations of non-Russian minorities reached new heights in the 1930s,
further eroded Czechoslovakia’s pro-Moscow inclinations and made the prospect of an alliance with
Moscow far less palatable.
The fear that many in Eastern Europe had of the Soviet Union intensified throughout the 1930s,
despite the growing realization of the threat posed by Germany. Even after Adolf Hitler’s dismemberment
of Czechoslovakia and annexation of the Sudetenland had raised alarm about German intentions toward the
whole region, the Nazi regime’s strong opposition to Soviet Communism (and Hitler’s policies toward the
Seton-Watson, Eastern Europe Between the Wars, 1918-1941, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1962); Hans Hecker and Silke Spieler, Nationales Selbstverstandnis und Zusammenleben in Ost-Mitteleuropa bis zum
Zweiten Weltkrieg (Bonn: Kulturstiftung der Deutschen Vertriebenen, 1991); Antony Polonsky, The Little Dictators:
The History of Eastern Europe Since 1918 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975); Hans-Erich Volkmann, ed.,
Die Krise des Parlamentarismus in Ostmitteleuropa zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen (Marburg/Lahn: J. G. Herder-
Institut, 1967); and Wayne S. Vucinich, East Central Europe Since 1939 (Seattle: Washington University Press,
1980).
5
Jews) ensured at least tacit support for Germany from large segments of the Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian,
and other East European populations. Poland and Romania still rejected any form of military alliance with
the Soviet Union, even though both had readily entered into such an arrangement with Great Britain and
France.7
The situation in Eastern Europe took a sharp turn for the worse in August 1939, when the Soviet
Union and Nazi Germany signed a Non-Aggression Pact and soon thereafter concluded a secret protocol to
the Pact. Under the terms of the secret protocol, the two signatories divided Eastern Europe into spheres of
influence and pledged not to interfere in each other’s sphere. In mid-September 1939, Soviet troops set up
a brutal occupation regime in eastern Poland and moved en masse into the three Baltic states, where they
forced the local governments to comply with Moscow’s demands and eventually replaced them with puppet
governments that voted for “voluntary” incorporation into the Soviet Union. The same pattern was evident
in the formerly Romanian territories of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, which the Soviet Union annexed
in June 1940. The only major impediment to the expansion of Soviet rule came in Finland, where the entry
of Soviet troops sparked a brief but intense war that exposed severe weaknesses in the Red Army stemming
in part from Stalin’s purges of the Soviet High Command in 1936-1938. Although the vastly outnumbered
Finnish forces eventually had to surrender, the three-and-a-half months of combat in 1939-1940 inflicted
devastating losses on the Red Army, including the deaths of at least 126,875 soldiers and the wounding of
264,908.8
7 I. I. Kostyushko, ed., Vostochnaya Evropa posle Versalya (St. Petersburg: Aleteiya, 2007); Anita Prażmowska,
Eastern Europe and the Origins of the Second World War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000); Anita Prażmowska,
Britain, Poland, and the Eastern Front, 1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); and Hans Roos, Polen
und Europa: Studien zur polnischen Aussenpolitik 1931-1939 (Tubingen: Schutz Verlag, 1957), pp. 320-361.
8 See the secret report on the “lessons of the war with Finland” presented by People’s Commissar of Defense Kliment
Voroshilov on 28 March 1940 to the VPK(b) Central Committee, “Uroki Voiny s Flnlyandiei,” in Arkhiv Prezidenta
Rossiiskoi Federatsii (APRF), Fond (F.) 3, Opis’ (Op.) 50, Delo (D.) 261, Listy (Ll.) 114-158; reproduced in Novaya i
noveishaya istoriya (Moscow), No. 4 (July-August 1993), pp. 104-122. For other important declassified documents
pertaining to the Soviet-Finnish Winter War as well as the latest reassessments of the war, see A. N. Sakharov et al.,
eds., Zimnyaya voina 1939-1940 gg. v dokumentakh NKVD SSSR: Issledovaniya, Dokumenty, Kommentarii (K 70-
letiyu nachala sovetsko-finlayandskoi Zimnei voiny) (Moscow: Institut rossiiskoi istorii RAN, 2009); N. L.
Volkovskii, ed., Tainy i uroki zimnei voiny: Po dokumentam rassekrechennykh arkhivov (St. Petersburg: Poligon,
2000); O. A. Rzheshevskii and O. Vekhvilyainen, eds., Zimnyaya voina 1939-1940: Politicheskaya istoriya
(Moscow: Nauka, 1999); Evgenii Balashov, ed., “Prinimaĭ nas, Suomi-krasavitsa”: “Osvoboditel’nyĭ” pokhod v
Finlyandiyu 1939-1940 gg., 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: Galeya Print, 1999); E. N. Kul’kov and O. A. Rzheshevskii, eds.,
Zimnyaya voina 1939-1940: I. V. Stalin i finskaya kampaniya (stenogramma soveshchaniya pri TsK VKP(b))
(Moscow: Nauka, 1999); L. P. Kolodnikova, “Istoricheskaya pamyat’ o sovetsko-finlyandskoi voine, 1939-1940
godov,” Rossiiskaya istoriya (Moscow), No. 5 (September-October 2009), pp. 15-29; A. V. Voronin and D. G.
Semenov, “Sovetsko-finlyandskaya voina 1939-1940 godov v Zapolyar’e,” Rossiiskaya istoriya (Moscow), No. 5
(September-October 2009), pp. 29-34; Ohto Manninen, The Soviet Plans for the North Western Theatre of Operations
in 1939-1944 (Helsinki: National Defence College, 2004); Ohto Manninen, Stalinin kiusa:--Himmlerin täi (Helsinki:
Edita, 2002); A. E. Taras, Sovetsko-finskaya voina, 1939-1940 gg.: Khrestomatiya (Minsk: Kharvest, 1999); Jari
Leskinen and Antti Juutilainen, eds., Talvisodan pikkujättiläinen (Porvoo: Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö, 1999
Robert Edwards, Winter War: Russia’s Invasion of Finland, 1939-1940 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006);
Carl Van Dyke, The Soviet Invasion of Finland, 1939-40 (London: Frank Cass, 1997);
by
sarah_jacobs (student)
