Eastern Bloc

7 Key excerpts on "Eastern Bloc"

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  Women of Power

  Half a Century of Female Presidents and Prime Ministers Worldwide

  • Torild Skard(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Policy Press

    (Publisher)

  Chapter Nine Eastern Bloc: from communism to capitalism

  The countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union1 have in common that they all underwent extensive social changes in the 20th century and became ‘socialist states’. The regimes were based on Marxist ideology and established ‘people’s democracies’, with the Communist Party in a dominant role and state control of the economy. With the exception of Yugoslavia and later Albania, all the countries in Eastern Europe became members of the Warsaw Pact and part of the Eastern Bloc.

  In 1990/91, the communist regimes collapsed, and the world region went through some of the biggest political and economic upheavals since World War II. The Eastern Bloc was dissolved. The Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were split up and the number of states tripled.

  Liberation becomes oppression Promising socialism

  In 1917, a quite extraordinary thing happened: a social upheaval had as an explicit goal to liberate women. After the Tsar was overthrown in Russia, a socialist republic was established based on the writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin. Socialism was supposed to liberate the people from the yoke of capitalism. The working people should rule, and a revolutionary transformation of society would abolish the oppression of class society, including men’s oppression of women. Women should be liberated and become financially independent.2

  Russian rule was autocratic. The population consisted of different ethnic groups and the Russian Orthodox Church had a strong position. In the 1800s, the country was economically underdeveloped and poor. Most people ran farms in the traditional way. The population grew rapidly, and the soil was a sought-after resource. Around 1900, large-scale industrialisation was launched, and people flocked to the cities. But the Tsar was unable to introduce democratic reforms like other European countries did. The miserable conditions led workers to protest and go on strike, which culminated in the revolution of 1905. In the election of the first parliament, special groups of men got the right to vote.

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  The International Politics of Democratization

  • Nuno Severiano Teixeira, Nuno Severiano Teixeira(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The enlargement of the EU from fifteen to twenty-five members reflects the marked economic and political differences between North and South in the range of countries extending from Estonia, the northernmost Baltic republic, to Albania, in South-Eastern Europe. The Cold War definition of Eastern Europe, as embracing previously independent European states subject to Soviet hegemony after the Second World War, masked this North–South divide. For forty years, political analysts in the West accepted as a given the way in which the Soviet Union had imposed a common set of governmental institutions and political organizations throughout the region, defining what was called the new order of state socialism, based on centralized command economies, and establishing local Communist parties as the vanguard of the new elites in power, over and above popular front political organizations mobilizing urban workers and peasants.

  The new Europe of the twenty-five embraces those countries to the East that have had the longest and deepest engagement with Europe historically and culturally, and have made the greatest progress in embracing both market economies and democratic practices since 1989. It excludes, for now, those communities that for one reason or another were perceived by many in Western Europe to be outside Europe prior to the Soviet era, especially in the areas in South-East Europe long subjected to the rule of the Ottoman Turks. In this regard, if one looks at the long trajectory of European history, these new member states drawn from Central Europe and the Baltic region frequently consider the years during which they were incorporated by force into the Soviet sphere of influence to be a historic anomaly. As soon as it became clear that the Soviet Union was collapsing, the realignment of key Baltic and Central European republics and their reconstitution as independent national communities tied to the West was rapid and definitive.4

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  Changing Images of the Left in Bulgaria

  An Old-and-New Divide?

  • Boris Popivanov(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Ibidem Press

    (Publisher)

  via). The other approach, which is more restrictive, is to treat CEE countries — which, in spite of their character as sovereign states, were previously officially allied with the USSR (i.e. , the Eastern Bloc). In this study, I will be reviewing literature that uses both approaches, but I will opt for the second approach in my own interpretation of the Bu l garian case.

  The countries of the Eastern Bloc — one of which is Bulgaria — formed a p o litical, military , and economic alliance under the leadership of the Soviet Union within two important structures: the Organization of the Warsaw Pact and Comecon. In each of those countries, there was a power mono p oly reserved for the respective Communist Party, which presupposed a r e

  jection of liberal democratic political pluralism. Their economies functioned (in varying degrees) on the basis of the mechanisms of central planning and the domination of public property over the means of production. The development of social structures was subordinated to the then ruling inte

  r pretations of so-called Marxism-Leninism, which in effect modelled all spheres of public life.

  Those key characteristics of the Eastern Bloc disappeared in the course of its dissolution during the tumultuous times of 1989 – 1991. The reason for their rejection and dismantling was the decision of the separate CEE cou n

  tries to undergo a geopolitical transformation (by leaving the Warsaw Pact and Comecon and terminating their special relationship with the USSR) and to start a transition to political democracy and market economy, ge

  n erally following the models established in Western Europe after World War II. Marxism-Leninism, however understood, interpreted , or upgraded, was repudiated and ceased to provide an explanatory framework for ongoing events. Influential social forces for which Marxism-Leninism

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  The Global 1970s

  Radicalism, Reform, and Crisis

  • Duco Hellema(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  5The Communist States The early and mid-1970s

  By the early 1970s, the Soviet bloc appeared to be a grim but stable region. The military intervention of August 1968 that had crushed the Prague Spring made it clear that Moscow, and most Eastern European communist leaders, were not going to tolerate any development in the direction of a ‘restoration of the capitalist system’, as Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev publicly declared in November 1968. To deter any possible recurrence of the 1968 events, the Russians increased their military presence in several Eastern European countries, not least in Czechoslovakia itself. The position of orthodox communist diehards thus seemed to have become stronger than in the 1960s, and the margins for political reforms reduced. This is one of the reasons why several historians have described the 1970s in the Soviet bloc as an era of conservatism and stagnation.1

  At the same time, however, particularly during the early and mid-1970s, the Soviet Union and its Eastern European ‘satellites’ achieved remarkable economic growth, even approaching ‘the lower threshold of what is somewhat vaguely called “the affluent society”’, as an Eastern European specialist at the time commented.2 There was also a new approach evident in internal political relations during the 1970s. The communist leaders dropped their policy of ideological mobilization with its appeals to the superiority of the communist system, the necessity for unity and sacrifice, and the wonderful future that lay ahead. Instead, with concepts like ‘developed’ or ‘actually existing socialism’, they offered their people a very different justification for the existing political and economic order: a higher standard of living and more consumerist room for manoeuvre. This tendency has sometimes been referred to as the ‘technicratization’ of communist rule in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.3

  The process of détente was an important aspect of these developments. Détente seemed to confirm the status of the Soviet Union as a great power and, not least, to legitimize Soviet rule over Eastern Europe. Apart from that, détente offered the prospect of increased East-West trade, and even Western investments and financial credits. For a while, there emerged a certain optimism in the Soviet and Eastern European capitals. Industrial production, consumption, and trade were increasing, while loans from the West provided the Soviet and Eastern European leaders with the Western currencies to buy much-needed modern capital goods and technology. Towards the end of the 1970s, however, this growing dependence on Western capital would also prove to have disturbing side effects.

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  Across the Blocs

  Exploring Comparative Cold War Cultural and Social History

  • Patrick Major, Rana Mitter, Patrick Major, Rana Mitter(Authors)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The Cold War appears at best as an epilogue to high Stalinism. 22 In part this is of course the result of availability of sources, linguistic barriers, and funding, but it would seem also that post-Soviet Russian scholars are perhaps unwilling to re-open this chapter of their history. Only very tentatively have some begun to tackle the view from the East, but often still through the lens of Western assumptions. 23 Publications are certainly more abundant for the former German Democratic Republic, which has seen a number of studies of East German society, notably from the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung in Potsdam, or from a number of younger British scholars. 24 Yet, the rest of the Eastern Bloc is heavily underresearched and focused on key isolated moments such as the Prague spring. 25 It would be a pity, therefore, if the cultural imperialism of which America was accused at the time were to be replicated in historical scholarship. Here we can perhaps learn from the Cold War International History Project, which consciously encouraged remedial research on the 'other side'. The editors' own current research falls on the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain, on East Germany and communist China respectively. In this volume, consequently, we have been keen to ensure a geographical balance between East and West. The fact that Eastern Europe witnessed a wholesale internal collapse in 1989 further reinforces the importance of the domestic arena for understanding the outcome of the Cold War. We, and the board of Cold War History, would therefore especially like to encourage new work on the terra incognita of Eastern Europe and beyond. In the interests of focus, we had to narrow down the areas on which this collection would concentrate. First, the essays draw on sources within the Euro-American Cold-War world

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  The Last Empire

  Nationality and the Soviet Future

  • Robert Conquest(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Hoover Institution Press

    (Publisher)

  An irremovable misfortune faces Soviet leaders, making it impossible for them to control Eastern Europe: namely, the fact that East European countries were and are culturally and economically more developed than the Soviet Union. Even Romania and Bulgaria—not to mention others—were closer than Russia to the European standard of living, and Czechoslovakia was even above it. Western states’ imperialism and colonialism were directed toward undeveloped areas, and exploitation also brought technical progress. In Eastern Europe today one finds the opposite case: there ideology—that is, naked force—complements the weakness and backwardness of the conqueror.

  The economic relations of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe passed through two phases—Stalinist and post-Stalinist. The first, Stalinist phase was characterized—as I have already stated—by Soviet attempts to exploit and integrate subservient states into the empire through brutal political pressure. In that period there was created, at Soviet initiative, the Council for Mutual Economic Cooperation (Comecon), which, in contrast to the European Economic Community (EEC), was not founded upon the free market but upon bureaucratic consultation.

  In the Stalin era, the Soviet Union dictated conditions of trade as it pleased. But rebellions and resistance in Eastern Europe, coupled with Soviet economic weaknesses during and after Stalin’s passing, changed those relations in many ways. The second phase began with Khrushchev’s ascent to power. Economic factors began to play a greater role. But the political pressure did not cease; nor did the laws of supply and demand become prevalent. Political pressure is now expressed by giving priority to the Soviet Union’s needs, that is, by demanding ideological, Leninist unity with the Soviet economy. Supply and demand are modified by the dominant role of bureaucratic mechanisms.

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  Studies in Economic and Social History

  Essays Presented to Professor Derek Aldcroft

  • Michael Oliver(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  At the close of 1945 only Yugoslavia had officially embraced communism with the establishment of the Socialist Federal Republic in November. Generally, communists were subsumed in interim coalition governments. What guaranteed that they emerged as the dominant political movement was Soviet support. Aldcroft (Aldcroft and Morewood, 1995, p. 97) sees parallels with the former domination of Nazi Germany. In similar fashion, the region was economically weak and required external support. Terror and subversion was employed, together with rigged elections, to oust opposition so that by 1948 communist regimes were widely installed with Moscow-backed leaders. They quickly set about establishing political and economic systems on the Soviet model. This meant one-party states and command economies with the emphasis on heavy industry. The state expropriated industry, finance and banking, and land reform began which destroyed the large capitalist landowners and redistributed acreage to the peasantry. This had its downside. The breaking up of substantial commercial estates into small and often inefficient holdings retarded post-war recovery but was illustrative of the way in which communist ideology took precedence, a pattern repeated with the subsequent move into collectivization. Between 1947 and 1951 the Soviet bloc countries unveiled five-year plans whereby the state sought to direct economic activity in its own interests and virtually eliminated private initiative and market forces.

  As Aldcroft demonstrates (Aldcroft and Morewood, 1995, pp. 100-102), in the immediate post-war period the USSR treated its emerging satellites as sources of reparations to help rebuild its own war ravaged economy. Aside from Bulgaria, these extracted industrial assets were on a huge scale, representing 17 per cent of Hungary's national income in 1945-46 and over 17 per cent of East Germany's in 1950-51. In fact, the reparations were of a much greater magnitude than those imposed on Germany's allies after the First World War and, because of Soviet military dominance, could be enforced. They were only compensated by aid dispensed by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which focused on Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia over the period 1945-48. German riots in 1953 finally forced the Kremlin to see the light, by which time it had begun to pump economic resources into the rest of the bloc through the mechanism of the CMEA. Indeed, the mirror image of the Soviet economy in bloc countries, with the emphasis on heavy industries, tended to cement political ties through economic dependency. The heavy demand for Soviet energy which resulted meant that Eastern Europe absorbed over 50 per cent of the USSR's energy exports until the early 1980s (Smith, 2000, p. 79).

  Against this background, it is remarkable that by 1949 for Soviet satellites, bar East Germany, reconstruction and recovery had largely succeeded. Over the period 1945-49 more than 90 per cent of industrial capacity was nationalized, creating the bedrock for a command economy (Teichova, 1997a, p. 16). To quote Aldcroft (Aldcroft and Morewood, 1995, p. 104):

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