The Creation of Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe Flashcards
Cause 1 - How did the ‘buffer zone’ get started?
Stalin’s Red Army pushed Germany out of the Soviet Union and then pushed further west towards Germany, ‘liberating’ countries in Eastern Europe from the Nazis.
Cause 2 - Why did Stalin want to keep control of these satellite states?
When the war was over, Stalin was reluctant to give up control of these countries because they were a useful ‘buffer zone’ between the Soviet Union and Germany to protect the USSR from any future attacks by Germany.
Feature 1 - How did some early countries become part of the buffer zone?
Some countries, such as Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were conquered by the Soviet Union in 1940 and simply treated as if they were part of the Soviet Union.
Feature 2 - How did other countries get pushed into becoming part of the buffer zone from 1945 to 1949?
Other countries were manipulated to become communist. For example, Poland, where the Red Army allowed a rebellion against the Nazis to be crushed before moving in to install a communist government. Other countries that were pushed into becoming communist stallite states included Bulgaria and Romania by 1945 and Czechoslovakia by 1948 and Hungary by 1949.
Consequence 1 - How did the creation of the buffer zone affect Truman’s thinking?
Truman saw the creation of the buffer zone as evidence that Stalin wanted to spread communism worldwide and so this made relations worse
Consequence 2 - What did Truman do as a result of the creation of the buffer zone?
Truman announced his Truman Doctrine while these satellite states were being established and this drew a clear line between the two sides in the Cold War and made relationships more tense.
