Topic 5: Creation and Consolidation of Soviet sphere of influence Flashcards
USSR background in Europe
- Russia was trying to gain territory out of necessity e.g. coastlines
- molotov-ribbentop Pact 1939
- Treaty of Brest-Litowsk - ended Russias participation in WWI
Molotov-ribbentop Pact 1939
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, officially known as the Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was a neutrality pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed in Moscow 1939
* Stalin and Hitler committed to not attack each other (allies at the beginning of WWII)
People’s democracies (1945-49)
Different levels of Soviet participation/control at the creation of new CEEC governments:
- Direct control (Hungary, Romania, Poland)
- Competing Soviet participation with internal political and social factors in each country (Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia)
- Creation of Communist regimes just by internal political and social factors (Albania and Yugoslavia)
People’s democracies (1945-49)
* “Sovietization” process followed at CEEC:
- De-Nazification
- Non-workers’ parties were prohibited
- Pseudo-democratic and rigged elections
- Soviet strategy of “gradual development towards a Socialist order” (without experiencing the dictatorship of proletariat stage).
- Finally, they get single party regimes (1946 – Romania; 1947: Poland and Bulgaria; 1948 – Czechoslovakia; 1949: Hungary and GDR)
People’s democracies (1945-49)
Common characteristics of these new People’s Democracies:
- Single party government (State vs. Party relation; democratic centralism; oversized bureaucratic state; unity of action).
- Centrally planned economy
- No Foreign Policy autonomy
People’s democracies (45-49)
* Zhdanov Doctrine (22/09/47)
- Soviet response to Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan (same kind of discourse)
- Division of the world in two blocks:
* Imperialist and antidemocratic
* Anti-imperialist and democratic - No Communist way can divert from Moscow guidelines (Stalinization of CEECs)
Cominform (1947)
- Alliance of communist parties to co-ordinate activity under Soviet Union
- Direct reaction to Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan.
- Goal (theoretically): exchange of information and political coordination of the CPs.
- Members (CPs): USSR, Bulgaria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, France and Italy
- Dissolution in 1956
COMECON (1949)
- Council for Mutual Economic Assistance
- Economic goal: promotion and planification of trade between its MS
- Political goals:
(1) Resisting the economic influence of Marshall Plan
(2) Preventing ideological deviationism - Functioning: international division of the productive system through multiannual plans of economic development.
Warsaw Pact (1955)
- Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance
- 4 reasons for its creation: (1) denial Treaty of Collective Security in Europe; (2) GFR access to NATO; (3) preventing revisionism within CEECs CPs; (4) China’s rising
- Structure and contents parallel to the Washington Treaty:
- Political Structure and Military structure
- positive security treaty and mutual defence
- reply to creation of NATO
- between SU and 7 other Eastern Bloc during the cold war