Topic 5: Creation and Consolidation of Soviet sphere of influence

Question 1

USSR background in Europe

Answer 1

• 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

Question 2

Molotov-ribbentop Pact 1939

Answer 2

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)

Question 3

People’s democracies (1945-49)

Different levels of Soviet participation/control at the creation of new CEEC governments:

Answer 3

• 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)

Question 4

People’s democracies (1945-49)

* “Sovietization” process followed at CEEC:

Answer 4

• 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)

Question 5

People’s democracies (1945-49)

Common characteristics of these new People’s Democracies:

Answer 5

• Single party government (State vs. Party relation; democratic centralism; oversized bureaucratic state; unity of action).
• Centrally planned economy
• No Foreign Policy autonomy

Question 6

People’s democracies (45-49)

* Zhdanov Doctrine (22/09/47)

Answer 6

• 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)

Question 7

Cominform (1947)

Answer 7

• 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

Question 8

COMECON (1949)

Answer 8

• 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.

Question 9

Warsaw Pact (1955)

Answer 9

• 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