USSR control over Eastern Europe

Question 1

(a) Describe events in Hungary in October and November 1956. [4]

Answer 1

– 23rd October -> student demonstration pulled down huge stature of Stalin in Budapest, attacked secret police and Russian soldiers
– 24th October -> non-Communist government allowed to form under Imre Nagy who wanted to leave the Warsaw Pact
– 4th November -> 200,000 Soviet troops and 2,500 Soviet tanks invade Budapest and two weeks of destructive fighting ensued
– Communist Kadar replaced Nagy.

Question 2

(a) Describe the Soviet response to events in Hungary in 1956. [4]

Answer 2

– Retired unpopular and oppressive Rakosi for “health reasons” in July 1956 and replaced him with Erno Gero
– 24th October -> allowed non-Communist government to form under Imre Nagy
– 4th November -> 200,000 Soviet troops and 2,500 Soviet tanks invade Budapest and two weeks of destructive fighting ensued
– Communist Kadar replaced Nagy -> arrested 30,000 and killed 300 anti-communists

Question 3

(a) What was the ‘Prague Spring’? [4]

Answer 3

– January 1968 -> Alexander Dubcek becomes leader of Czechoslovakia
– Aimed to establish “socialism with a new face” -> a less repressive and extreme version of Brezhnev’s Communism
– The “Prague Spring” was the period of liberalism in early 1968 in Czechoslovakia that followed Dubcek coming to power as he introduced new reforms -> most notably, censorship of the press would be abolished and criticism of the government would not be seen as a crime

Question 4

b) Why did Warsaw Pact forces invade Czechoslovakia in 1968? [6]

Answer 4

1. Brezhnev was concerned Dubcek would leave Warsaw Pact
   – 9th August: Tito arrives in Prague following Dubcek’s invitation => Brezhnev took this to mean that Czechoslovakia was distancing itself from the Warsaw Pact and leaning towards to independent nature of Yugoslavia
   – Dubcek signed an agreement with Nicolae Ceausescu, the Romanian leader, who also disliked the strong control of the USSR
   – Brezhnev was worried that these closer relationships threatened the Soviet control in Czechoslovakia
2. To dissuade other satellite states from rising up
   – Czechoslovakia was in a strategic position -> barrier between capitalist West Germany and Communist Ukraine => worried that other countries would follow Czechoslovakia’s example and become a more Western-style country
   – Effectively asserted the “Brezhnev Doctrine” (announced just after the crisis) which gave USSR right to impose Communism by force -> would discourage future anti-Communist revolution in the future

Question 5

(b) Why did Berlin remain a focus of Cold War tensions during the 1960s? [6]

Answer 5

1. Contrasting standards of living
   – East = could see advertisements for products available in the West that you could not get in the East, harsh communist regime and cruel leader Ulbricht, over 2.7 million workers had defected to the West by the 1960s
   – West = poured massive investment into West Berlin to make it more desirable than East Berlin -> shops were filled with goods and the people were given great freedom => with Western aid West Berlin flourished
2. Berlin Wall
   – Vienna Conference (June 1961) -> Khrushchev challenged Kennedy to withdraw American troops from West Berlin or declare war on the USSR
   – Kennedy started preparing for war, spending $207 million on nuclear fallout shelters
   – 13th August 1961 -> Khrushchev knew he couldn’t win a war against the US and therefore he built a wall around West Berlin
   – People still tried (and some succeeded) to enter West Germany but many less than before the wall -> 1953 = 300,000 left and in 1962 = 10,000 left
   – Made Communism look even more unattractive -> why were they having to trap people in their country?
   – Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech showed how America would never give up on Berlin, despite all the attempts of the USSR to remove democracy from East Germany