The Soviet Union and Eastern and Southern Europe, 1945-48

• Percentages agreement confirmed to JS that the states that the USSR liberated from the Nazis would fall within a Soviet sphere of influence 
• 1945 – no clear evidence that JS was intent upon the creation of a communist bloc in EE
• Initial focus – influence > ideological expansion 
• His actions in EE motivated by a determination to do whatever was necessary to safeguard Soviet international interest and Soviet territory
• JS initial intent – establish a defence/buffer zone to the west of the USSR based on satellite states, completed by 1948
• USSR succeeded in establishing comm regimes across EE
• Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Czechoslovakia all had pro-Soviet comm regimes in place 
• This buffer zone of allies would reinforce the defensive capability of the USSR against any possible threat from the West 
• JS’s methods of imposing the regimes reveal something of his motives
• Regimes weren’t simply imposed by force on EE
• Common for comms to form alliances with other left-wing parties then take control of them
• Opposition candidates were often intimidated, and elections results were manipulated to ensure a comm victory
• Comms emerged as committed patriots in anti-fascist wartime resistance 
• Compliance towards comm in EE – Czechoslovakia, comms emerged as larged single party with 38% of the votes in the relatively free elections held in May 1946
• War left these states with mass unemployment and economic chaos 
• Many workers in these states, comm offered a much better prospect than capitalism and the dominance of an economic elite associated with it 
• Many thought comms = freedom fighters due to their struggle against Nazism
• Comms promised employment and social mobility - This view wasn’t shared by all sectors of EE society
• Rural peasants looked to the pro-agrarian parties to deliver land redistribution and to be responsive to the specific needs of the very large numbers of rural peasants 
• JS believed communism could only be achieved if both the USSR was powerful and he, as leader, was all-powerful
• JS Committed to power before his commitment to ideology 
• Willing to tolerate other political parties temporarily, but this was a means to an end 
• Regimes established couldn’t be independent of Soviet influence 
• Purity of communist ideology operating in EE states wasn’t a high priority for JS
• Leaders had to function as Stalinist puppets
• Level of commitment and loyalty gave Stalin, and the USSR power – and power gave security