"Sovietization" of Eastern Europe

[Lamanov]

Are there any good articles on a post war period for Russian satelites (DDR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary): 1945-1953?

I have to do an essay on this subject: "Sovietization of Eastern Europe".


Note: no pro-Kremlin stuff.

[Wanted Man]

Originally posted by DJ-[email protected] 08, 2006 05:13 pm
Note: no pro-Kremlin stuff.
Gotta stay "fair and balanced", right? ;)

[Lamanov]

No. I just "gotta" avoid apologetics, since I'm interested in empyrical facts.

[chimx]

Here are some books and book reviews:

Sovietization in Romania and Czechoslovakia: History, Analogies, Consequences seems to be good. it is a collection of papers on the subject, and is edited by Alexandru Zub and Flavius Solomon. Here is a book review:


This volume contains many of the papers presented at a symposium of the same name held in Romania in 2001. The quality of the papers (which are in English, French and German) is rather high, each one abundantly footnoted and still sufficiently accessible for the reader unfamiliar with the subject-matter. The book is divided into three sections. The first, 'Culture, Historiography and Mentalities', looks at Soviet efforts to regulate the flow of ideas and knowledge, particularly in the sphere of education after 1945. Most of the papers relate to Romania, notably the conversion of historiography to Marxist-Leninist requirements, the transformation of school textbooks, and the nature of the Romanian cinema in the 1950s. There were no two more dissimilar countries in Eastern Europe than Romania and Czechoslovakia subject to Soviet control. The latter had a large working-class and a powerful communist movement whereas Romania was an overwhelmingly agrarian society in which communism enjoyed virtually no standing before 1945. It would have been rewarding to explore the extent to which these contrasts obliged the Soviets to take a different approach to culture and educational matters, but the one paper presented to the symposium that might have shed some light on this issue, Gheorghe Onisoru's 'The Establishing of the "Democrat-People's" Regimes in Czechoslovakia and Romania: Similarities and Particularities', was not included in this volume. The second section, entitled 'Politics and International Relations', has a stronger Czechoslovak focus. It centres on key developments in the evolution of communist rule, the rejection of the Marshall Plan in 1947, the importance of the Hungarian revolution in 1956 on neighbouring Slovakia, and differing interpretative models of the 'Prague spring' of 1968. A paper on the re-establishment of Czechoslovak-Romanian relations appears in this section along with one on the emigration of Czechs and Slovaks from Romania after 1945, but opportunities for comparative analysis have not been taken further. Issues such as the nature and duration of blanket repression and the role of Soviet officials in directing it, and the character of minority policies in the respective states, would have been fruitful subjects to examine jointly. Nevertheless, Professors Zub and Solomon are to be congratulated for making available to a larger audience wide-ranging papers on the respective impact of communism in both countries which future colloquia should be encouraged to treat more comparatively.
It was published in Bucharest Romania by Polirom in 2003

--

Captive University: the Sovietization of East German, Czech, and Polish Higher Education, 1945-1956 by John Connelly. It was published by University of North Carolina Press in 2000. Book review by Jacek Kochanowicz:


The book under review testifies to the growing interest in the recent history of East Central Europe. Countries of the region are no longer treated as mere copies of the Soviet Union, unworthy of an independent study, and variations from case to case are noted as much as differences between each case and the model. John Connelly has focused his research on higher education--obviously an important institution, as it served the reproduction of the elites and thus influenced the whole social system. He looked at three countries during the Stalinist period: Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, and Poland. Before World War II, they all had similar systems of universities on the Austrian-German model. In all three cases, there was an intensive attempt to reconstruct the system according to the Soviet model. Yet the outcomes of Stalinist sovietization were clearly different--the most successful in the German and the least successful in the Polish case.

In order to highlight and explain these routes and the differences between them, the author made a very thorough search of party archives, archives of selected universities, memoirs, and secondary literature. In addition, he interviewed a number of scholars from each of the three countries. Of the university's two functions--creating new knowledge and creating elites--the book looks mostly to the latter. It also focuses on social sciences and humanities, leaving aside natural, technical, and medical sciences.

The results of Connelly's research are interesting as much with reference to the process of sovietization itself as with respect to the interpretation of its different outcomes. The Soviets, as we learn, were much less directly involved in imposing their solutions than was the case with, say, internal security or foreign policy. Quite the contrary: the initiative mostly came from local communists, who tried hard to impose the Soviet pattern. That proved more difficult than expected--the notoriously secretive Soviet authorities did not allow easy access to their institutions, officials, and documents and were not eager to send important people to lecture. Sometimes visiting Russian scholars even warned cautiously about possible excesses and advised against repeating the Soviet steps too literally.

The local communists wanted to recast the universities in order to create a new, socialist intelligentsia. In order to achieve this, they tried to penetrate universities ideologically and politically, to reconstruct curricula, to isolate academics whom they associated with a "bourgeois" approach to science and teaching, and to change radically the student body. However, they had to find compromises between two contradictory aims: one of subjecting institutions of higher learning to the new political system, the other of maintaining certain academic standards. The resistance they met came from the old professoriate as well as from social structures.

The task was the easiest in East Germany. Here, the academics' will to resist was broken because of their affiliation with the Nazi regime. In the long run, the communist party's penetration of the academic world was the deepest in the German case. The Czech professors, as Connelly argues, did not so much embrace communism as capitulate to it. In both these cases, the professors traditionally regarded themselves as state functionaries, passively accepting the changing demands of the state. Breaking the resistance of the professoriate was much more difficult in Poland. Poles had a social memory of working against the state under partition and an experience of the World War II resistance. They relied on the dense network of personal and familial contacts of the intelligentsia (srodowisko, or milieu), which successfully resisted penetration by the party.

In all three cases, it proved to be difficult to introduce Marxism-Leninism into the curricula. The students treated the topic as propaganda, and there was a lack of reading materials and--first and foremost--good teachers. Young activists without a degree hardly had a chance in competing as role models with prewar professors, who were widely read and charismatic in the classroom.

To have more students of worker or peasant origins was easy in none of these cases, as the working-class candidates, despite crash preparatory courses, were often unable to cope with the intellectual requirements of the university. However, that task--in contrast with attempts to change the professors--was relatively the easiest in Poland. This was the most backward and rural of the three countries under discussion, and higher education was one of the most attractive channels of social promotion. In the already highly developed Czech lands it was much less so, in part because there were very small wage differences between workers and people with degrees.

Connelly's book is well researched and the argument convincing. It might have been good, however, for the author to say more about the overall numbers involved, particularly concerning the size and structure of both the student body and the teaching staff. The argument is mostly qualitative, and the figures provided play a supplementary role. Developments in higher education in these three countries--and particularly in Poland--were part of a massive social change, not just a result of attempts at sovietization, and thus measuring them is important for understanding the process.

The book also raises a more theoretical point. Connelly seems to treat sovietization as a set of conscious policies aimed at imposing the Soviet institutional model and Marxist-Leninist ideology. That leads him to concentrate on the Stalinist period, obviously a heyday of such policies. However, sovietization can also be understood as a broader cultural process; a formation of attitudes promoting the bureaucratic-authoritarian system that state socialism was evolving into. The Stalinist period did not last long enough to go beyond institutional transformation. Changing attitudes and mentalities appeared only in the next generation of students and professors, and these changes were more pronounced and far-reaching in the newly created schools than in the old universities. The content of humanities and social sciences had less to do with the crude imposition of Marxism-Leninism than with weakened contacts with the West and with subtle changes in the content and understanding of the disciplines. In this perspective the significance of 1956 diminishes, as this process continued thereafter in more subtle ways, leading to a sovietization--so to speak--a la Alexander Zinoviev (The Radiant Future [New York, 1980]). In both the Polish and the Czechoslovak cases the events of 1968 bear witness to the importance of this broader understanding of sovietization.

--

Here is an article about Poland, and why exiled Polish leaders should be held partly responsible for their country's sovietization:

The 1940s Sovietization of Poland: a historiographic appraisal. Steve S. Pec. East European Quarterly v26.n1 (Spring 1992): pp109(14).

--

I don't know if you wanna cover it, but there is a 4 volume work called The Republic of Armenia: Between Crescent and Sickle: Partition and Sovietization by Richard Hovannisian.

--

I have the article Poland and Hungary, 1956: a comparative essay based on new archival findings in my inbox. Here is its full citation:

Poland and Hungary, 1956: a comparative essay based on new archival findings. Johanna Granville. The Australian Journal of Politics and History 48.3 (Sept 2002): p369(27).

If you want, i can email it to you. just email me at xchimx [at] gmail [d0t] com

--

I also have the article Soviet takeovers: the role of advisers in Mongolia in the 1920s and in Eastern Europe after World War II in my inbox. Email me if you want it. Here is the article's abstract:


The Soviet subjugation of Eastern Europe used the lessons the Soviet's learned in their conquest of Mongolia and applied them in different ways to various countries. Soviet advisers played a critical role in these takeovers, always modeled on their Mongolian success. Poland and Hungary under early Soviet occupation show many similarities, though Poland was terrorized more quickly because it was the more valuable prize. The Red Army played a greater role in Poland, while NKVD personnel were more evident in Hungary.

[Xiao Banfa]

A brilliant and Illusion shattering piece is Chris Harmans' (decidedly anti-Kremlin)
Class Struggles in Eastern Europe 1945-1983

Maybe you should see if you can find something Ernst Mandel has written for a more ortho-trot perspective to balance out the Cliffite bias.

But the only Cliffite bias in the Harman book is the conclusions on state capitalism. He is on pretty solid ground factually.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Originally posted by DJ-[email protected] 08, 2006 06:25 pm
No. I just "gotta" avoid apologetics, since I'm interested in empyrical facts.
duh! We Communists hate historical materialism and love Cold War USA facts!!!

[Phalanx]

Originally posted by LeftyHenry+December 10, 2006 11:13 pm--> (LeftyHenry @ December 10, 2006 11:13 pm)
DJ-[email protected] 08, 2006 06:25 pm
No. I just "gotta" avoid apologetics, since I'm interested in empyrical facts.
duh! We Communists hate historical materialism and love Cold War USA facts!!! [/b]
You're so fucking annoying.

Not all books on the subject were written by staunchly pro-Soviet or pro-USA writers . Just because something wasn't written by Soviet propagandists doesn't mean its not factual.

[Lamanov]

It's cool. I wrote the essay by now.

Anyway, some on-line stuff would still be valuable.

[Severian]

I can point you to some stuff written at the time, as the events unfolded. It has a certain amount of general factual material, though I'm sure much more became available later.

It took several years for full "Sovietization" to take place - largely as a reaction to the "West" launching the Cold War.

The best is the stuff by Joseph Hansen, for example collected in "Class, Party, State and the East European Revolution." It's not the most readily available.

There's some stuff available on the web:
from Fourth International magazine at the time (http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/fi/index2.htm)
by Pierre Frank (http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/frank/index.htm)
Ernest Mandel had some economic data (http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/index.htm)

[chimx]

I know you said you already wrote the paper, but I thought this may be helpful to folks in the future. I finally found an online repository for the US State Department's Foreign Relations series. They are enormous and always extremely helpful, as they are primary sources--memos, speeches, etc. written during the period. Here are all the volumes that would be relavent (bare in mind they are thousands of pages):

United States Department of State Foreign relations of the United States, 1948. Eastern Europe; The Soviet Union: Volume IV (1948)
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/F...RUS.FRUS1948v04 (http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=header&id=FRUS.FRUS1948v04)

United States Department of State Foreign relations of the United States, 1949. Eastern Europe; the Soviet Union: Volume V (1949)
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/F...RUS.FRUS1949v05 (http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=header&id=FRUS.FRUS1949v05)

United States Department of State Foreign relations of the United States, 1950. Central and Eastern Europe; The Soviet Union: Volume IV (1950)
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/F...RUS.FRUS1950v04 (http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=header&id=FRUS.FRUS1950v04)

United States Department of State Foreign relations of the United States, 1951. Europe: political and economic developments (in two parts): Volume IV, Part 1 (1951)
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/F...S.FRUS1951v04p1 (http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=header&id=FRUS.FRUS1951v04p1)

United States Department of State Foreign relations of the United States, 1951. Europe: political and economic developments (in two parts): Volume IV, Part 2 (1951)
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/F...S.FRUS1951v04p2 (http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=header&id=FRUS.FRUS1951v04p2)

United States Department of State Foreign relations of the United States, 1952-1954. Eastern Europe; Soviet Union; Eastern Mediterranean: Volume VIII (1952-1954)
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/F....FRUS1952-54v08 (http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=header&id=FRUS.FRUS1952-54v08)

United States Department of State Foreign relations of the United States, 1955-1957. Central and southeastern Europe: Volume XXVI (1955-1957)
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/F...RUS.FRUS1955v26 (http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=header&id=FRUS.FRUS1955v26)

ENJOY!

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by LeftyHenry+December 10, 2006 11:13 pm--> (LeftyHenry @ December 10, 2006 11:13 pm)
DJ-[email protected] 08, 2006 06:25 pm
No. I just "gotta" avoid apologetics, since I'm interested in empyrical facts.
duh! We Communists hate historical materialism and love Cold War USA facts!!! [/b]

I'm not a Communist. I'm only a communist.

That's the difference between you and I.


* * *

chimx, that is great. Thanks.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Originally posted by Tatanka Iyotank+December 10, 2006 11:35 pm--> (Tatanka Iyotank @ December 10, 2006 11:35 pm)
Originally posted by [email protected] 10, 2006 11:13 pm

DJ-[email protected] 08, 2006 06:25 pm
No. I just "gotta" avoid apologetics, since I'm interested in empyrical facts.
duh! We Communists hate historical materialism and love Cold War USA facts!!!
You're so fucking annoying.

Not all books on the subject were written by staunchly pro-Soviet or pro-USA writers . Just because something wasn't written by Soviet propagandists doesn't mean its not factual. [/b]
:rolleyes: In case you didn&#39;t notice, he only asked for biased accounts shithead <_< that means he&#39;s already made up his mind on the matter and just wants to reinforce his position. It wouldn&#39;t kill you or him to read "pro-soviet" propaganda, and than compare and contrast to the American shit.

[Phalanx]

No, he only asked for anything but pro-Kremlin info. That could mean he&#39;s already read up on all the Kremlin bullshit and feels like he needs other opinions. And being a former Marxist-Leninist, I&#39;ve read up on all that propaganda, so I don&#39;t need more of their shit.

[Rawthentic]

Yeah. LeftyHenry is one of those apologists that the comrade talks about. He feels nostalgic about the past; people such as Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, and refers to them as "real" revolutionaries, and of course labels left communists as counterrevolutionaries. He&#39;s just a dogmatic Leninist sectarian. I mean, look, he&#39;s part of RCP aka "Saint Avakian&#39;s Church of Mao." :D The RCP is about as cultist, petty-bourgeois and sectarian that one can get.

[Ander]

Oh boys just leave Henry alone, he only became a Maoist a month ago. He&#39;ll move on in a week or two. ;)

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17, 2006 01:49 am
Oh boys just leave Henry alone, he only became a Maoist a month ago. He&#39;ll move on in a week or two. ;)
:rolleyes: yes, all this coming from the Anarcho-Nationalist.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Originally posted by Tatanka [email protected] 15, 2006 03:34 am
No, he only asked for anything but pro-Kremlin info. That could mean he&#39;s already read up on all the Kremlin bullshit and feels like he needs other opinions. And being a former Marxist-Leninist, I&#39;ve read up on all that propaganda, so I don&#39;t need more of their shit.
LOL umm no it means he doesn&#39;t care to hear anything but the shit he wants to hear.


Yeah. LeftyHenry is one of those apologists that the comrade talks about. He feels nostalgic about the past; people such as Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, and refers to them as "real" revolutionaries, and of course labels left communists as counterrevolutionaries. He&#39;s just a dogmatic Leninist sectarian. I mean, look, he&#39;s part of RCP aka "Saint Avakian&#39;s Church of Mao." The RCP is about as cultist, petty-bourgeois and sectarian that one can get.

You&#39;re a moron. Aren&#39;t you part of the FPM who support all past & present socialist states? Oh wait but you&#39;re also part of the CL. Do you have two personalities or something or are you a plain confused anarchist who has little understanding of communism? How the fuck is the RCP some church. The RCP is an group based on action. Bob Avakian only applies to the RCP in that he is chair and he writes some good shit but in reality, most of the time we&#39;re on the streets at demos being active. I don&#39;t label left communists as counterrevolutionaries, but they do get it wrong. There&#39;s a reason anarchism and left communism have never overthrown capitalism. Left Communism and Anarchism are mainly a first world phenomenon, while Maoism and RCP world wide affiliates carry out revolution and people&#39;s war in Nepal, India, Philipines and many other places.

[Ander]

Originally posted by LeftyHenry+December 17, 2006 01:37 am--> (LeftyHenry @ December 17, 2006 01:37 am)
[email protected] 17, 2006 01:49 am
Oh boys just leave Henry alone, he only became a Maoist a month ago. He&#39;ll move on in a week or two. ;)
:rolleyes: yes, all this coming from the Anarcho-Nationalist. [/b]
Again, I&#39;ve never been an anarchist at all.

This might help you though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist

Btw, what the hell is an Anarcho Nationalist? :lol:

[kingbee]

Just finished a university course on this: I did an essay on the exact topic. George Schopflin sums up everything, as does Seton-Watson and Swain & Swain. I can&#39;t remember the names of the books, but I have notes on it if you PM me.

Edit- realise now that you have done it.

[Rawthentic]

You&#39;re a moron. Aren&#39;t you part of the FPM who support all past & present socialist states? Oh wait but you&#39;re also part of the CL. Do you have two personalities or something or are you a plain confused anarchist who has little understanding of communism? How the fuck is the RCP some church. The RCP is an group based on action. Bob Avakian only applies to the RCP in that he is chair and he writes some good shit but in reality, most of the time we&#39;re on the streets at demos being active. I don&#39;t label left communists as counterrevolutionaries, but they do get it wrong. There&#39;s a reason anarchism and left communism have never overthrown capitalism. Left Communism and Anarchism are mainly a first world phenomenon, while Maoism and RCP world wide affiliates carry out revolution and people&#39;s war in Nepal, India, Philipines and many other places.

Nope, I fortunately am no longer a part of the FPM, and what you said on them is precisely why I&#39;m out. Yeah, I am a CL member, and a left-communist, but the CL is not Leninist, but a classical Marxist organization. If it was Leninist, I wouldn&#39;t bother.

I am not a "confused anarchist", I am not anarchist at all, and I understand communism well enough to know that it has never existed and that Lenin&#39;s theories are detrimental to it. Why all the Leninist crap? We don&#39;t need it. Its like some so-called "leftists" that insist on using religion for liberation, its just a load of crap.

The thing on the RCP as a church is a metaphor, I know that its not really a church. Its just the way that people exalt Avakian as some great super being who knows all there is to know and has the duty to instill it on the working class. Its like how people praise God and put all their faith onto him to save humanity. Also, radical Christians are always active on the streets trying to recruit people, so don&#39;t throw that crap in because it wont fly here.

How is it that left-communists "get it wrong"? There&#39;s a reason why no ideology or group of people have never overthrown capitalism. Leninists tried to "skip" the process and ended up with capitalism either way. I do believe that if the proletariat and peasantry had actually administered the period of feudalism to industrialize and create socialism, there could have been a chance, but the vanguard elites became the new ruling class. If these so-called people&#39;s wars succeed in these countries, hit me up in 30 years to check where they are. History has the weird habit of repeating itself.

[Phalanx]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17, 2006 04:47 am
LOL umm no it means he doesn&#39;t care to hear anything but the shit he wants to hear.
How is that any different from you, Mr. Stalin&#39;s in my wet dreams?

There&#39;s absolutely no way you can tell how well read someone is by a single thread.

[chimx]

I think I have read some threads by LeftyHenry that would make me able to "ballpark" his literary library. ;)

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17, 2006 04:47 am
There&#39;s a reason anarchism and left communism have never overthrown capitalism.

It&#39;s not up to anarchism and left communism to overthrow capitalism. That&#39;s what workers and students must do through their own creative abilities.

That&#39;s what you, as a follower of maoist church, cannot understand.


Left Communism and Anarchism are mainly a first world phenomenon, while Maoism and RCP world wide affiliates carry out revolution and people&#39;s war in Nepal, India, Philipines and many other places.

And that worked out great, didn&#39;t it?

All joking aside: these two are products of the "first world" becuase it was the only part of the world fully developed by 1917. The only part of the world where proletariat managed to leave traces of its revolutionary practice.

Maoisim can only work for peasant national-liberation movements, and that&#39;s it&#33;

You&#39;re wrong if you think that it managed to overthrow capitalism: it didn&#39;t. Capitalism only changed its form.

[Rawthentic]

Correctly said DJ-TC. It is natural for workers and students to seek autonomy in liberation, not joining some vanguard party.

[Ander]

At the first sign of trouble Henry is gone like a flash.

[Mikhail Frunze]

Well, in concern to Czechoslovakia, the communists there won fair and square in the 1946 legislative elections having attained 40+ percent of the vote. Soviet troops had withdrawn prior to the election. With a majority in the legislature through coalition with allied parties and with their leader Klement Gottwald as prime minister, the Czechoslovak communists enacted a socialist constitution in 1948 and established a national front with other parties. "Russia: A History" edited by Gregory Freeze argues that Stalin did not have any involvement in what unfolded in Czechoslovakia because communist parties became immensely independent from Moscow during the war; this is best exemplified by the national liberation forces led by Mao and Tito. It was not after WWII when communist parties were reintegrated to the Moscow line.

In concern to Bulgaria, the USSR did not have any direct involvement there either. Although the USSR declared war against Bulgaria on 5 September 1944, no fighting actually occurred. The communist-led Fatherland Front then deposed the regime which had collaborated with the Germans on 9 September 1944. Soviet troops arrived in Sofia on 14 September 1944. When Soviet troops arrived in Bulgaria, they were welcomed by the populace as liberators from German occupation. Soviet troops withdrew from Bulgaria in 1947.

In concern to Hungary, the USSR helped to establish a genuinely pluralist transitional government there in December 1944 when the country was liberated:
On December 22, 1944, a provisional government emerged in Debrecen that was made up of the Provisional National Assembly, in which communist representatives outnumbered those of the other "antifascist" parties, and a cabinet, whose members included a general and two other military officers of the old regime, two communists, two Social Democrats, two members of the Independent Smallholders&#39; Party, one member of the National Peasant Party, and one unaffiliated member.
The communists then established a coalition with the Social Democrats and and National Peasants which allowed them to gain several significant posts in the cabinet. After the 1947 elections which were allegedly tainted, the communists and social democrats legally enacted their policies through the legislature over which they had control.

In Romania, the USSR did not have involvement with helping the communists land in power. Before the Red Army was able to advance, King Michael supported by the communists unleashed a coup against Antonescu:
In June 1944 the National Peasants, National Liberals, Communists, and Social Democrats, responding to a Communist Party proposal, formed the Blocul National Democrat (National Democratic Bloc--BND), whose aim was to extricate Romania from the Nazi war effort. On August 23 King Michael, a number of army officers, and armed Communist-led civilians supported by the BND locked Ion Antonescu into a safe and seized control of the government. The king then restored the 1923 constitution and issued a cease-fire just as the Red Army was penetrating the Moldavian front. The coup speeded the Red Army&#39;s advance, and the Soviet Union later awarded Michael the Order of Victory for his personal courage in overthrowing Antonescu and putting an end to Romania&#39;s war against the Allies.
Soviet troops eventually withdrew from Romania in 1958. Thereafter, especially after the misguided 1968 intervention in Prague, Romania became largely independent from the Moscow line.

In Yugoslavia and Albania, of course, the USSR had no involvement whatsoever in helping communists there land in power. In Yugoslavia a remarkably effective resistance movement had driven out the fascist invaders without any substantial external support.

The only country where it can be argued that the USSR directly established a government was in Poland. But even still, the Lublin government was a multi-party coalition composed of communists, socialists led by Edward Ochab, and agrarians. After the 1947 elections which were claimed by the opposition to have been tainted, the government bloc took 80% of the vote and thereafter legally enacted its policies through the legislature.

I suggest you refer to the Library of Congress "Country Studies". It is devoid of the propagandistic, distortive, half-truth drivel found in other histories.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/cshome.html

[chimx]

http://www.countrystudies.us is a far easier domain to remember, fyi.

[Lamanov]

I&#39;ve done that essay by now.

I left out Czechoslovakia because I will write about it in my essay about Prague Spring.

I&#39;m sorry it&#39;s not in english, because I would have posted it by now. If there&#39;s any intrest, I could translate it.

[Mikhail Frunze]

Well, you should have included Czechoslovakia to show that there was not any Soviet involvement in helping the communists consolidate their power. Soviet troops withdrew from the country shortly after it was liberated in 1945. In the 1946 election, communists and fellow travellers took the majority of votes.