The Communist Bloc and Its Influence 1945-1976

Posted on Mar 8, 2025 in History

The Communist Bloc

a) Countries liberated by the Red Army formed coalition governments between Communists and other democratic forces.
b) Both the Communists and the Soviets enjoyed great prestige because of their role in the fight against the Nazis during the war.
c) The Cold War caused the USSR to reinforce control over its sphere of influence. Thus, the Soviet government allowed the Communists to take power, birthing exclusive and forced them to establish socialist systems inspired by the Soviet model and align with them on foreign policy.
d) These democracies became Soviet satellite states, subject politically, economically, and militarily to it, forming a security cordon against the Western capitalist powers.
e) Yugoslavia, under the command of Tito, opted for an independent socialist model, breaking from Moscow’s guidelines.
The fear that other countries would follow this example led Stalin to purge the governments of these democracies.
f) The creation of NATO and the launching of the Marshall Plan in Western Europe found their answer in the East with the formation of the Warsaw Pact and Comecon, with the aim of coordinating military and economic policy in the countries of Eastern Europe.

a) Stalin’s rule was marked by political repression and tight ideological control.
b) His death began a period of change in the USSR.
c) The 20th CPSU Congress involved the reporting of crimes and abuses committed during Stalinism.
d) The arrival of Khrushchev, following Stalin’s death, brought about a series of political reforms:
- Domestic Policy: A period of greater tolerance and a certain freedom of expression began, improving the quality of life of the population.
- Foreign Policy: Opened the way for peaceful coexistence with the Western bloc in order to avoid an armed confrontation.

a) With Stalinization came the first attempts of opposition to Soviet rule, expressing the willingness to find their own way to socialism.
b) In East Berlin, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, there were labor conflicts that were repressed by the Soviet army.
c) The Hungarian government, headed by Nagy, supported by labor and student movements, enacted several reforms that moved it away from the Soviet sphere.
- In response, the USSR, supported by the Eastern countries, sent the Soviet army, which ended the Hungarian reformist attempt.
d) Albania’s communist regime, in disagreement with Khrushchev’s policy of openness, decided to break its ties with the USSR and establish trade relations with China.
e) In Czechoslovakia in 1968, during the Dubcek government, a process of reform and democratization of the system was initiated, opening up to the West economically but without breaking with Moscow.
- The intervention by Warsaw Pact troops ended the conflict in Czechoslovakia, known as the “Prague Spring”.
f) Romania would not participate in the suppression by Warsaw Pact troops and, thereafter, adopted a foreign policy distant from the Soviet Union.

a) China
- In 1949, after a civil war, the Communists, led by Mao Zedong, seized power and proclaimed the People’s Republic of China.
- At first, they followed the Soviet model, but the lack of results led to a break with the USSR.
- At the end of the 1950s, China started its own model of socialist development, called the “Great Leap Forward”.
- Between 1966 and 1976, Mao promoted the Cultural Revolution, i.e., a renewal of the revolutionary impulse that meant greater ideological repression.
b) Cuba
- Since 1952, Cuba had been under the Batista dictatorship, with U.S. support.
- In the mid-1950s, Castro and Guevara led a revolution that ended the dictatorship.
- American pressure led the Cuban government to approach the Soviet orbit, thereby becoming one of the scenarios of the Cold War.
- The Cuban Revolution inspired many revolutionary movements that emerged in Latin America.