International relations between the USSR and its satellite states were a series of diplomatic, commercial and geopolitical actions carried out between the leaders of the Soviet Union (1922-1991) and those socialist states in Europe resulting from the Second World War, which positioned themselves as political allies of the USSR during the Cold War (1945-1991).
During such period, the Soviet Union's relations with the other Eastern Bloc allies in Europe defined the geopolitical landscape within the Iron Curtain, as well as the social dynamics in its area of influence. The satellite states resulting from the Second World War will ensure the Soviet Union a line of defence against the Western Bloc in the form of buffer countries. The various Soviet governments would firmly and decisively direct political decision-making throughout the Soviet umbrella from 1945 until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991-1992, although their influence declined definitively in 1989 with the demise of most of the socialist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe.
Background edit
The Iron Curtain is a political term: a metaphor for the division that emerged in Europe after World War II (1939-1945). After Allied victory in the war, the victorious countries divided occupied Europe, with the western part of the continent falling under the influence of American liberalism and capitalism. The countries of Central and Eastern Europe, through which the USSR Red Army had passed on its way to Germany, became socialist regimes in favour of the Kremlin. Thus, a Europe of the second half of the 20th century was shaped. Germany was divided between a liberal state (FRG) with its capital in Bonn, and a communist one around Berlin, itself a divided city. Poland redrew its pre-war borders and Romania lost Moldova to the USSR. From then on, Stalin promoted a policy of estrangement from his former allies, separating these new buffer states from those that remained in favour of the United States.[1]
The Communist Bloc in Europe became relatively enclosed, a clear sign that the Cold War had just begun. From 1947 with the adoption of the Truman Doctrine, which sought to hinder Soviet expansionism by supporting capitalist (not necessarily democratic) regimes; and until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, the Iron Curtain was to mark the lives of all Europeans, becoming one of the most obvious symbols of the world's division into two blocs: capitalist and communist.
The term became popular over the years, but it was British Prime Minister Churchill who put it this way in a speech in 1946: "From Stettin [now Szczecin] on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended over the continent. Behind this line are all the capitals of the former Central and Eastern European states. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the towns around them are in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one way or another, not only to Soviet influence, but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control by Moscow."[2]
Churchill does include Yugoslavia in this speech as part of the Eastern Bloc, despite the fact that due to the development of Yugoslavia's foreign policy throughout the 20th century and especially its distancing from the Soviet orbit of power (the break between Marshal Tito and Iósif Stalin) it would end up not being a vassal state of the USSR by playing a key role in the development of the Non-Aligned Movement. It is also noteworthy that among the European cities the prime minister names is Vienna, even though Austria was not part of the Iron Curtain. The reason for this is that after the Allied victory in World War II, Austria was occupied by the victorious armies on the same model as Germany. The country and the capital were divided up separately, leaving parts of Austria and Vienna under Soviet control. That was the state of Austria when Churchill made his speech in 1946. But unlike Germany, a federal republic was established in Austria, and by 1955 Austria's neutrality was legally approved. Thus, and also under pressure from both Austria and the Western Allies, the Soviet Union lost its influence in Vienna.
All in all, we now have the historical backdrop against which international relations in Central and Eastern Europe will be played out until the fall of the Iron Curtain, which began in 1989 and which had as its final blow the dissolution of the Soviet Union between 1991 and 1992. Until this happened, the USSR employed the entire state apparatus to gain influence over its allies, direct their economies and control state and supra-state policies.[3] These buffer nations were not merely ideological allies, but an instrument of national security and an invaluable input for the communist economies of Europe. Thus, the Soviet Union created and fostered the development of two international organisations (among many others) that were key to understanding how the world worked within the curtain: the Warsaw Pact and COMECON.
The Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, better known as the Warsaw Pact because that is where it was signed in 1955, was an alliance of military cooperation, which sought in theory the mutual protection of its member states in the event of both internal and external threats. The Pact was the counterpart to the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO), an American military organisation of the same kind. In practice, the treaty served to keep the other socialist countries of Europe under Soviet control until the end of the Cold War. The treaty was used as a tool to stop the influence of capitalism emerging behind the Iron Curtain and to protect the communist way of life.[4] Thus, we will see in the cases of different countries how the USSR crushed political revolutions using this organisation.
USSR leader Leonid Brezhnev (1964-1982) described it perfectly in a statement to the state newspaper Pravda: "When there are forces that are hostile to socialism and try to change the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, they become not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem that concerns all communist countries".[5] This article follows 1968 Prague Spring, one of those anti-communist revolutions which the USSR stopped militarily. With these words the Brezhnev Doctrine was established, countering the Reagan Doctrine, but instead of protecting liberal democracy, they were protecting socialist revolution.
The other international organisation to mention is the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, more commonly referred to by its abbreviation COMECON. This international organisation was meant to facilitate international cooperation in economic matters, and served as a socialist alternative to the Marshall Plan of the United States and later the European Economic Community. In this way, the USSR boosted international trade relations and gained access to economic resources and manpower from its allied countries. The Soviets largely controlled the economic policies of the COMECON member states, and dictated how production plans were to be set in the Eastern bloc. Unlike the Warsaw Pact, COMECON did not remain a solely European organisation, but over the years introduced extra-continental members like Mongolia, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, etc. All of these were communist countries that depended heavily on the economic power of the USSR, although interestingly there were also observer members that were non-socialist states, such as Finland and Mexico.[6]
USSR - GDR relations (1949 - 1990) edit
The German Democratic Republic (German: Deutsche Demokratische Republik), or simply GDR, was perhaps the most obvious example of the Soviet satellite-state model. The leaders of the USSR were determined to split Germany in two to ensure the USSR's security in Central Europe. The existence of the GDR is purely ideological and geopolitical, and in no way responds to a nationalist, social or ethnic will. Germans are exactly the same on both sides of the Curtain. Since its inception, East Germany has become the greatest symbol of the division of the continent.
Soviet control on GDR's home policies edit
As early as its establishment in 1949, the GDR became a puppet of the Kremlin, where the real political decision-making took place. The Soviets moulded Germany as a Marxist-Leninist republic, on the Russian socialist model; federal, with five states or länder (although these were transformed into districts from 1952 to avoid political fragmentation); and one-party, in the hands of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (German: Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands), which was formed with the help of Soviet authorities in Germany during the first years after the war. The Soviet presence in Germany was absolute. The USSR had an embassy in East Berlin, as well as consulates in Dresden, Leipzig, Magdeburg and Potsdam. These not only housed the Soviet diplomatic mission, but also functioned as KGB espionage headquarters, known as Residences (Russian: резиденту́ра).
To ensure the correct political direction of the country, the Soviet Union set up an administrative and diplomatic body in 1949: the Soviet Control Commission (German: Sowjetische Kontrollkommission) or SKK. Its duty was the administration and supervision of the federal government and its branches. After Stalin's death in 1953, it became known as the USSR High Commission in Germany. This committee was headed first by General Vasily Chuikov and then by Vladimir Semyonov. In this way, the Soviets maintained a high level of control over German institutions through these shadow leaders, who served as de facto leaders, especially in times of crisis.[7]
In addition, the USSR promoted a police state, where repression and political persecution were common, thanks to the Volkspolizei (national police force) and especially through the Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit) better known as the Stasi: an internal security and intelligence body, based on the Soviet secret service or KGB. Its agents were trained by Soviet officers, who in turn held positions at the top of the ministry.
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When this was not enough to maintain the established order, Moscow also had a permanent Red Army division stationed in Germany. The Soviet Forces Group in Germany (also known as the Western Forces Group) was spread across seven military bases throughout the country and included both ground and air force divisions. They played a key role during the 1953 Uprising when, following a labour reform that raised taxes and lowered wages, workers in state enterprises went out on the streets to protest. The demonstrations began in Berlin on 16 June 1953 and quickly spread throughout Germany. The next day, 40,000 workers took to the streets of Berlin in protest, where they clashed with Soviet troops, who had taken over the city and replaced the police. In less than a day they put down the revolt, leaving more than 50 dead and thousands wounded. In other cities, such as Dresden and Magdeburg, the Stasi, aided by the Red Army, were able to contain the demonstrators. There were hardly any injuries, although several hundred people were arrested and prosecuted.[8]
The events infuriated Stalin's government, which soon brought the chairman of the State Council, Walter Ulbricht, to report the events in Moscow. As a result of the uprising, State Security Minister Wilhelm Zeisser was dismissed. In addition, the Soviet Control Commission carried out structural and personnel reforms in the Volkspolizei, the Stasi, the Ministry of National Defence and the State Planning Commission. All this shows how state structures and policies were changed at will and convenience of the USSR.
Soviet control of GDR's foreign policies. edit
In foreign affairs Germany fared no better. The USSR dictated how the GDR was to relate to the world, and especially to the capitalist bloc. As far as foreign policy was concerned, two events above all marked Soviet intentions in East Germany, both related to its capital city.
On the one hand, the aggressive policies of the Soviet bloc after the Second World War were reflected in the Berlin Blockade, which began on 24 June 1948 with the closing of the borders of socialist Germany (still under Soviet occupation at the time) with the intention of cutting off West Berlin from the rest of the territories occupied by the US, the UK and France (what would later become the Federal Republic of Germany). The aim was to put pressure on the liberal powerhouses to surrender Berlin to the Soviets, as well as to respond to the economic and monetary reform that Western powers intended to implement on the French side and in the US-British Bizone. The Blockade lasted eleven months, but the capitalist bloc allies managed to supply their side of Berlin thanks to constant flights from the rest of Germany (around 900 a day). Seeing that the measures taken had not worked, and that the discontent of all Berliners was growing day by day, Stalin ordered the blockade to be lifted on 12 May 1949. This was a serious blow to the image of the USSR among the Germans, which they tried to fix by propaganda campaigns during the 1950s, showing Soviet friendship and solidarity with the newly created Democratic Republic.[7]
The other major event that defined Soviet control of German foreign policy was the Berlin Wall. It was erected on 13 August 1961 as a containment measure and to better control border traffic. In other words, the wall served to prevent thousands of Berliners from escaping to the western side of the city, as East Berlin had been emptying since the late 1950s. Moscow supported the initiative vis-à-vis the Warsaw Pact members, and financed the needed border reforms. The whole process was supervised by the SKK. Thus, the wall became the most visible evidence of the Iron Curtain: the greatest symbol of the Cold War and the division of the world into two blocs. Discussions about the use of the wall were a frequent topic of dialogue between the USSR and the GDR, especially during the Brezhnev administration.
During Walter Ulbricht's leadership, the GDR government was sceptical, and feared the worsening of German foreign relations as a result of this new security policy. In the face of criticism from the German Council of State, Brezhnev gradually gave more and more power to security bodies such as the Stasi and Volkspolizei, bypassing the German government and relying more on the judgement of the SKK. Despite whatever differences the two countries may have had over the Wall, the reality is that the inter-German division in Berlin continued until 9 November 1989, and international relations between the two countries did not generally worsen either.
Erich Honecker's role edit
President of the State Council from 1976 to 1989, Erich Honecker (1912-1994) represented not only a change in East German diplomatic policy, but was also one of the main actors in the dissolution of East Germany. As early as 1971, he replaced Ulbricht as secretary general of the German Socialist Unity Party, along with the post of chairman of the National Defence Council, becoming the de facto leader of the country. His rapid rise to power was promoted by Brezhnev, who was then at odds with Ulbricht. Erich Honecker presented himself as a less orthodox and somewhat more democratic leader, although in reality he maintained repressive policies and strengthened the role of the Stasi within Germany. At the same time, Honecker managed to dissociate himself slightly from Soviet political leadership, trying to give the GDR an identity of its own as a socialist nation, though always within the framework of the Communist Bloc.
His administration obtained certain licences from the Kremlin to promote culture and especially education, through educational programmes between communist countries and mobility at universities, including with the Western bloc. Honecker thus sought to shape the state more independently, seeking to carry out his own reforms. He therefore pushed the SKK aside and enacted Germany's own institutions. Relations with the USSR began to deteriorate after 1985 with the introduction of the reform initiatives glasnost ('openness') and perestroika ('restructuring') by the then Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. Honecker, who had been more supportive of the Brezhnev doctrine, disagreed with the imposition of these socio-economic reforms on the GDR, writing to Gorbachev's office: "We have done our perestroika, we have nothing to restructure".
Tensions grew between him and Gorbachev, whom he considered a bad socialist and a traitor to the values of Marxism-Leninism.
In the late 1980s, Honecker challenged Gorbachev's power in Germany, holding events on his own initiative and making repressive reforms that ran counter to Moscow's plans, all as a provocation to the Soviet Union. It was these reforms (or rather counter-reforms) that led to an increasing flight of people to the West. Soon Germany also distanced itself from its neighbours and allies, closing its borders with Czechoslovakia and Poland and breaking off diplomatic relations with Hungary. The estrangement from the USSR and the above-mentioned events were already indicative of the instability and decay of the GDR, which refused to change. The politbüro (party executive committee), opposed to Honecker's political leadership (and under pressure from the Soviet Union), dismissed Honecker in October 1989. Three weeks later, on 9 November, the Berlin Wall fell.
USSR - Bulgaria relations (1946-1990) edit
The People's Republic of Bulgaria (Bulgarian: Народна Република България) was a socialist nation, formed as a Marxist-Leninist, unitary, one-party republic. It was characterised by a five-year state-planned economy, largely dependent on collaboration with Romania and especially with the Soviet Union. The Bulgarian Communist Party, which formed the Central Committee and the State Council, pursued a programme of "Stalinisation" from the end of World War II until 1953. It thus became a police state, with a Soviet-style political and economic structure, and was part of the international organisations of the Eastern Bloc.
From 1954 onwards, it is worth mentioning the role of Tódor Zhívkov (1911-1998), President of the Council of State, whose political career paralleled that of the Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. Under his rule between 1954 and 1989, the longest of any Iron Curtain state, the Brezhnev Doctrine was firmly implemented. Bulgaria was an active participant in the Warsaw Pact, arming its army with Soviet support. In return, the USSR had a military base near Burgas on the Black Sea coast, a strategic location for monitoring naval traffic due to its proximity to NATO members Greece and Turkey. From the late 1960s onwards, Zhivkov promoted the country's technological development by encouraging investment in its industrial complex. In the 1960s and 1970s, they worked closely with the Soviet Space Programme developing software for space missions. Thus, in 1979, they launched a joint mission into space with the aim of operating a Soviet space station. The mission was known as Soyuz 33, in which the first Bulgarian cosmonaut, Georgi Ivanov, participated. Bulgaria was a key member of the Interkosmos international collaboration programme, which sought to support the satellite states in their participation in Soviet space initiatives during the space race.[9]
Tódor Zhívkov focused state initiative on the development of information technologies. Bulgaria was known as the 'Silicon Valley of the Eastern Bloc'. Thanks to joint investment with the Kremlin, the state-owned Pravetz exported computers to the Soviet Union and other trading partners such as the GDR and Czechoslovakia.
The deterioration of Bulgarian-Soviet relations began in the mid-1980s with the Soviet imposition of Gorbachev's reforms, which Zhivkov opposed. Gorbachev included him in the 'Group of Four', referring to the communist leaders who resisted perestroika (Zhivkov plus Germany's Honecker, Romania's Ceaușescu and Czechoslovakia's Husák). The USSR Central Committee pressured members of the Bulgarian Communist Party to oust Zhivkov. Thus, Prime Minister Georgi Atanasov, together with other top managers, forced Zhivkov's resignation on 17 November 1989. The wall had fallen and the Iron Curtain could not hold much longer. The new government reformed the state towards a multi-party system, which with the free elections of 1990 meant the end of the People's Republic of Bulgaria.
USSR - Czechoslovakia relations (1948-1990) edit
Becoming a satellite state edit
Bilateral relations between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union began even before World War II. In 1935, they signed a mutual assistance treaty, spurred by the growing fear of military actions from Nazi Germany. During the war, the Czechoslovak government-in-exile maintained relations with the Soviet high command to coordinate the liberation of the country. In 1945, with the Germans retreating, Stalin made a series of demands to be met as a condition for the Czechoslovaks to have the Red Army's support. The Kremlin demanded that once the war was over, Czechoslovakia should follow Soviet foreign policy. The exiled government agreed, which was reflected in the Beneš Decrees (signed by then president Edvard Beneš). These were a series of state-level reforms that shaped Czechoslovakia during and after the war. One of the most prominent conditions was the Soviet annexation of Carpathian Ruthenia, an eastern region of Slovakia, now in Ukraine.[4]
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The Prague Offensive (6-11 May 1945), the last major military operation in Europe during the war, ended the German occupation of the country. In 1946, the Republic was re-established and free elections were held. Despite agreements with the USSR, the Czechoslovaks retained a great deal of independence. But the victory of the communists in these elections changed the political course. The Soviets saw an opportunity to add Czechoslovakia to the Eastern Bloc. So in 1948, after two years of democratic rule, they financed a coup, making the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (better known as KSČ) the country's sole party, and transforming the state into a Marxist-Leninist republic with a planned economy.[10]
Between 1948 and 1957, Czechoslovakia underwent a continuous process of "Stalinisation" that brought the country closer to Soviet leadership and aligned it as a satellite state within the Iron Curtain. Key during these years was the leadership of Klement Gottwald first and Antonin Zápotocký later on.
Alexander Dubček and the Prague Spring edit
The presidency from 1957 onwards of Antonín Novotny, a Stalinist close to Brezhnev, would bring with it the seeds of the decline of the following years. The planned economy had plunged the country into an agricultural crisis, and by the mid-1960s Czechoslovakia was in a state of stagnation. By 1965, many in the party were questioning his leadership, and many citizens were calling for socio-economic reforms to modernise the country. On the one hand, the intellectual elite demanded freedom of expression and greater democratisation of government structures. On the other, party members, led by Ota Šik and Alexander Dubček, demanded a move to a kind of "mixed economy", combining capitalist elements but with state control. The great social discontent over Novotny's inability to carry out the necessary reforms led to his dismissal in January 1968 in favour of Alexander Dubček. This Slovak politician turned the country's direction around.
His reforms brought almost complete freedom of speech, association and assembly. Over the next few months he liberalised the economy moderately and pushed through an Action Plan allowing political dissent and freedom of press. Dubček believed he had Moscow's support and believed that, as a member of the Soviet sphere, Czechoslovakia could afford to reshape the state more flexibly than Western nations. This plan of action launched in March 1968 was known as "socialism with a human face" (Czech: socialismus s lidskou tváří), which led to the Prague Spring.[11]
But it soon became clear that the Czechoslovak government did not have the Kremlin's blessing, as Brezhnev asked to meet Dubček in Dresden in March of the same year, where he demanded that he put the brakes on the reforms. However, Dubček continued the democratisation of the country, leading to the Bratislava Declaration (03/08/1968), in which the other Warsaw Pact member states (except Romania) forced Dubček to accept the capacity for Soviet military intervention in the event that a "bourgeois system" was eventually implemented in Czechoslovakia.[12] Despite growing tensions between Prague and Moscow, there was no reason then to think that national sovereignty was at stake. The Soviets had no troops stationed in the country, and Brezhnev claimed that the Bratislava Declaration was no more than an assistance agreement that could only be used as a last resort.
Dubček's mistake was to believe Brezhnev, for on 20 August the Red Army launched a full-scale invasion of the country, first seizing airports and military posts, and later occupying the cities. The USSR politburo justified the operation on the grounds that Czechoslovak reforms endangered the way of life of the entire bloc, and exposed the USSR to Western powers. By contrast, the government in Prague defended the invasion to the international community as an illegitimate aggression. On 26 August the Kremlin's decision to keep Dubček in power because of his immense popularity among the Czechoslovak population, who were resisting the occupying forces, became effective. On that day Dubček and other reformist leaders were forced to sign the Moscow Protocol, which obliged the government to halt reforms, restrict political opposition, accept the Soviet invasion, recant before the international community and re-align with the Eastern Bloc in full. The Soviets did not, however, declare an end to the occupation, which was to occur slowly and progressively over the next few years.
"Normalization" and later years edit
Relations between the USSR and Czechoslovakia had calmed down, although social unrest in the months following the invasion only increased. Alexander Dubček and his government began to be seen as traitors, sell-outs to Moscow who were now undoing all the progress made. The dismantling of the Prague Spring from the summer of 1968 onwards became known as the "Normalization of Czechoslovakia". Meanwhile, the Kremlin searched the KSČ ranks for a possible replacement for Dubček. In April 1969, Gustav Husák was elected the new Party leader, causing Dubček to resign. Husák was the most successful politician to lead Czechoslovakia into the process of "normalisation".
He was elected at the time not so much because he was a staunch advocate of the Brezhnev Doctrine, but because he was a pragmatic leader who understood that only by completely ending the reforms of the Prague Spring could diplomatic relations with Moscow be put back on track. But time proved that Husák was indeed a communist with tendencies towards Soviet-style authoritarianism. He carried out numerous political purges, turned the country into a police state and suppressed any kind of rejection of the socialist model dictated by the USSR.
In 1970 the two countries signed a new Friendship Treaty, which led thousands of KSČ members to resign, exposing social discontent and public disillusionment with what might have been. The following years brought social calm and stability to Czechoslovakia, but only through state repression.
Overall, the events of the Prague Spring demonstrated that international relations between the Soviet Union and its satellite states were not a matter of diplomacy between socialist equals, but that there was a logistical, intelligence and military action effort on the part of the USSR to secure control of Central and Eastern Europe, making future Western attempts to influence policy beyond the Iron Curtain impossible.
From the beginning of the 1970s, relations between the Soviet power and Czechoslovakia were relatively stable, until the end of the 1980s, when Husák was included by Gorbachev in the famous "Group of Four", mentioned above, which denoted the USSR's disapproval of the president's refusal to accept reforms.
USSR - Hungary relations (1949-1989) edit
First years and 1956 Hungarian Uprising edit
While the Prague Spring was the greatest exponent of the Brezhnev Doctrine, it was not the only occasion on which the Warsaw Pact coalition intervened militarily. The establishment of the Hungarian People's Republic (Hungarian: Magyar Népköztársaság) was no different from that of the other Soviet buffer states. The first years of life of this state brought "stalinization" and shaped a socialist dictatorship directly dependent on Moscow. During the leadership of Mátyás Rákosi, general secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party, the government was a puppet of Moscow. Its institutions were staffed by Russian advisors and the Hungarian secret police, the State Protection Authority or AVH (Hungarian: Államvédelmi Hatóságág) was an appendage of the Soviet KGB. The Soviet Union established close trade links by exporting consumer goods and raw materials to Hungary, and importing heavy machinery (machines for manufacturing goods) and chemicals and pharmaceuticals, one of the country's few notable enterprises. But by the mid-1950s the economy had stagnated, with a crisis caused by both a shortage in agricultural production (due to the planned economy) and a shortage of housing in the cities. The latter was a problem that lasted until the 1970s with the introduction of low-quality but low-cost socialist block housing, known in Hungarian as Panelház.
In the face of popular discontent due to the socioeconomic situation, Rákosi resigned in winter 1956, being replaced by Erno Gerő. But real expectations of change were slim. As a result, thousands of demonstrators gathered on October 22 in Budapest to protest against the government's ineffectiveness. Led by political dissident Peter Veres, the demonstrators declared a series of demands through a sixteen-point manifesto with political, economic and ideological character. Citizen mobilization only grew, and by the end of the day some 200,000 people were in the streets, surrounding the Parliament, storming the Soviet embassy and destroying the statue of Stalin in the eponymous square. Facing this, Gerő's government formally requested assistance from Warsaw Pact members. The next day, 6,000 Soviet units entered Hungary and occupied Budapest. Thus began the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
However, a reformist section of the government, headed by the then Prime Minister Imre Nagy, joined the demonstrators, allowing them to arm themselves, supported by a faction of the Hungarian army. The clashes between the armed population and the USSR troops continued for several days, until on November 4th the Red Army executed a military operation to shoot down the civilian fighters. While Imre Nagy was arrested and executed, Nikita Khrushchev also demanded that the Hungarian political apparatus be reformed. Ernő Gerő was ousted and went into exile in the Soviet Union. After thousands of deaths and the country divided, it was decided to put a moderate reformer, János Kádár, at the helm. The Kremlin carefully structured the new cabinet and forced the government to recognize the restoration of peace at the United Nations with the help of the Eastern Bloc countries. The man in charge of overseeing the establishment of the new road map in Hungary was Yuri Andropov, who years later would become General Secretary of the USSR from 1982 to 1984.
Relations during "goulash communism" edit
From 1957 onwards, the Magyar country took a turn in terms of state policies. Although János Kádár was an orthodox communist and a hard-line communist, he believed that the country urgently needed to respond to social demands for "destalinization" and to implement economic reforms. Under his government there was a dual dynamic. On the one hand, Kádár persecuted the revolutionaries responsible for the 1956 Uprising and re-established Soviet influence in state organs. But, on the other hand, he implemented, through the Central Committee of the Party, a series of economic reforms aimed at liberalizing the economy, especially in the area of agricultural products. This plan was known as the New Economic Mechanism, and introduced commercial freedoms for the peasants, such as the law of supply and demand, producing as much as they wanted and setting prices themselves. It also moderated control over enterprises and even allowed trade with Western countries. Although the Brezhnev government was critical of COMECON, it ended up benefiting from these measures, as many of the consumer goods imported into Hungary from the West ended up in the USSR.[1]
Kádár also allowed some criticism of the state, in what he called the "democratic opposition", although it was still monitored by the ÁVH. Perhaps of all the satellite states, the Hungarian People's Republic was the most lax, as it had Moscow's approval for more than two decades to expand socio-economic freedoms, always within the framework outlined by the Soviet Union. Kádár's model was colloquially known as "goulash communism", meaning Hungarian-style communism (goulash is Hungary's national dish), and Hungary began to be called the "happiest barracks", implying that it was the least miserable of the communist states. It laid the foundations on which many reforms of openness in other socialist countries, such as Deng Xiaoping's China, would be based. As a consequence, the growth of the Hungarian economy was one of the largest and fastest within the Iron Curtain, and Hungary became an economic authority within COMECON, sometimes even clashing with Soviet plans.[13]
The years of Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost made it clear that openness and democratization reforms were especially easy to implement in Hungary. The country opened up to tourism and Western brands as early as the mid-1980s, and bands such as Queen played in Budapest from 1986 onwards. Gorbachev continued to press the Kádár government toward moderate liberalization of the country. But Kádár, now elderly and somewhat skeptical of Moscow's requests, resigned in 1988, opening the door to Hungary's full democratization that year with Miklos Németh, the prime minister who challenged the authority of Kádár's successor, Károly Grósz, and eventually led the transition to multipartyism in 1989, effectively ending communism in Hungary.
USSR - Poland relations (1945 - 1989) edit
The People's Republic of Poland did not experience the same social upheaval as other USSR buffer states, but we can highlight a number of issues that shaped diplomatic relations between the two countries. The first was the territorial question. With the "liberation" or invasion of Poland by the Red Army, the need arose to shape and define Polish territory. The problem: during the war, the Soviets had invaded and annexed a large part of the Second Polish Republic (1918-1939). Thus, Red Ruthenia became part of the Ukrainian SSR; the Białystok region became part of the Byelorussian SSR; and the Vilnius region was annexed to the Lithuanian SSR. As a solution, Stalin proposed redrawing the borders to the west, giving the Poles eastern regions of the Third Reich. The provisional government, by then already communist, signed the Polish-Soviet Border Agreement on August 16, 1945. Thus the USSR consolidated its sovereignty over the above-mentioned regions, and Poland annexed the Pomeranian region on the Baltic Sea and East Prussia with cities such as Wroclaw and Szczecin. In addition, Russia made an advantageous agreement by also gaining more kilometers of southern coastline protecting Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg). The Agreement also resulted in the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of ethnically Polish inhabitants to the Third Republic.
The second issue present in the bilateral relations between these two socialist states was the clear Soviet control of the Polish political apparatus. Already since World War II it was clear that Poland would become under Soviet rule a puppet of the Kremlin. Through numerous purges and adjustments in the government, the Soviets spent the next four decades putting in and taking out leaders at will. While the parliament or Sejm was retained, many of the deputies were informers, and command of the country changed hands on Soviet orders, with Poland having no outstanding leader. All heads of state in socialist Poland were, in fact, either military or active KGB collaborators. When Moscow was unhappy with the political leadership of the country, it removed the leader of the day to install one more loyal to the regime. The Polish United Workers' Party or PZPR (Polish: Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza) had total control of the country and was directly financed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
As a third point, and related to the second, it is worth mentioning the presence of the Red Army on Polish territory during the Cold War. Poland served as a strategic location for the emplacement of Russian troops for the duration of the Iron Curtain. The country had access to the sea in the north, and was located in Central Europe in the south, protected by the Carpathian Mountains, but with direct routes to Czechoslovakia and East Germany. The puppet government in Warsaw actively participated in the Treaty of Collective Security and Mutual Assistance, and was, together with the USSR, the country that mobilized the most troops wherever anti-communist revolts took place.
The final and perhaps most important issue that shaped relations between Poland and the USSR was political persecution and the disagreements between Poles and Russians on how to deal with it. Despite what was discussed above, the PZPR tended to be somewhat more liberal with dissent than in other communist countries such as the GDR or the USSR. Social unrest in the late 1970s led workers throughout the country to protest against Soviet control of the state economy. In particular, the momentum and growth of the Solidarity trade union (Polish: Solidarność) and its action during the 1980 Lenin Shipyard strike in Gdansk brought opponents such as activist Lech Wałęsa to the world's attention. The Gdansk Agreements of the same year, between the Polish government and the strikers, legalized the Solidarity trade union, which was harshly criticized by the Kremlin. The Soviet delegation in Warsaw forced the government of Wojciech Jaruzelski to toughen measures and declare martial law in order to outlaw the union again and arrest the demonstrators. But the truth is that the PZPR opposed the USSR's heavy hand and the measures brought criticism within the Polish socialist institutions themselves.
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Another concern of the Soviet government was the influence of the Catholic Church in Poland. The opposition of the pope, also a Pole, John Paul II, to the socialist regime, supported the cause of the opposition. Although Jaruzelski tried to curb the Vatican's influence in the country, it was not successful. Both the Pope and Lech Wałęsa became during the 1980s the key figures in the struggle against communism. As early as 1989, in the midst of perestroika, and with Gorbachev's blessing, the Polish government met in Warsaw with the Solidarity trade union, and they negotiated social reforms that could alleviate the enormous social anger with the high command. However, the result was reflected in the Round Table Talks, in which the transition to liberalism was accepted. Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki (future leader of the Christian Democrats) took it upon himself to implement the demands of Solidarity: multipartyism, freedom of religion, speech, press, etc. were allowed. Free elections were called and by 1990 Jaruzelski resigned as head of state, putting an end to the communist regime in Poland.
USSR - Romania relations (1947-1989) edit
While the Romanian People's Republic saw the light of day in 1947 with the communist victory in a rigged election and the elimination of the royal house, it is not the country's early years, under Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, that I intend to focus on. Rather, to understand Romania's history behind the Iron Curtain we must fast forward to 1965, with the rise to power of Nicolae Ceaușescu. It was this general secretary of the communist party, who controlled the country with an iron fist until the end of the Cold War, establishing a de facto totalitarian dictatorship since 1971. Ceaușescu transformed the country into the Socialist Republic of Romania from 1965, beginning a period of unprecedented purges and political repression.
Ceaușescu believed himself to be a defender of communist orthodoxy, which made him out of step with the plan of action outlined from Moscow, something that always annoyed the tenants of the Kremlin. Although he never left the Warsaw Pact, he refused the Soviet occupation of other states of the Bloc, and did not actively participate in the mobilization of troops. He criticized the actions of his allies and especially in relation to the Prague Spring, as he announced during the speech of August 21, 1968, which earned him the Brezhnev's anger, who cooled relations between the two countries.
The confrontation with the USSR did not end there. Ceaușescu never defended the Soviet Union in the face of its differences with China, as the other European satellite states did. He also did not want to be economically dependent on the USSR and sought greater trade collaboration with other COMECON members such as Bulgaria. He was considered by many as the third breakaway, together with the Albanian Enver Hoxha and the Yugoslav Tito. Beginning with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Ceaușescu further distanced himself from Brezhnev and the following Bolshevik leaders.
But the strained relations between the USSR and Romania did not arise only from Romanian foreign policy, but also due to the leader's own behavior in his country. In the midst of the era of "destalinization" and reforms on the model of Khrushchev and Brezhnev throughout communist Europe, Nicolae Ceaușescu imposed with his wife Elena Petrescu the cult of personality, becoming a figure of supreme command in the country by appointing himself Conducător (something like "conductor of the people"). The couple controlled Romania in a tyrannical manner, and the government was dedicated to executing the extravagant orders of its leader: spending huge amounts of money on pharaonic works while people starved.[14] And despite this domestic policy, what bothered the Soviet high command most was that the Romanian government's disobedience portrayed Ceaușescu as an open-minded leader in the eyes of the Western powers.
With the country going through such a situation, the question of how it was possible for Ceaușescu to remain in power without suffering intervention by the USSR or Western powers is explained by the following: during diplomatic visits to the People's Palace, the seat of the Romanian government, such as those of Nixon and De Gaulle in the late 1960s or Brezhnev in 1976, the Conducător engaged in recording conversations through the country's secret police, the Securitate. He also installed dozens of monitoring centers controlled by the Romanian military intelligence service to tap calls in embassies and government buildings. In this way the Romanian dictator obtained a life insurance policy, becoming untouchable both inside and outside the Eastern bloc.
The result of all this was a stable government, but estranged from the Soviet Union, which in turn preferred to distance itself from Ceaușescu. Romania became one of the poorest countries in Europe, mired in a chronic economic crisis and under the tyranny of a paranoid and totalitarian leader. Things between Bucharest and Moscow did not improve with the coming to power of Mikhail Gorbachev, who included Ceaușescu in the "Group of Four" for his refusal to democratize the regime. Decades of backwardness and repression eventually took their toll, and on December 16, 1989, mass protests that began in Timișoara ended his rule when the army stormed the People's Palace and arrested him on Christmas Day. Ceaușescu and his wife Elena were tried by a military court and executed that same day, beginning the transition to the end of socialism in Romania.
See also edit
References edit
- ^ a b Kramer, Mark (2014-07-01). "Stalin, Soviet Policy, and the Establishment of a Communist Bloc in Eastern Europe, 1941–1948". Stalin and Europe. Oxford University Press. pp. 264–294. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199945566.003.0012. ISBN 978-0-19-994556-6. Retrieved 2024-02-15.
- ^ pixelstorm (1946-03-05). "The Sinews of Peace ('Iron Curtain Speech')". International Churchill Society. Retrieved 2024-02-15.
- ^ González, Juan C.; Carr, E. H. (1976). "Historia de la Rusia soviética. Tomo III: La revolución Bolchevique (1917-1923). La Rusia Soviética y el mundo". Revista española de la opinión pública (43): 283. doi:10.2307/40182361. ISSN 0034-9429. JSTOR 40182361. Retrieved 2024-02-15.
- ^ a b Marantz, Paul (March 1975). "Internal Politics and Soviet Foreign Policy: a Case Study". Western Political Quarterly. 28 (1): 130–146. doi:10.1177/106591297502800108. ISSN 0043-4078. S2CID 153542035. Retrieved 2024-02-15.
- ^ Weisband, Edward; Franck, Thomas M. (1971-10). «The Brezhnev-Johnson two-world doctrine». Society 8 (12): 36-44. ISSN 0147-2011. doi:10.1007/bf02804242. Consultado el 15 de febrero de 2024.
- ^ Ramachandran, S. (1973-01). «Iron Ore Exports: Problems and Prospects». Foreign Trade Review 7 (4): 349-358. ISSN 0015-7325. doi:10.1177/0015732515730403. Consultado el 15 de febrero de 2024.
- ^ a b Reiman, Michal (29 de julio de 2016). About Russia, Its Revolutions, Its Development and Its Present. Peter Lang D. ISBN 978-3-631-69554-8. Consultado el 15 de febrero de 2024.
- ^ Herminghouse, Patricia (1991-05). «Confronting the "Blank Spots of History": GDR Culture and the Legacy of "Stalinism"». German Studies Review 14 (2): 345. ISSN 0149-7952. doi:10.2307/1430568. Consultado el 15 de febrero de 2024.
- ^ Kelleher, Michael (2009). «Bulgaria's Communist-Era Landscape». The Public Historian 31 (3): 39-72. ISSN 0272-3433. doi:10.1525/tph.2009.31.3.39. Consultado el 15 de febrero de 2024.
- ^ Kramer, Mark (1 de julio de 2014). Stalin, Soviet Policy, and the Establishment of a Communist Bloc in Eastern Europe, 1941–1948. Oxford University Press. pp. 264-294. Consultado el 15 de febrero de 2024.
- ^ Luers, William H. (1990). «Czechoslovakia: Road to Revolution». Foreign Affairs 69 (2): 77. ISSN 0015-7120. doi:10.2307/20044305. Consultado el 15 de febrero de 2024.
- ^ Weisband, Edward; Franck, Thomas M. (1971-10). «The Brezhnev-Johnson two-world doctrine». Society 8 (12): 36-44. ISSN 0147-2011. doi:10.1007/bf02804242. Consultado el 16 de febrero de 2024.
- ^ Kramer, Mark (1998-04). «The Soviet Union and the 1956 Crises in Hungary and Poland: Reassessments and New Findings». Journal of Contemporary History 33 (2): 163-214. ISSN 0022-0094. doi:10.1177/002200949803300201. Consultado el 15 de febrero de 2024.
- ^ Grieger, Manfred (31 de diciembre de 1995). Nicolae Ceausescu. De Gruyter. pp. 443-447. ISBN 978-3-05-006963-0. Consultado el 16 de febrero de 2024.