Cold War
“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow.” Winston Churchill, speaking in Fulton, Missouri, March 5, 1946 After the new economics of Lenin, Stalin wrecked the Soviet economy but by winning the war was able to carry on his totalitarian policy. The Russian trained Polish, Hungarian and Romanian and Czech communists on how to be secret service. Even if these people didn't support the ideology they had well paid positions and wanted to hold onto them. When East Europe fell into Russian hands they set to work building up the pro-Moscow regime, the first election were democratic but that forced the socialists to form a coalition, the communists took the ministry of Interior and later arrested the opposition. Ethnic cleansing was very much part of Stalin policy. It had been agreed by the Allies that Germans would have to leave Czechoslovakia but then Germans were expelled from Romania, Hungary and started fleeing parts that became Poland in front of the Red Army advance. But Ukrainians were expelled from Poland and vice versa also Hungary and Czechoslovakia etc. The same prison camps left by the Germans housed refugees and later they were also used as prison camps again. In the same way that the exchange of population caused animosity to the departing minorities so it affected the Jews in the same way besides the anti-Semitism. Where Jews were too numerous in the communist party this was seen as negative. Eastern Europe supported the establishment of Israel and when Jews wanted to go there trains were organized and the Hagana even had training in those countries. Civil society like the WMCA or women's organization opened and started helping destitute refugees trying to get help, self-help communities but this was regarded as a threat to the communist regime which converted them to official party Patriotic organizations. Instead of charity volunteers they became bureaucrats promoting the party. Those who didn't take part in May day parades were forced out or resigned. In a totalitarian state there are no independent schools, no private businesses, no grassroots organizations, and no critical thought. Mussolini and his favorite philosopher, Giovanni Gentile, once wrote of a “conception of the State” that is “all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value.”4 Totalitarians regimes had 5 things in common 1)a dominant ideology,2) a single ruling party,3) a secret police force prepared to use terror,4) a monopoly on information,5) and a planned economy. “Truman Doctrine willing to help free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes.”totalitarian The North Korean regime, set up along Stalin’s lines, has changed little in seventy years. As the war ended merchants were out in the market selling and bartering all sorts of goods and suddenly there was a thriving market but the communist ideology set up state wholesalers and goods stopped being available. What was the free market was now considered a black-market and instead of professional merchants you had party apparatchiks getting the jobs and services deteriorated. A Polish secret service person defected and told his whole story over the American radio, after that informers were scared to inform in Poland. Communism was doomed from the start and every country found ways of avoiding the state apparatus. Poland with the Catholic church, Czechoslovakia used literature, Eastern Europe consists of 8 countries and was a political term rather than Geogrphic and these countries all have different languages religions and cultures. After 1989 every country took a different path. The Bolsheviks did not begin with a blueprint. In the wake of the Russian Revolution, they pursued a zigzag course, sometimes harsher and sometimes more liberal, as one policy after another failed to deliver promised economic gains. In due course, the Great Terror might have led to real disillusion. But Stalinism—and Stalin—was fortuitously rescued by the Second World War. The Soviet invasion of eastern Poland and the Baltic States in 1939 produced a cadre of NKVD willing to bring Sovietization there. William Appleman Williams, who argued that the Cold War had been caused not by communist expansion but by the American drive for open international markets. Or the division of Germany was caused not by the Soviet pursuit of totalitarian policies in Eastern Germany after 1945 but by the Western powers’ failure to take advantage of Stalin’s peaceful overtures.22 Youth organizations were the first thing the Soviet took control of whether boy scouts or catholic of protestant church youth organizations. At the Potsdam conference it was agreed that Germans would be moved out of countries like Czechoslovakia but the extent of ethnic cleansing under the Soviet was not expected. Upon joining the party in 1945, the communist writer Wiktor Woroszylski was offered three choices:1 the communist youth movement,2 the secret police, or3 the propaganda department, which dealt with mass media. These were the initial priority of Stalin. The communist party was popular in Eastern Europe as well as France, Italy, and Britain. In Yugoslavia because of Titos resistance it was really popular. Returning refugees were easy to control. Hard though it sometimes is for us to understand, communists also believed their own doctrine. The harsher policies imposed upon the Eastern bloc in 1947 and 1948 were therefore not merely, and certainly not only, a reaction to the Cold War. They were also a reaction to failure. The Soviet Union and its local allies had failed to win power peacefully. Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia all had stock markets, foreign investment, limited companies, and laws protecting property rights. All had civic institutions—churches, youth organizations, even though they were not real democratic regimes Czech lands were among the most industrialized in Europe. Eastern Europe had suffered the worst of both Hitler's and Stalin's Ideological madness. When the war ended people desperately sought out ordinary work and education and these countries saw enormous growth spurts with people with energy to get their lives back to normal. Totalitarian armies had occupied the area and for example the city of Levow had been occupied by Russia after the Ribbentrop Molotov agreement then by Germany and now again by Russia. In 1939 the NKVD not only arrested Nazi collaborators but anyone they saw as a threat to their administration like bankers, merchants social democrats often the same people targeted by the Nazis. Dietrich von Choltitz out of sentimental respect left Paris standing but Warsaw and Budapest were destroyed without any qualms. British deaths 360 thousand, French 590 thousand . Poland 5.5 million of which 3 million were Jews. Yugoslavia 1.5 million. The concept that the ruling authorities could simple confiscate private property was well established in Eastern Europe. When the Germans fled Silesia and Prussia there became a profession of looting that was almost patriotic. This looting culture stopped but made acceptable state taking property, Ex soldiers and partisan set themselve up as criminal gangs. Murders violence arrests by the authority was normal.
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