Exploring the Political, Social, and Economic Factors that Helped Communists to Rule in East-Central Europe After 1944

INTRODUCTION

In 1939, the Communist USSR entered into a pact with Nazi Germany containing a secret protocol that divided the eastern part of Europe into German and Soviet interests. While the two signed a non-aggression treaty that should last for ten years, it was only to buy time to prepare their troops to attack the other. Joseph Stalin, the de facto leader of the Soviet Union, was consumed about reforming his army after losing most of his senior officers, who were either detained or executed. Germany initiated the war against Russia in 1941 through Operation Barbarossa, the largest land strike in history. The Germans slaughtered twenty million Russians, including civilians, in an attempt to annihilate what Adolf Hitler referred to as sub-humans. In 1945, the Germans surrendered, and this put the Soviet Union in a strong position in the continent.

On the other hand, it was not only war that helped the communists to take power in East-Central Europe after 1944. Stalin and the communist parties took advantage of political, economic, and social factors to spread their influence across. Stalin believed that he must impose his own social system in each territory he would occupy, and this required a full-scale Soviet military presence throughout East-Central Europe. He did not succeed in his objective overnight, but set out to make certain that he, alone, would determine the political agenda in the region. Stalin also knew that it was the size of the Soviet Union that aided in the defeat of Germany and was the same factor that would protect the region from further attacks.

Some historians say that it was the Fulton speech of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on Iron Curtain that induced the Soviet Union to push for t...

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...e Western allied powers and the Soviet Union. In Yugoslavia, Tito signed a decree in November 1944 declaring the Germans as enemies of the people, and transferring their property into property of the government. In another law, Yugoslavia cancelled Yugoslav citizenship of ethnic Germans. Meanwhile, Poland and Czechoslovakia transferred more than ten million ethnic Germans from their former territories to the German occupation zones. Obviously, ethnic cleansing was used by the communist party as propaganda to stir up fear in the general population and make them believe that the targeted ethnic group is a threat to their security. The Germans were against the communist system, and their presence could become an impediment to the rise of communism. The Soviet Union claimed that the ethnic Germans should be driven out of their land so that order would be restored.