Changes

The final step in the establishment of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe came with the seizure of power by the Communist party of Czechoslovakia in February 1948. From that point on, “People’s Democracies” allied with the Soviet Union were in place all over Eastern Europe. The Soviet power in the region was now firmly entrenched.

[[File:Soviet_Prime_Minister_Josef_Stalin,_President_Harry_S._Truman,_and_British_Prime_Minister_Winston_Churchill_pose_for..._-_NARA_-_198797.jpg|thumbnail|325px|left|Stalin, Truman, and Churchill at Potsdam Conference in 1945]]

The economies of the Eastern Bloc countries mirrored and closely copied Soviet’s models and command economy lines. Stalin felt that socioeconomic transformations were indispensable to establish Soviet control, reflecting the Marxist-Leninist view that material bases, the distribution of the means of production, shaped social and political relations. Moscow put its excellent trained cadres into all crucial power positions to fulfill orders regarding sociopolitical transformation. Elimination of the bourgeoisie’s social and financial power by expropriation of land and industrial property was Stalin’s exclusive directive and absolute priority.

Certainly, the Soviet rule publicly billed these measures altogether as power reforms rather than socioeconomic transformations. Throughout the Eastern Bloc “societal organizations” such as trade unions and associations representing various social, professional and other groups, were monopolized by a single organization for each category. Furthermore, loyal Stalinist cadres dominated and managed all those organizations, which in turn allowed no competition at all.

At the same time, at the war’s end the Soviet Union adopted a “plunder policy” of physically transporting and relocating east European industrial assets to the Soviet Union. Eastern Bloc states were required to provide various resources such as coal, industrial equipment, technology, rolling stock etc. to reconstruct the Soviet Union. In addition, the Soviets re-organized enterprises as joint-stock companies in which the Soviets possessed the controlling interest. Using that control vehicle, several enterprises were required to sell products at below world prices to the Soviets.

In this regard, the trading pattern of the Eastern Bloc countries went through some severe modifications and transformations, too. For instance - before World War II, the Soviet Union represented a small portion, no greater than 1% - 2% of the Eastern Bloc countries’ international trade. However, less than 10 years later, by 1953 - the share of the Soviet exports in and imports from these same countries had jumped to well over 40%. Moreover, this was yet another direct consequence of Stalin’s decisions, as well. In 1947, he denounced the famous Marshall Plan forbidding all Eastern Bloc countries from participating in it and or benefiting from its supportive post-war reconstruction and financial aid programs.

The Soviet Bloc system governed its regional economic activity by Five-Year plans, divided into monthly segments and milestones, with government planners frequently attempting to meet plan targets regardless of whether there was hardly any market for the goods being produced at the time. There was a limited coordination between the numerous production departments, which in turn led to some very amusing situations. Emblematic example was the automobile industry where factories could often produce millions of ready-to-drive cars even before there were hardly enough gas stations or roads to let people drive these cars. Nevertheless, once such monthly milestones or Five-Year plans targets had been met, communist propagandists could always boast of the crucial increase in the Soviet Bloc’s vehicle production. <ref>Eastern Bloc: Initial changes and Five-Year plans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc</ref>

The Soviet Rule under Stalin also introduced the infamous “Lenin shifts” or “Lenin Saturdays”, where laborers had to work additional extra days and hours for no pay. However, the emphasis on the construction of heavy industry provided full employment and social mobility through the recruitment of young rural workers and women. While blue-collar workers enjoyed that they earned as much or more than many professionals, the standard of living did not match the pace of improvement in Western Europe.

As a result, black markets emerged to fulfill the gap and need for supplies, goods and ingredients mostly stolen or intentionally hidden from the public sector by the Soviet Regimes. This second “parallel economy” flourished throughout the Soviet Bloc because of rising unmet state consumer needs. Black and grey markets for foodstuffs, goods, and cash arose. Goods included household goods, medical supplies, clothes, furniture, cosmetics, and toiletries in chronically short supply through official outlets.

Many farmers concealed actual output from purchasing agencies to set it illicitly to urban consumers. Hard foreign currencies were highly sought after, while highly valued Western items functioned as a medium of exchange or bribery in Stalinist countries, such as Romania, where Ken cigarettes served as an unofficial extensively used currency to buy goods and services.

The extensive production industrialization that resulted was not responsive to consumer needs and caused a neglect in the service sector, unprecedented rapid urbanization, acute urban overcrowding, chronic shortages and massive recruitment of women into mostly menial and/or low-paid occupations. The consequent strains resulted in the widespread use of coercion, repression, show trials, purges and intimidation. Cities became massive building sites, resulting in the reconstruction of some war-torn buildings but also the construction of drab dilapidated system-built apartment blocks. Urban living standards plummeted because the Soviet Rule redirected and invested huge local resources into enormous long-term building projects. At the same time, industrialization forced millions of former peasants to live in hut camps or grim apartment blocks close to massive polluting industrial complexes.

In addition to eradicating the perceived inefficiencies associated with small-scale farming on discontinuous land holdings, collectivization also purported to achieve the political goal of removing the rural basis for resistance to Stalinist regimes. A further justification given was the need to promote industrial development by facilitating the state’s procurement of agricultural products and transferring “surplus labor” from rural to urban areas. In short, the Soviet regimes reorganized all agriculture in order to proletarianise the peasantry and control production at prices determined by the state. However, collectivization often met with strong rural resistance, including peasants frequently destroying property rather than surrendering it to the collective bodies of the state.

[[File:Soviet_General_Secretary_Leonid_Brezhnev_greets_President_Ford_-_NARA_-_7157128.jpg|thumbnail|left|350px|Leonid Brezhnev and President Gerald Ford]]

Communist regimes in the Eastern Bloc viewed marginal groups of opposition intellectuals as a potential threat because of the basis underlying Communist power therein. The Block considered the suppression of any dissidence and opposition a central prerequisite to retain its power, in spite of the enormous expenses required in order to keep certain countries population under secret surveillance. Following a totalitarian initial phase, a post-totalitarian period followed the death of Stalin in which the primary method of Communist rule shifted from mass terror to selective key repression, along with ideological and sociopolitical strategies of legitimation and securing of loyalty. <ref>Political and civil restrictions: purges and show trials - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc_politics</ref>A large number of people were executed or died in custody during the newly established communist People's Republics existence, most during the Stalinist era of the 1950s. While judicial executions between 1945 and 1964 numbered several thousand, deaths in custody were estimated in the hundreds of thousands and even totaled millions. Many more were imprisoned for political, economical or other reasons and suffered abuse, torture and often death in specially established Labour Camps.

Despite the critics, the Eastern Bloc countries overall achieved generally high rates of economic and technical progress, promoted industrialization, and ensured steady growth rates of labor productivity and rises in the standard of living. However, western historians claim that because of the lack of market signals, Eastern Bloc economies experienced inadequate, misdirected and underdevelopment by central planners. The Eastern Bloc also depended upon the Soviet Union for import of significant amounts of materials to drive its production facilities, which in turn determined its disintegration fate later.

During the late 1980s, the weakened, politically unstable and economically exhausted Soviet Union gradually stopped interfering in the internal affairs of Eastern Bloc nations and numerous independence movements took place.

Gorbachev initiated a policy of glasnost (openness) in the Soviet Union, and emphasized the need for perestroika (economic restructuring) since the Soviet Union was struggling economically after years of misdevelopment and disproportions. It did not have the resources to control Central and Eastern Europe.

A wave of Revolutions of 1989, sometimes called the “Autumn of Nations”, swept across the Eastern Bloc culminating in the destruction and fall of the infamous Berlin Wall dividing Europe and the world into Western and Eastern Blocs and reuniting Europe, reintroducing once again free markets, trade, civil rights, freedom of speech, trans-border movement of people, goods and services. Post-communist Eastern Bloc paved way for extensive privatization of the state owned monopolies, return of the private sectors, denouncing the former communist regimes and their former leaders often by the means of public bloodsheds or open “democratic” court trials.

<div class="portal" style="width:85%;">

*[[What were the goals of the Axis powers and the Soviet Union during World War Two?]]

*[[How Did the German Military Develop Blitzkrieg?]]

*[[Why did Operation Market Garden in 1944 fail?]]

*[[How did Mussolini become Prime Minister of Italy?]]

*[[Why was France defeated in 1940?]]

</div>

<references/>