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In the closing months of World War II and the latter half of 1940s, the Soviet Union oversaw the establishment of Communist regimes throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Over the next four decades, these regimes constituted the so-called Soviet bloc. The Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe is often referred to as The Iron Curtain - a name given by Winston Churchill in 1946. Although from 1947 to 1951, Marshal Plan injected billions of US dollars into European nations for post-war rebuilding, these loans came with strict conditions, such as the adoption of liberal, democratic and capitalist policies. Unsurprisingly, the Soviet regime forbade access to the financial aid, which enabled the reconstruction of Western Capitalist Europe, while advancing American commercial and foreign policy interests. In the context of the Cold War, the Marshall Plan helped weak and war-ravaged governments and economies to recover, without falling prey to communist infiltration and being swallowed by the Soviet bloc.

====Further changes introduced: transformations billed as reforms====

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.

====Key restrictions introduced: civil, media, speech, information and travelling restrictions====

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.