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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.

==The initial entrenchment and spread of Communist Rule in Eastern Europe==

In Bulgaria and Romania, Soviet troops who had occupied the countries in the late summer of 1944 enabled Communist-dominated governments to assume power by the end of the year. The Bulgarian and Romanian Communist parties had been of negligible influence prior to and during World War II, but the presence of Soviet military forces on Bulgarian and Romanian territory shifted the balance of political power sharply in favor of the Communists during the final months of the war. The new, Soviet-backed governments in both countries initially took the form of coalitions allowing some still popular non-Communist parties to take part as well. Nevertheless, that arrangement was mostly cosmetic and aimed to forestall any immediate frictions with the United States and Britain. No sooner had the governments of both countries been set up that the Communists began methodically eliminating their potential opponents, paving the way for Stalinist transformations. <ref>Cold War: Formation of the Eastern Bloc. From Allies to Satellites - https://www.highbeam.com/topics/cold-war-formation-of-the-eastern-bloc-t10918</ref>

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.

==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.

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.

==Introducing the famous Five-Year Plans: Core Soviet Economy principle==

Factory managers and supervisors could hold their posts only if they were clear and passed under the nomenclatural list system of party-approved cadres. Furthermore, the party politics effectively limited all free initiatives and strictly constrained and modified the meaning of the term good management. Managers assigned their workers all tasks based on the pattern of “norms, with sanctions for non-fulfillment”. However, the system eventually served to significantly increase inefficiency. This was because once the norms were met and fulfilled, the management would merely increase them even further.

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.

==Flourishing of the Black markets and grey economy==

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.

==Further urbanization and agricultural collectivization==

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.

==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.

With a few exceptions, after the creation of the Eastern Bloc, the Soviet Rule effectively halted emigration out of the newly occupied countries, as well. The Soviets actually were in charge for and controlled the national movement in most countries of the Eastern Bloc.

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.

==Harsh road back to reintegration and democracy==

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.

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.