been, was terminated. Economic policy too underwent change. The pace of agricultural collectivisation quickened in most countries. Across the region, indeed, communist parties increased investment in projects of heavy industry. Close commercial links were forged with the USSR. The Eastern Block aimed at autarky with economic interests as designated by Stalin being given priority. The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) was formed in January 1949 to control and co-ordinate developments. The whole region, including the Soviet-occupied German Democratic Republic, was locked into a single military, political and economic fortress. The Eastern Block was the outer empire of the USSR.
In return for obedience the subject countries were supplied with oil and other natural resources below world market prices. But in general the other immediate benefits flowed towards the Soviet Union, and Stalin and Molotov did not hide their pleasure. Although they had excoriated Churchill’s Fulton speech on the Iron Curtain, their actions fitted the description given by the former British Prime Minister. Just as the USSR had been put into quarantine before the Second World War, eastern Europe was deliberately cut off from the West in the years after 1945.
Communism was triumphant and its leaders celebrated their victory. A technical point, however, had to be clarified. No one had yet explained how the new communist states were to be fitted into a Marxist–Leninist scheme of historical stages. Stalin had insisted that they should remain formally independent countries (and he discouraged early proposals for them to be simply annexed to the USSR as had been done with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). He also wanted to stress that the USSR was the originator of the world communist movement and was at a more advanced point in its progress towards communism than the newcomers. This was the kind of message he was propagating on all fronts in Moscow. Stalin laid down that Soviet, especially Russian, achievements dwarfed those of every nation on earth. In his eyes, his military and political forces were the bringers of a superior form of civilisation to a region blighted by centuries of reactionary rule. Soviet pride, indeed arrogance, was at its zenith. The countries of the Eastern Block were meant to be fraternal states. But they were to be left in no doubt that they were younger and lesser brothers. Big Brother was the USSR.
It was also a tenet of Marxism–Leninism that revolutionary socialism usually — indeed universally, according to Lenin’s
Stalin therefore opted to designate the new communist states differently. It was the sort of task he liked in his role as the principal ideologist of world communism, and seemingly he scarcely bothered to consult his associates in the matter. He introduced a crafty nomenclature. Instead of referring to these states as proletarian dictatorships, he introduced a new term: ‘people’s democracies’. By this he contrived to suggest that their path to socialism would be smoother than had been possible in Russia. He did not have only the prevention of civil wars in mind. He was also implying that the range of popular consent reached beyond the working class to many large social groups. Peasants and the urban lower-middle class had suffered under many pre-war regimes across the region, and communist-inspired reforms had considerable appeal. Land was redistributed. Free universal education was provided. The social privileges of the upper orders were eliminated and avenues of promotion were cleared for young people who might otherwise have suffered discrimination. A term such as ‘people’s democracy’ served to stress the basic commitment of communist parties to introducing reforms which were long overdue; it was a masterstroke of ideological appeal.
Yet the term involved immense deceit. Imperfect though democracy is everywhere, it usually involves the practical provision of legal and peaceful electoral procedures. Such provision occurred nowhere in eastern Europe. Even in Czechoslovakia there was political violence before the communists achieved power. In those countries where communists continued to allow other parties to serve as junior members of governing coalitions, no fundamental derogation from the desires of the local communist leadership was permitted. There was massive electoral fraud. Although the communists had some popularity, it was always highly restricted. The accurate suspicion remained that such communists had anyway to comply with instructions issuing from the Kremlin.
As the harness of repression was imposed, Stalin strove to increase the degree of dependable compliance. He did this in line with his lurch into an anti-Jewish campaign in the USSR after he fell out with the Israeli government.14 Communist parties were constrained to select a Jew from among their midst, put him on show trial and execute him. In the Cominform countries the sordid legal processes began and no doubt many communist leaders in the region calculated that action against Jews would gain them national popularity. Yet the ultimate verdict was decided in Moscow. Laszlo Rajk in Hungary, Rudolf Slansky in Czechoslovakia and Ana Pauker in Romania: all were found guilty without the slightest evidence that they had worked for foreign intelligence agencies. All were shot. Soviet penetration of these states meant that the Soviet embassies, the MVD (which was the successor body to the NKVD) and the Soviet Army directed high politics as they pleased. Only one country remained aloof from the scheme. In Poland the pressure from Moscow was to put Gomulka on trial as a spy and shoot him. But the rest of the Polish communist leadership, having incarcerated him, refused to apply the death sentence. Not everything in eastern Europe followed precisely the path drawn for it by Joseph Stalin.
But what was Stalin up to? Certainly he had it in for Jews from 1949, and his behaviour and discourse became ever cruder.15 But Gomulka was a Pole without Jewish ancestry — and the leaders who put him in prison included Jews such as Bierut and Berman. Probably Stalin was also moving against nationalist tendencies in the communist leaderships of eastern Europe. Gomulka had famously stood out against accelerating the process of communisation in Poland and insisted that Polish national interests should be protected whenever he could. But Rajk in Hungary, Slansky in Czechoslovakia and Pauker in Romania could hardly be accused of indulging nationalism. Probably it is foolish to probe for a particular set of political sins detected by Stalin. If the results of the show trials in Hungary, Romania and Czechoslovakia are taken as a guide, then he surely had intended the political subjugation of eastern Europe.
The choice of victims did not much matter so long as they were leading communists. Until then the priority had been for the communist leadership in each country of the outer empire to persecute those elements of society which opposed communisation. The old elites in politics, the economy, Church and armed forces had been selected for arrest followed by forced labour or execution. The communist parties had had to infiltrate their members into all public institutions. They had to copy the basic architecture of the Soviet state and maintain close bilateral relations with Moscow. Weak in numbers in 1945, they had had to turn themselves quickly into mass parties. Their task had been to indoctrinate, recruit and govern in a situation where they knew that the bulk of their populations hated them. Yet they themselves had always been suspect to the Leader in the Kremlin. Before the end of the Second World War he thought them too doctrinaire and ordered them to try and identify themselves with the interests of their respective nations. Then as the basic communist architecture was established, his emphasis changed and he turned towards getting them to play down the national aspects of policy. Monolithism was to prevail in the Eastern Block. Total obedience would become the guiding principle, and an example had to be made — as Stalin saw things — of a few bright early stars of the Cominform.
The process was scrutinised by Stalin in the MVD reports he received from the capitals of eastern Europe. Tortures previously reserved for non-communists were applied to Rajk, Pauker and Slansky. The beatings were horrific. The victims were promised that their lives would be spared if only they confessed in open court to the charges trumped up against them. Here the expertise of the Lubyanka came into its own. Techniques developed against Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin and Pyatakov were applied in the dungeons and courtrooms of Budapest, Bucharest and Prague. Not all Western journalists had seen through the lies of the Great Terror of the late 1930s. The mistake was not repeated after the Second World War. The media in North America and western Europe denounced the trials. Stalin was rightly accused as the real criminal in the proceedings.
The frightened communist leaders maintained outward compliance, and no one knew whether the show trials might prove a prelude to wider purges. In the meantime the Eastern Block offered fealty to the October Revolution, the USSR and its leader Stalin. Cities were named after him. His works appeared in all the region’s languages. His policies were accorded official reverence. Yet beneath the surface the popular resentment was immense. The religious intolerance of the communist authorities caused revulsion. The refusal to divert sufficient resources to satisfy the needs of consumers annoyed entire societies. Cultural restrictions annoyed the intelligentsia. No communist government offered the realistic prospect of change and all of them were firmly
