Jeff Bell

History 352
Professor Shearer
4 May 2010

Question 1
THE SOVIET PERIOD

It is common for those in the west to view the Soviet domination

of post-war eastern and central Europe as a failure. Arguments

supporting such an assertion often include each regime’s eventual

collapse, failures to match western standards of living, and the

development of highly oppressive governments. While these

arguments do all have some level of merit, they are bolstered by

propaganda and do not portray the entire picture. The Soviet period

facilitated a transformation in eastern Europe that proved stabilizing,

modernizing, equalizing, and fruitful. This occurred to such an extent

that the eastern Europe of the late Soviet period was hardly

recognizable from that of the pre-war period. The Soviet period, in fact,

was a period that although not without hardships, proved significant in

that it fostered dramatic positive changes in eastern European society

that arguably contributed as much to its own downfall because its

policies and ideologies were no longer needed than did any external

forces.

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 The common western conception of the Soviet period can often

tend to project the Stalinist period, roughly the period from 1945 to

1953, on the Soviet period as a whole.1 That is to say, it is common to

view the entire Soviet period as one of a brutally oppressive regime

which was ideologically inflexible and bent on carrying out its policies.

However, these policies of the Stalinist period were still very influential

as they helped to begin the Soviet period with rapid industrialization

and full economic planning as well as the massive social effects of the

purges of the old intellectual elites.

Following Stalin’s death in 1953, the next major part of the Soviet

period began. This part, known as de-Stalinization was probably more

characteristic of the Soviet period in eastern Europe than the Stalin era

itself. It essentially marked the realization by the Soviet leadership and

the communist leadership in the Soviet satellites that Stalin’s policies

were unsustainable and that more moderate policies needed to be

pursued. The forced pace of industrialization was slowed, taxes and

compulsory crop deliveries were lowered, and it was stated that more

consumer goods and houses were to be made available.2 Now the

standard of living had become an issue of concern for Communist party

leadership. Henceforth, until the fall of these Communist regimes, the

1 Mark Mazower, Dark Continent, Europe’s Twentieth Century (New York, 2000), 283.
2 Mazower 273

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standard of living would be a major concern and would prove to have

pivotal effects later on.

De-Stalinization was not just economic, it was also deeply

political. This was evident both in the leaders that it removed from

power and in the leaders it brought in to it. “Little Stalins” all over

eastern Europe were challenged and eventually toppled.3 With them

also went the power of their once mighty tool, the secret police. Before

the secret police had been above the law and the party, nearly

infallible and capable of interpreting the will of the party as they

pleased. Now it became apparent that their power needed to be

limited. Once this was done, it became impossible for party leaders to

ever initiate a political clampdown such as had been done in the

Stalinist era.

This new political moderation also helped to lay the roots for one

of the Soviet empire’s biggest political successes, that being its ability

to allow each Soviet satellite to pursue socialism in its own way so long

as they remained loyal. This was perhaps best worded by Khruschev in

1955, when he explained that there were in fact “several roads to

socialism.”4 This allowed the Soviets to essentially maintain their

authority and the legitimacy of Soviet domination while simultaneously

3 Mazower 273
4 Mazower 274

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granting each satellite some degree of crucial autonomy. Localized

decisions in the long run likely resulted in significantly better decisions

than ones made in Moscow for the far reaches of its empire.

Another important element of de-Stalinization was the move

towards a more pragmatic leadership instead of a highly ideological

one. Party officials began to be technocrats instead of ideologues and

had a “belief that science, technological progress and a state run by

experts held the key to modern life.”5 This was a very practical position

given the new emphasis on increasing consumer goods available to the

public, as well as an emphasis on competing with the the material

production of the west. It is also likely that a more pragmatic view of

communism and the economy helped lead to a depoliticization that

proved stabilizing in the Soviet satellites. However, this approach also

set high expectations for the various regimes’ citizens that could later

prove difficult to maintain.

This period also proved important in setting the limits in how far

the Soviet Union would allow its satellites to become moderate. The

Soviet Union’s reaction to both the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and

the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia in 1968 were evidence of this. In

both instances, some degree of reforms were initially allowed but the

leadership took it farther then the Soviet leadership was willing to let it

5 Mazower 276

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go and the Soviets put it down swiftly and harshly. In the Hungarian

Revolution, leaders even went so far as to propose a Hungarian

withdrawal from the Warsaw pact which was a legitimate security

concern for the Soviet Union.6 In those Soviet satellites in which

reforms never quite went so far as they did in Hungary and

Czechoslovakia, it is likely that this degree of reforms never occurred

because of the justifiable concern of a Soviet invasion. In the Cold War

context, complete membership in the Warsaw pact was considerably

more important to the Soviet Union than the politics and ideology in

each individual Soviet satellite. The Soviet Union often only needed to

be sure that reform didn’t go so far as to put this in jeopardy.

Soviet domination of eastern Europe actually had much to offer

for the eastern Europeans. One such benefit was a very abrupt

departure from much of the pre-war ethnic violence that took place in

eastern and central Europe. These areas are some of the most diverse

in Europe ethnically, culturally, and linguistically and communism

helped to act as a unifying factor. Additionally, ethnic conflicts could

not rise up while under the watch of the Soviet Union because they

would be crushed promptly. Soviet domination of eastern Europe,

despite Cold War mantra, also helped to provide for stability with the

West as both sides were generally subject to the wills of NATO and the

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Warsaw Pact, organizations that were not willing to risk war. Even the

division of Germany helped to provide stability as it became the basis

for the European post-war order.7

Another considerable success of Soviet domination of eastern

Europe was how much standards of living grew in these areas during

this time period. One important indicator of this is the arrival of

national health care services in almost all of these countries. Both life

expectancies and infant mortality rates significantly improved.8 Other

social welfare programs became available as well, such as official

childcare and a much better education systems. This can be well seen

in Poland where students enrolled in higher education multiplied five

fold from before the war.9 These programs marked a significant

departure from the prewar social and economic order which entailed

strong class differentiation and extremely low levels of social mobility.

While it could be argued that these regimes still developed a

ruling class, they had become considerably more egalitarian than any

other system in eastern Europe to date. Upward mobility was

significantly increased and poverty was significantly reduced. Mylnar

even went so far as to write that poverty was “known to the younger

generation only from movies.”10 Under Soviet domination eastern

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8 Mazower 278
9 Mazower 279
10 Mazower 279

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Europe had in fact gone through a complete social revolution which

can be regarded as a significant success.

Despite these successes, however, many of the typical western

criticisms of these Communist regimes still apply at least to a certain

degree. While the production of consumer goods had indeed vastly

increased from pre-war levels, an important ideological victory over the

west was impossible until they had surpassed these levels of the west.

Khrushchev even boasted that communism would equal or overtake

the United State’s production of consumer goods by 1965. 11 This

however never turned out to be the case, as these regimes never

found a way to adequately compete with the west and instead found

themselves falling behind. This is well illustrated with the fact that

“Czechs and Austrians had roughly the same rate of car ownership

before the war; by 1960 the Austrians had three times as many per

capita.”12 Additionally the growth that these regimes had seen was

usually based more on increased use of labour rather than innovation

or other investments. This meant that the growth that they had seen

was considerably less sustainable than that seen by the west. This

would prove to be a destabilizing factor as long as citizens of these

11 Mazower 277
12 Mazower 280

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regimes could look west and see what they perceived as a better way

of life.

Another significant failing of Communist regimes in eastern

Europe was their general inability to adapt to their own successes.

These were essentially regimes founded upon the need for a

revolutionary reformation of society. As standards of living improved

and a large middle class developed, the need for these regimes began

to wane. Additionally, as standards of living rose, so did expectations

so satisfaction with the regimes correspondingly decreased. As these

societies improved, some level of regime change was probably

necessary due to their self-obsolescent nature. The Communist party

however, being the sole legitimate political party in eastern Europe

could not allow this to happen as it “was committed to the eastern

centralism which had once worked so dramatically but was now

leading to failure.”13

While the collapse of the Soviet Union was not easily predicted in

the years leading up to it, these factors were clear problems that these

regimes had difficulty handling. This became particularly apparent with

the economic crisis that began in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.

Communist leadership began to borrow western capital “as a means of

buying off public opinion and delaying the harsh impact of structural

13 Mazower 282

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change in the economy.”14 However, this infusion of foreign capital

proved ineffective at repairing the economy. Evidently, the structures

of these command economies did not facilitate the kinds of

investments that would help provide for meaningful economic change.

Borrowing capital from the west may have even done these regimes

more harm than good, as in many ways it just served to demonstrate

that they were no longer capable of carrying out the aims of socialism

in these states.

The ideological nature of these regimes also didn’t allow them to

make the kinds of adjustments that governments in the west could

make to the same economic crisis. Under a capitalist system when

heavy inflation is present prices rise, but these regimes had to have

price controls to maintain their legitimacy. Other mechanisms to help

treat the economy were also out of the question such as increased

unemployment or decreased wages. As Mazower puts it, “inflation was

marked by growing shortages, deteriorating quality and lengthening

queues, not prices, which were controlled tightly by the authorities.”15

In many ways the situation just proved to the people that the Party was

incapable of carrying out the very goals that it claimed to support. It is

14 Mazower 367
15 Mazower 364

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no wonder these socialist regimes were losing legitimacy under such

circumstances.

Perhaps one of the most telling examples of these regimes failure

to carry out Socialism is in Poland with Solidarity. Solidarity, although a

trade union, was in many ways more socialist than the regime it

opposed. It “criticized the perks of the Party bosses and showed no

signs of interest in capitalism or the market.”16 Solidarity demonstrated

that these socialist regimes were no longer capable of being effective

arbiters of the economy which was a primary justification for a socialist

regime. Solidarity may have had a particularly strong impact in Poland

due to ears of Stalinist economic policies that emphasized heavy

industry, which included Solidarity’s shipbuilding strike, but similar

similar problems persisted all around eastern Europe and regimes

began to lose even more legitimacy.17

So while the fall of Soviet domination was difficult to predict, in

retrospect the factors that led up to it are clearly visible. Regimes in

eastern Europe faced many of the same problems that were faced by

the governments of western Europe, but they lacked the tools to

properly deal with them. As these socialist regimes proved that they

could no longer meet the needs and desires of their people they

16 Mazower 369
17 Mazower 370

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gradually lost legitimacy and became unstable. As a result, much of

the resentment towards these regimes, such as in the case of

Solidarity, was actually rooted in the idea that they were not socialist

enough. Regardless, the basis for their power was undermined which

ultimately led to their demise.

The period of Soviet domination of eastern and central Europe

was actually much more successful than is commonly thought in the

west. Between the end of the Second World War and the fall of the

Soviet Union massive economic and social changes had taken place.

Standards of living had significantly increased and correspondingly had

the citizens’ expectations. These regimes were largely victims of their

own successes. The Soviet period was one of incredible social and

economic change and was so effective in industrializing and building

the economy that it was eventually incapable of dealing with the

economic and social problems of the new societies it produced.

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