1 Communist Seizure of Power, 1944-8: Disrupted Historical Continuity

1 Communist seizure of power, 1944-8
Disrupted historical continuity

Fascism and nazism, which appeared in the interwar period, became
dominant in Central and Eastern Europe during the tragic years of World
War II. It occurred cither through nazi-German occupation or with the
takeover of domestic nazi-fascist groupings. In most cases these two
factors did not exclude but complemented each other. Independent
countries (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Albania) were annexed
and ruled by a nazi (or partly Mussolini's) administration, others became
allies of Hitler (such as Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria), or were
created by him (as "independent" allied Slovakia and Croatia), bringing
to power long existing internal nazi-fascist parties.
The peoples of the region reacted in various ways. Heroic, self-sacrificing
partisan warfare (especially in Yugoslavia and Albania) and dramatic
uprisings (in Poland and Czechoslovakia), passive resistance as well as
passive collaboration (in most of the countries), active cooperation in the
annihilation of Jews (in Slovakia, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, and
Poland) - these phenomena were present at the same time in each country.
The military aftermath of the war in 1944 and early 1945, as a result of
the victorious advance of the Allied forces, including the Red Army in
Central and Eastern Europe, led to a bloody and spectacular collapse of
fascism. The decline and breakdown of Axis-regimes in Yugoslavia and
Albania were brought about, or at least assisted, by the actions of internal
partisan armies during the general course of the war. In other cases the
process was accelerated by coups (Romania), which removed the local
fascist government and resulted in a conversion to the Allied side, or
brought about entirely by foreign troops (Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and
Hungary).
The domination of German nazism and the collaborating internal
governments was eliminated. Members of fascist administrations, armies,
and police forces physically disappeared: most fled to the West, quite a
few were killed during the war, while high-ranking military personnel
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4 Out from Europe
and politicians were executed as war criminals. Thus not only the most
notorious Hungarian nazis, such as Szalasi, Baky, and Endre, were tried
and hanged, but, among others, Imredy and Bardossy, former prime
ministers, who had introduced the anti-Jewish laws and issued the
declaration of war. In Hungary, altogether 189 war criminals were
executed and 27,000 sentenced from the almost 60,000 people who were
investigated and tried.
In Bulgaria, 2,138 generals, high ranking officers and former cabinet
members were executed, and an additional 3,500 were imprisoned. The
state apparatus and public servants were also purged. In Hungary,
three-member committees investigated the political activities of public
employees and dismissed 60,000 people from their positions. Beside
right-wing elements, thousands were dismissed owing to personal revenge
and virulent competition among rival political parties.
A highly emotional atmosphere of vengeance characterized postwar
Europe. Arrests and punishment sometimes went beyond the legal
framework. The intransigent harshness of de-nazification and castigation
of collaborators was a reaction to the war. The historical moment was
determined by emotions generated by the unspeakable horror and
inhumanity of nazism. An additional factor, communist ambitions to
eliminate totally elements of the ancien regime in order to clear the ground
for a later introduction of socialism, also contributed.
The old regimes were buried under the ruins of war and fascism.
Political continuity was shattered. The restoration of prewar regimes or
governments was impossible everywhere, except Czechoslovakia, and the
internal political vacuum was filled by new forces.
Discontinuity became an overwhelming characteristic of postwar
Central and Eastern Europe. Not only political regimes were changed but
borders as well. Poland was shifted to the West: she lost roughly 70,000
square miles of her prewar territory to Russia and was compensated by
40,000 square miles from Germany. Former East Poland became West
Ukraine, former East Prussia was transformed into West Poland. The
wartime Hungarian borders shrunk back to the prewar standard. Hungary
had to give back the Northern and Eastern territories regained by the first
and second Vienna decisions. Romania acquired Northern Transylvania
from Hungary but lost Bessarabia to the Soviet Union. Yugoslavia was
enlarged by former Italian territories on the Adriatic sea.
Beside territorial changes, tens of millions of people were annihilated
or forced to move. Nations were literally decimated. Large groups of
minorities disappeared. The bloodiest massacre in history savagely
struck Central and Eastern Europe. More thanfive-sixthsof the unthinkable
death-toll of the war was paid by Russia, Germany, and the smaller

Communist seizure of power, 1944-8 5
countries that fell in between, the latter having lost roughly 10 million
people. Poland represented one of the most tragic cases with 3 million
deaths, more than 10 percent of her population. Yugoslavia, according to
highly contradictory and debated figures, lost between 0.7-1.7 million
lives. The larger figure, reported by Tito's postwar administration, also
represented about 10 percent of the population. Romania, Hungary, and
Czechoslovakia, with 0.5, 0.5, and 0.2 million deaths respectively, also
suffered a great deal.
The Holocaust of the Jews was unparalleled in history. The Jewish
minority in Poland fell from 3 million to 600,000 and half of Hungarian
and Romanian Jews were eradicated. Jewish communities, which
represented roughly 10, 5, and 5 percent of Poland's, Romania's and
Hungary's population respectively, declined in all cases to 2-3 percent.
Those who survived, altogether roughly 1.5 million people, proceeded to
escape from their homeland, especially after the shock of postwar
pogroms in Kielce (Poland) and Kunmadaras (Hungary). Occurring a
few months after the Holocaust, this contributed to the emigration of
more than half of surviving Jewry. Those who remained represented only
1 percent of the population.
The second largest single minority, the Germans, were forced to leave
after the war. Because of the great powers' agreement and the philosophy
of "collective responsibility," Germans (those who declared themselves
to be "Volks-Deutsch" and had joined the nazi "Volksbund," but in
reality a greater number) were expelled. Half a million Germans fled,
followed by nearly 2.2 million expatriates from Czechoslovakia. Another
2 million Germans had to leave former East Prussia, now Western
Poland. The majority of the 8 to 9 million Germans who lived in that
territory before the war escaped with the retreating Wermacht. Sudetenland
in Czechoslovakia and East Prussia, now incorporated into Poland, were
virtually "cleansed" ethnically after the war. Hundreds of thousands of
Saxons and Schwabians were transported from Hungary (200,000) and
Romania to Germany.
Nearly 100,000 Hungarians were labelled as fascists and expelled from
Czechoslovakia (ironically from Southern Slovakia, which was a part of
"independent" fascist Slovakia).
As a result of the redrawn map, approximately 2 million Poles moved
from former Eastern Poland, now absorbed by the Soviet Union, to the
newly annexed Western Poland (and roughly 2.5 million Poles joined
them from overpopulated central regions). In Western Poland, emptied
byfleeingor expelled Germans, 4.5 million new settlers found established
homes after the war. This was also the case in the deserted western
borderland of Czechoslovakia, where nearly 2 million Czechs and

6 Out from Europe
Slovaks moved from the overpopulated inner regions. In other words, at
least 10-15 million people began a new life in a new place, or even in a new
country. Lack of continuity was thus also characterized by mass migration,
unparalleled in the history of the region.
The war devastated a great part of the national wealth, produced by
generations. Physical havoc played an additional role in breaking continuity.
Poland, Yugoslavia, and Hungary were among the most devastated
countries after the war. Half of their railroad capacity was destroyed, and
75 percent of Polish and 36 percent of Hungarian bridges were ruined.
Yugoslavia lost half of her deep-sea vessels, all of her motor cars, and even
40 percent of her peasant carts. One of the most devastated cities of
Europe was Warsaw, where 85 percent of the buildings were ruined or
damaged. Budapest was in ruins as well, with 27 percent of its buildings
severely damaged or destroyed and all of its famous Danube bridges
blown up. The infrastructure of most of these countries had thus fallen
back by seventy years.
Animal stock suffered the most. Cattle, horses, and pigs were confiscated,
stolen, and slaughtered, amounting to a 50-80 percent loss for all three
countries. In Poland, as much as 25 percent of its forests was mowed
down. Bombing and the ground war destroyed 25-35 percent of the
industrial capacity of the countries mentioned above. Czechoslovakia,
Romania, and Bulgaria deteriorated much less.
As a result of serious bottlenecks caused by demolition, a great part of
the existing capacities remained ineffective. A severe shortage of energy
and transportation crippled most of those industries left intact. While
industrial capacity diminished by 25 percent, the actual decline of output
reached 85 percent in Hungary during the spring and summer of 1945. A
devastating hyper-inflation, a world record of 12 percent price increases
per hour (!) in the late spring of 1946, pushed the country back to the age
of trade in kind.
Mass-graves, refugees, ruins, chaos, poverty, and humiliation charac-
terized Central and Eastern Europe at the war's end. Continuity was
disrupted. The end of the interwar course, and the emergence of a new
era, however, promised also a discontinuity of misery, national hatred,
nazi-fascist influence, genocide and war. Postwar desperation was thus
mixed with enthusiasm for a new opening. A spring air brought fresh
hope to the people who wanted to believe that something new may emerge
from the ruins of the old world.
The broken continuity opened the gates to newly arising internal
political forces and external powers. The destiny of Central and Eastern
Europe was to be determined by them.

Great power interference: the seeds of a Cold War sown
in Poland and Greece
The victorious great powers wanted to guarantee international security
and avoid new wars. Roosevelt found security in both American economic
and military strength, unparalleled in history, as well as in international
cooperation. In Teheran he spoke of an international order supervised by
"four policemen," America, Russia, Great Britain, and China. The basis
of international understanding to him was American-Russian cooperation.
Stalin also wanted the wartime alliance to remain alive. It was
especially important to him because of severe war devastation and losses
in the Soviet Union, and the increased economic gap between his country
and the United States. In the meantime he also wanted to build up a
security zone around his Western border, and did not want to tolerate
hostile governments next to him.
Churchill preferred a clear division of spheres of interest, based on agree-
ments. He wanted to rebuild the great power position of Britain as a leading
Mediterranean power and as a senior partner of the United States in Europe.
These goals, in spite of several points of common interest, began to
confront each other. The first central issue of conflict was the Polish
question. Stalin did not hesitate to begin building up the requested
security zone. In the summit meetings of the Big Three, his allies accepted
his arguments and agreed to shift Poland toward the West, granting
former Eastern Poland (up to the post-World War I so called Curzon-line)
to Russia, and compensating Poland with former East German territories.
Stalin, however, wanted a "friendly" government in Poland as well. It led
to a break with the Polish government-in-exile in London.
In July and August 1941 two Soviet-Polish agreements were signed,
the same as were made with Czechoslovakia. Polish prisoners of war were
released, and General Wladyislaw Anders organized a Polish army under
the operational command of the Red Army. There was, however,
permanent conflict with the Soviets, and ultimately the Anders army left
the Soviet Union for the Middle East in July 1942, and went under
British command. Permanent controversy and refusal to meet Stalin's
territorial demands by the Polish government-in-exile caused further
tensions. The Katyn affair, the German discovery of the mass graves of
Polish officers massacred by the Soviets,1 sharpened the conflict and led
1
The Politburo of the Bolshevik Party ordered the massacre of 27,000 Polish officers,
prisoners of war in Russian camps since 1939. About 5,000 of them were killed and buried
in mass graves in Katyn and later found by the German army, which occupied the area.
Hitler disclosed details of his discovery, and accused the Soviets of staging the massacre.
Stalin denied the charge, and angrily denounced a "Nazi provocation." The Polish
government-in-exile, however, believed the allegation of Soviet culpability, which was
proved by top secret archival documents only in the fall of 1992.

8 Out from Europe
to a turning point: Stalin broke off diplomatic relations with the exiled
Polish government.
At the beginning of 1943 Stalin initiated the organization of a new
Polish army, led by Colonel Berling, with the participation of Soviet
officers of Polish origin (or name). A Polish Committee of National
Liberation was founded in Lublin in July 1944. This parallel army and
government was formed and directed by Stalin and led by Polish
communists. The civil administration in liberated Poland was handed
over to the Lublin Committee, which declared itself the provisional
government of Poland in December 1944.
The Lublin Committee and its military units initiated a ruthless
attack, in cooperation with the Red Army, against the exiled London
government's partisan Home Army. Therefore, even before the end of
World War II, one of the anti-fascist great powers turned against a
former ally, a heroic anti-Hitler resistance movement, and annihilated it.
The liberation of Poland was combined with an exported "civil war"
against the national, anti-German (but also non- or even anti-communist)
Polish Home Army.
The scene of the first "battle" of this Soviet orchestrated "civil war"
was in Warsaw, where the Red Army, which had already reached the
capital and remained in the Praga district on the other side of the Vistula
river, passively watched while the nazi military machine bloodily
slaughtered the Warsaw uprising. The uprising became a litmus-test in
measuring confronting interests. "Operation Tempest," as it was named,
was more "a struggle for political power in liberated Poland .. . than a
fight against the Germans" (Kimball, 1984, p. 260).
True, General Bor-Komarowski, head of the underground and uprising,
refused, against British advice, to inform the Soviet government about
the planned action. Moreover, the Polish Home Army was alarmed by the
unique Russian advance of 450 miles during the summer-offensive in
July, 1944, and attempted to liberate the country. On August 1, General
Bor-Komarowski began the attack. Stalin, having seen the anti-Soviet
motivations behind it, reacted angrily, and called the uprising a "reckless
and terrible adventure" (Kimball, 1984, p. 281).
The silent Soviet assistance to the German massacre of 200,000 in the
leveling of Warsaw was later "explained" by the Soviets as a consequence
of their lines of communication and supplies being stretched to the
breaking point. In reality, a Polish civil war had begun. Clashes
commenced between the two anti-nazi troops, the communists, and the
national non-communists, with the active participation of Soviet combat
units, and the killing and arrest of legendary resistance fighters became a
tragic epilogue in the history of World War II Poland. A most infamous

episode in this drama took place when sixteen leaders of the Polish
non-communist resistance army were invited to the Soviet headquarters
in Warsaw to "coordinate the Polish actions with that of the Soviet
Army" against the Germans in January 1945. All were arrested and
thirteen of them were imprisoned for anti-Soviet actions.
An almost permanent debate has emerged about the future Polish
provisional government. Stalin explicitly expressed in December 1944
that "the problem of Poland is inseparable from the problem of security
of the Soviet Union" (Kimball, 1984, p. 476).
The acceptance of the communist Lublin Committee as the authentic
Polish government was Stalin's basic aim at this stage, but it was
confronted with the strongest Western resistance. It generated an open
conflict between Stalin and Roosevelt. "I see no prospect," Roosevelt
stated, for "transferring . . . recognition from the Government in London
to the Lublin Committee in its present form" (Kimball, 1984, pp.
482-3). His last words, however, offered a compromise: the Lublin
Committee was acceptable, not "in its present form," but in an enlarged
form with the participation of Mikolajczik's London men. Churchill and
Roosevelt pushed Mikolajczik to cooperate with the Soviets. The only
compromise accepted by Stalin, because of British and American
demands, was to guarantee a vice-premiership for Mikolajczik, the head
of the exiled government in London, and to form portfolios for his
colleagues.
Why did Roosevelt and Churchill make all these compromises? Was it
because the Red Army was strongly needed against nazi Germany and
Japan to save British and American lives? Was it also because Roosevelt
believed, as he said to Edward Stettinius, that the Soviet Union "had the
power in Eastern Europe," and therefore accepted Soviet control in the
area? Or did they view "wartime arrangements as temporary, subject to
revision at a postwar peace conference" (Kimball, 1984, pp. 481-2)?
Ultimately both Churchill and Roosevelt were definitely convinced that
internationally controlled free elections after the war would solve
everything, a principle which was accepted in Yalta and endorsed by
Stalin. It seemed to be satisfactory to the Western leaders, since this
could assure further Soviet military cooperation, including the use of
Soviet troops against Japan, which was vital to them.
But Stalin, cunningly enough, accepted the short-run security conces-
sions while confident of being able to transform them into long-term
dominance. Long, repeated bargaining decided the fate of Central and
Eastern Europe. The policy to accept Soviet security interests, at the
war's end, was characteristic of Western opinion at large. John Lukacs,
historian of the Cold War, aptly stated: "never . . . was the power and

10 Out from Europe
prestige of Russia greater than in 1945 . . . admiration for Russia was a
tremendous force" (Lukacs, 1961, pp. 18, 49).
This atmosphere was reflected by the conservative British The Titnes^
which proclaimed in an editorial in the fall of 1944:
what Russia seeks on her Western frontier is her own security. Great Britain has
traditionally opposed any intervention by the Great Powers in the Low Countries
or the Suez Canal area, and United States has done the same in Central
America- areas that these two great powers have always properly considered vital
to their own security. It would therefore be inconsistent to ask Russia today to
give up a wholly identical right to security. (Fontaine, 1968-9, p. 217)
The communist-led five-party coalition in Poland in the end represented

only a facade masking Soviet domination and an actual communist
takeover. (Mikolajczyk, 1948)
In other cases Stalin did not rush to exploit the opportunity for Soviet
military advance, and intended to remain within the framework agreed at
the summits. He was also ready to make compromises. The time for this
arrived in the fall of 1944.
Churchill, who advocated a most rapid Western military advance and
the liberation of as much European territory as possible, was forced to
give up his dreams; in May 1944 he realized that American and British
troops would not reach Budapest and the Balkans. The communist-led
Yugoslav, Albanian, and Greek partisans already controlled most of the
rural areas of their countries. Churchill saw the guarantee of security in a
traditional division of spheres of interest between Britain and Russia in
the European theater. With the military successes of the Western allies in
early fall strengthening his position, he initiated a bilateral meeting in
Moscow. Between October 9 and 17, Churchill, Eden, Stalin, and
Molotov participated in an unusually long, intimate, and pragmatic
Anglo-Soviet talk. On the very first evening, in a tete-a-tete meeting with
Stalin, when Roosevelt's observer, Averell Harriman (Harriman, 1975),
was not present, Churchill felt that, as he described in his book:
the moment was apt for business so I said, "Let us settle about our affairs in the
Balkans.... So far as Britain and Russia are concerned, how would it do for you to
have 90 percent predominance in Romania, for us to have 90 percent of the say in
Greece and sofifty-fiftyabout Yugoslavia?" ... I wrote out on a half-sheet of paper:
Romania
Russia 90 percent
The others 10 percent
Greece
Great Britain 90 percent

(in accord with USA)
Russia 10 percent
Yugoslavia 50-50 percent
Hungary 50—50 percent
Bulgaria
Russia 75 percent
The others 25 percent
I pushed this across to Stalin . . . There was a light pause. Then he took his blue
pencil and made a large tick upon it. . . . It was all settled in no more time than it
takes to sit down. (Churchill, 1948-53, pp. 227-8)
The next day Eden and Molotov sat down for real bargaining over the
exact percentages. Molotov made proposals and Eden made counter-
offers. Agreement was finally reached: the Soviets gained 80 percent in
Hungary and Bulgaria, 90 percent in Romania, and 60 percent in
Yugoslavia. For a 90 percent British influence in Greece, Churchill and
Eden were ready to sacrifice Central and Eastern Europe.
During their discussion, "Stalin agreed with Churchill's insistence
that 'Britain must be the leading Mediterranean power', [while requesting]
that they gain unrestricted access to the Mediterranean from the Black
Sea" (Kimball, 1984, p. 351).
Churchill was satisfied and cabled to Roosevelt from Moscow:
"Arrangements made about the Balkans are, I am sure, the best that are
possible.... We should now be able to save Greece." Although the Polish
question was pushed aside at this time, Churchil reported to Roosevelt
that "Stalin made it clear that [he] . . . wants Poland, Czecho and
Hungary to form a realm of . . . pro-Russian states" (Kimball, 1984,
p. 359). This was a "fair bargain," and all the cards were put on to the table.
The meeting was a great success for Churchill. He thought he could
save the most important British interests. But it was an even greater
triumph for Stalin, whose security interests in the neighboring European
areas were accepted by the Western allies, as he assumed they would be.
The seeds of later misunderstandings, however, were sown. In Stalin's
mind this was a serious agreement on the postwar share of interests, while
the American President viewed it as a preparatory and temporary
agreement. Churchill, meanwhile, believed that he got a free hand in
Athens, since during their meeting British troops had arrived in the
Greek capital.
The Yugoslav and Albanian communist successes were almost repeated
in Greece. Having been occupied by the Germans, the country was
liberated by the communist-led Greek National Liberation Front (EAM),
established in September 1941. From its scattered military units, a

12 Out from Europe
People's Liberation Army (ELAS), a kind of "private" militia of the
Communist Party, was organized in April 1942. The intransigent
anti-nazi partisan struggle, as in the two neighboring Balkan countries,
culminated in a civil war: ELAS troops fought against the much weaker
royalist partisan units of Zervas, who enjoyed British support. By
October 1944 the communist partisan army controlled most of the
country (Kousoulas, 1965). At this point, however, British intervention
halted and reversed the process. "I . . . think that we should make
preparation . . . to have in readiness a British force." Churchill wrote to
Roosevelt in August 1944, "which could be sent when the time is ripe"
(Kimball, 1984, p. 279).
Roosevelt agreed: "I have no objection to your making preparations to
have in readiness a sufficient British force to preserve order in Greece
when the German Forces evacuate that country" (p. 297).
British troops were sent to Greece on October 4 and arrived in Athens
on the 14th. In the meantime Churchill got a free hand even from Stalin.
The road for action was cleared. Churchill urged brutal intervention:
"having paid the price we have to Russia, for freedom of action in Greece,
we should not hesitate to use British troops. I fully expect a clash with
EAM" (Carlton, 1981, p. 248). The British Commander in Chief,
General Scobie, ordered the disarmament of the communist guerilla
troops. ELAS leaders refused and organized a great protest demonstration
in Athens. Shots were fired,2 and a thirty-three day battle began.
Churchill dictated a cable to Scobie. As one of his aides wrote in his
diary: "He was in a bloodthirsty mood, and did not take kindly to
suggestions that we should avoid bloodshed if possible" (Carlton, 1981,
p. 249).
"We have to hold and dominate Athens," he cabled to General Scobie,
" . . . with bloodshed if necessary. . .. Do not hesitate to act as if you were
in a conquered city where a local rebellion is in progress." He later wrote
in his memoirs: "It is no use doing things like this by halves" (Churchill,
1948-53, pp. 288-9).
The order was executed. British air and ground forces attacked and
destroyed ELAS. "If our forces had not been on the spot," stated
Churchill, "the whole of Greece would now be in the hands of a
communist-run EAM Government" (Kimball, 1984, pp. 452, 455).
"Without British intervention", added Seton-Watson, "the anti-communist
forces would have been as helpless as were . . . [those] in Yugoslavia and
Albania" (Seton-Watson, 1961, p. 321).
2
According to Fontaine, "Who fired the first shot, the Communists or the royalist police?
. . . Probably no one will ever know." (1968-9, p. 216.) According to Seton-Watson the
demonstrators broke through the police line and panicked police openedfire(1952, p. 319).

The massacre of the former anti-nazi allies, as had occurred in Poland,
was carried out before the end of the anti-nazi war. Churchill certainly
did not want to risk British interests and influence, and decided to keep
his Balkan bridgehead by all means possible and block the road of
potential Soviet expansion in Greece, a path toward the Middle East.
The British press, however, and even the House of Commons, were
indignant. The State Department released a public statement on December
5 rather critical of British actions, in terms of interference "from outside"
in "liberated territories." But, in reality, the Allied powers overlooked the
incident. Roosevelt cabled to Churchill: "[I] am necessarily responsive to
the state of public feeling. It is for this reason that it has not been possible
for this Government to take a stand with you in the present course of
events in Greece" (Kimball, 1984, p. 456).
Churchill, of course, had aimed for and would have preferred to
support a democratic system based on the free elections of March 1946.
That effort, however, failed. The British command reorganized the
Greek army and gendarmerie, and the first part of the civil war, in which
the Greek extreme right-wing was directly aided by British military
intervention, ended with a right-wing victory. In the end, after a renewed
civil war (when the communist army was completely defeated) and years
of bloody repression, and with certain democratic episodes, a cruel,
right-wing military dictatorship ruled the country for a long period
(Tossiza, 1978). The communist take over, nevertheless, was successfully
avoided. "Churchill was the first to admit," commented Alain Fontaine,
"that Stalin did fulfill his pledges with respect to Greece. . . . Without
lifting a finger he allowed the British to massacre the ELAS partisans,
who were led by Greek Communists" (Fontaine, 1968, p. 215). Stalin
definitely expected the same generous response from his allies concerning
the countries in his sphere of interests.
British and Soviet geopolitical interests were thus realized by exporting
civil war to Greece and Poland. Central and Eastern Europe had become a
playground for great power politics.
Genuine communist take over in Yugoslavia and Albania

Domestic forces, nevertheless, played a definite role, too. As was the case
throughout liberated Europe, new political camps, especially communist-
led anti-nazi resistance movements, gained momentum when new regimes
were established in internal power vacuum. Even in Western countries,
such as France or Italy, the communist parties secured a place in the
newly formed postwar coalitions. The more successful an internal
anti-nazi resistance movement was in contributing to the liberation of a

14 Out from Europe
given country, the more determined role it played in creating a postwar
government. Hence one cannot deny the potential of self-determination,
though it was indeed limited by great power politics.
In two exceptional cases domestic partisan warfare led to self-liberation,
followed by the formation of new regimes under the direction of the
former resistance movements, which institutionalized themselves as
postwar governments. Great power arrangements formed only the
framework of the internally hammered political transformation in these
cases.
The pattern, from resistance to power, was the form of communist
takeovers in Yugoslavia and Albania. After the German occupation of
Yugoslavia in 1941, strong resistance emerged and led to the formation of
partisan armies. A favorable geographical and geopolitical environment,
dense wooded mountains, far away from the main roads of warfare,
offered shelter for partisans. Scattered partisan groups were gradually
consolidated into organized armies. One of them was led by an energetic
secretary general of the Yugoslav Communist Party, Josip Broz, whose
pseudonym, Tito, acquired a legendary meaning in the European
resistance, and who from 1943 on successfully formed a regular army
controlling huge territories. The anti-German resistance also led to sharp
controversy and bitter clashes between the partisan armies of Tito and of
General Mihailovic, the Minister of War in the Yugoslav government-in-
exile. Since Tito built up a much stronger army that became very efficient
in anti-German battles, and because the British military mission revealed
Mihailovic's contact with the Italians, Tito, especially after May 1943,
received the recognition of the Allied powers.
Tito's strong and ever growing partisan army of 300,000-400,000 troops,
successful in combat and enjoying the cooperation and assistance of the
Allied powers, soon became the dominant force in the country. The
anti-German partisan war gradually became linked to a Yugoslav civil
war. Tito's partisans, fighting against nazi occupiers, evidently fought
against the collaborating Serbian local administration, the Croatian Ustashi,
and even the rival Chetnik troops of the exiled government. The latter
(weak, antagonized by Serb-Croat conflicts, burdened by Mihailovic's
cooperation with fascist Italy, and humiliated by the British abandonment
of Mihailovic) was actually "dethroned" by Tito, who formed his own
provisional government, the National Committee of Liberation, under
his presidency in November 1943. The Premier of the government-in-exile,
Ivan Subasic, went to Yugoslavia to sign an agreement with Tito in
December 1944, and joined his government as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
A Regency was formed to replace King Peter until a legal decision could
be made. The conservative Yugoslav forces surrendered (Authy, 1974).

Profiting from the victorious advance of the Red Army and the conse-
quent weakening of the occupying nazi forces, Tito's army liberated the
rural areas of the country by the summer of 1944, and freed the whole
country by May 1945.
The struggle on both sides was exceptionally ruthless and cruel. The
partisans, tortured and executed on the spot throughout the war, were
eager for revenge: when an intact Ustashi army escaped to the West and
surrendered to Western Allies at the end of the war, they were handed
over to Tito's army, and were brutally massacred. The enemy, due to the
logic of partisan warfare, had to be annihilated in the bloodiest war ever to
decimate the Yugoslav people.
The partisan-controlled government, first in liberated enclaves and
then throughout the whole country, led to a spontaneous formation of a
people's committee system, which surfaced as a new local power. Tito's
National Liberation Front emerged as a central government (enthusiasti-
cally supported by local people's committees) with all the power and
prestige to run the country. It was a unique combination of revolutionary
people's representation and a monolithic central power without opposition.
Those politicians who returned from Western emigration could not influ-
ence the process and soon resigned. An early election in November 1945,
which was held without competing opposition, led to a 96 percent victory
for Tito, an unchallengeable national hero with an enormous international
reputation.
"Partisan warfare" in peace continued to eliminate all potential opposi-
tion. A strange mixture of the just punishment of eliminating domestic
nazi collaborators, personal revenge, and an intolerant campaign against
non-communist politicians who were executed with ruthless Stalinist
methods led to the drastic liquidation of all kinds of opponents. The
wartime rival Mihailovic was captured, tried, and executed in July 1946.
In addition, Jovanovic, the left-wing peasant leader, Gazi and Jancikovic,
the Croat peasant politicians, Trifunovic and Furlan, the Radical Party
leaders, were all tried and imprisoned in 1947. An accusation of active or
even "passive collaboration" was enough to get rid of enemies, who probably
did no more than continue their business under German occupation.
Most of private business was expropriated on that basis. From a most
successful anti-nazi resistance, there emerged a monolithic communist
regime.
The pattern was rather similar in Albania. The small mountainous
Balkan country, occupied by Mussolini, was liberated by communist-led
partisan warfare. King Zogu and his entire state apparatus and governing
elite disappeared. The iron-handed communist teacher and excellent
organizer, Enver Hoxha, built up a partisan army and launched a systematic

16 Out from Europe
attack against the occupiers. Here too, the resistance struggle was insep-
arably linked to a struggle against native collaborators and conservative
opponents, and thus simultaneously evolved into a civil war. The defeat
of Italy provided an opportunity for Hoxha's partisans to take over their
remote country, far away from the major scenes of the war. Unlike Tito,
Hoxha did not even allow the repatriation of former politicians from
Western emigration. Following in the steps of Tito, he also reorganized
his communist-led liberation movement and founded the Democratic
Front. In an early election in December 1945, without allowing the
participation of any kind of opposition, Hoxha's Front garnered 93 percent
of the votes and established a monolithic communist regime in Albania.
The Yugoslav and Albanian road (which was almost repeated by Greece)
represented a genuine revolutionary seizure of power. Victorious com-
munist-led partisan warfare created the possibility of gaining power and
led to the introduction of the Soviet model of modernization, an attractive
one for backward countries after its historical triumph of World War II.
Genuine democratic coalitions: the Czechoslovak and

Hungarian cases
The defeat of nazism strengthened left-wing political trends all over the
region. Communists became stronger than ever before. It was partly a
consequence of their uncompromising anti-nazism, courage and sacrifices
in struggle, which, in a way, legitimized these "rootless internationalists."
But, at the same time, these genuine democratic social revolutionary mass
movements, which flooded Central and Eastern Europe after the collapse
of conservative anciens regimes, aimed to destroy the former rigid class
hierarchy and dominating big estates. They desired a more just society
which emancipated the masses and was ready to combine democracy with
radical social reforms, and this created an adequate ground for their
advance. The communists could most easily sail the rough waves of
radical-plebeian-revolutionary public spirit and expectations.
Certain lower layers of society were ready to follow radical slogans:
young radical workers, who were attracted for a while to right-wing
radicalism, now also turned to left-wing extremism; some minorities
longed for equal rights and an eradication of majority nationalism. A
great many Jews, survivors of the Holocaust, sought security against
populist-nazi anti-semitism. All these different groups found a kind of
hope in communist programs. Moreover, communist positions were
fortified by the increasing role and influence of the Soviet Union, which
emerged from the war as a great power.
The first postwar elections in Czechoslovakia assured a relative

majority for the Communist Party, the only one in the region which
remained legal and had been a mass party before World War II. In the
other countries the communists emerged from decades of illegality,
emigration, and prisons. Most of them were running for parliamentary
representation for the first time in their history. The former opposition
parties generally, but most particularly the peasant parties, gained much
ground as well.
A genuine revolutionary communist takeover, as in Yugoslavia or
Albania, however, was unthinkable. The bulk of the population was
apprehensive, frightened by the possibility of a communist acquisition of
power. Communist rule meant Soviet domination. The Soviet Union,
even at the height of her postwar international prestige, was hardly
popular among the masses of these countries. Atrocities, rapes, and thefts
suffered at the hands of arriving Soviet troops; anxiety regarding
communist revenge; and fear of imminent collectivization, together with
the impact of decades-long right-wing propaganda, all guaranteed a
majority for anti-communist parties. The middle classes, the small-scale
proprietors, and the bulk of the peasants all opposed communist power.
In some cases traditional anti-Russian sentiment, centuries-long historical
antagonism, especially in Poland and Hungary (where Russia was the
suppressor of their eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fight for national
independence), significantly contributed to anti-communism. Traditional
prejudice and popular anti-Semitism also played a certain role. Commu-
nism, in some countries, was successfully equated with Jewry and
labelled as "Judeo-Bolshevism."
The strengthened communist parties, therefore, could not count on a
genuine revolutionary or peaceful electoral victory in Central and
Eastern Europe. The basic trend all over the region was the formation of
coalitions which incorporated different trends and parties. The spectrum
was fairly large: on the one hand, the prewar regime was restored in
Czechoslovakia; on the other, the former (partly illegal) opposition of the
prewar regime, which never gained power, took over in Hungary.
Czechoslovakia was the only country of the region where the restoration
of a prewar democratic republic, and thus continuity, was possible. The
London based government-in-exile and President Benes were able to
gain the recognition of the Soviet Union in July 1941, and agreed with
Stalin to organize a Czechoslovak military unit under the operational
control of the Red Army. Benes signed mutual assistance treaties with the
Soviet Union in December 1943 and in 1944, which assured to the exiled
government control over the civil administration in liberated Czechoslovak
territories. Benes moved to Moscow in March 1945, and his government,
based in Kosice and headed by Zdenek Fierlinger, declared its program.

18 Out from Europe
Most of the traditional parties were reorganized (except the Slovak
People's Party and the formerly leading Peasant Party, both banned
because of their right-wing orientation during the occupation). Even
though Czechoslovakia was, in most part, liberated by the Soviet Army,
while Western Bohemia (to Plzen) was liberated by the Americans, both
armies were recalled before the end of 1945. The prewar regime was
restored and a genuine coalition was formed. The first postwar free
elections of May 1946, already without the presence of foreign troops,
reflected a definite shift to the left. The Communist Party had grown to
become the single strongest party in the parliament with 38 percent of the
votes, followed by the Czech National Socialist Party (18 percent), the
People's Party (16 percent), and others.
The balance of power was guaranteed by the presidency of Eduard
Benes, an institution in continuity himself, and the premiership of
Klement Gottwald, head of the communists. The key position of minister
of foreign affairs was granted to the son of the founding father of the
republic, Jan Masaryk. Though newly formed Czechoslovakia became
more radical and plebeian than ever before, it was still a continuation of
the former republic.
In Hungary, a plebeian radicalization was markedly stronger. Both the
former ruling government parties and the extreme right-wing organizations
were compromised and dissipated from the political arena. Power
automatically went over to the former opposition, which had never
succeeded in running the country during the Horthy era. At the very
beginning, parallel to the advancing Soviet troops, liberated villages and
townships spontaneously formed self-governing people's "National
Committees." A kind of revolutionary self-government, dominated by
previously oppressed democratic and left-wing groups, was established.
They welcomed the Red Army as a double liberator from both German
oppressors and the regime. At the end of 1944 a provisional parliament
and government was formed, made up of representatives of the former
opposition parties, including the Communist Party.
A revolutionary, spontaneously started land reform parcelled out the
big estates, which dominated the countryside and comprised roughly 40
percent of the land. De-nazification and a radical purge of former state
and public offices initiated a change of guard. Soviet-backed communists
acquired great power in all newly formed institutions.
The first free elections in November 1945, however, halted this process
and consolidated a more balanced, genuine coalition. The absolute
majority (57 percent) was given to the Smallholders Party, a democratic
peasant opposition party in the 1930s. In the new situation, however, the
Smallholders attracted the votes of those urban and non-peasant voters

Communist seizure of power, 1944—8 19
who were frightened by a communist takeover. The Communist Party,
on the other hand, did not receive more than 17 percent of the votes.
Roughly the same percentage was given to the Social Democratic Party,
while the radical, left-wing Peasant Party won 9 percent. These three
parties, with more than 40 percent of votes, formed a so-called "left-wing
block," which was assisted from outside by the strong, communist-led
trade unions. The head of the Smallholders, Zoltan Tildy, after the
proclamation of the Hungarian Republic (February 1946), became its
first president. The other leader of the party, Ferenc Nagy, headed a
genuine coalition government. Certain key positions, however, most
importantly the ministry of interior, the police force, and the secret
police, were granted to the communists owing to direct Soviet intervention.
The communists' power was stronger than the percentage of votes they
received.
After the liberation, similar genuine coalitions were formed in Romania
and Bulgaria. In Romania, even a kind of continuity was assured by King
Michael, who remained at his post and appointed a coalition government
headed by General Sanatescu, and consisted of four members both of the
National Peasant Party and the National Liberal Party, the two traditional
governing parties in interwar Romania. The shift toward the left was
expressed by the participation of the socialists (with three portfolios) and
the communists (with one minister in the cabinet).
In Bulgaria, the traditional democratic Agrarian Union and its leader,
Dr. G.M. Dimitrov, played a leading role in a genuine coalition with all
the left-wing parties, including the communists.
Various political parties with rather different programs and aims
participated and competed with each other in free elections. They formed
real coalitions, based upon common short-run goals and interests, in an
atmosphere of a kind of national emergency, and in most cases in the
presence of the Red Army and a Soviet-led Allied Control Commission.
The coalition of former ruling and/or opposition parties was democratic
and more radical than any prewar government in the region. Democratiz-
ation was linked with fundamental social reforms.
The common platform of postwar Central and Eastern European
coalition governments was strict anti-fascism, from legislation to purges
and punishment of nazi murderers and collaborators.
The coalition governments, furthermore, wanted to create an institu-
tional, legal basis for democracy. Parliamentary and electoral reforms
were introduced and new constitutions were adopted with established
legal principles; human rights were secured by new legislation.
The postwar governments included left-wing forces as well, which
wanted to combine the introduction of democracy with rudimentary

20 Out from Europe
social reforms. One of the key elements was a severe land reform.
Parcelling out Czechoslovak, Polish and Hungarian big estates, which
occupied 20 to 40 percent of the land of these countries, started
immediately after the war. The Hungarian provisional government
declared the law on land reform in March 1945 and redistributed the land
among more than 642,000 families. (Estates above 100 and 200 cadastre
"hold" [140 and 280 acres], big estates and peasant holdings respectively,
were parcelled out.) Radicalism characterized the Polish reform of
September 1944: estates over 100 hectares were handed over to more than
1 million families. (483,000 farms from the newly created 788,000 located
on the former German territories.) Czechoslovakia distributed German
and Hungarian landed estates in three stages (June 1945, July 1947 and
March 1948), then all the estates above 50 hectares. Altogether, 14
percent of the land was given to 350,000 families. Big estates in the Balkan
countries were insignificant, and thus land reforms in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia
and Romania touched only 2 to 8.5 percent of the land respectively.
Estates larger than 50 hectares practically disappeared in the region.
The Church was strictly separated from the state. In most of the
countries, important social policy and welfare measures were initiated.
Old age pensions, health insurance and the improvement of working
conditions became generalized. Equal rights and equal wages for women
were guaranteed. Still existing feudal ranks and titles such as count and
baron were deleted. Education was extended to children of peasant and
workers' families. The coalition governments sought to build a popular,
Jacobin democracy.
In foreign policy, they aimed at creating a secure international
position: friendship with neighboring countries and an equal, correct
alliance with both the Western democracies and the Soviet Union.
The democratic coalition governments in Central and Eastern Europe
suffered from permanent pressure on the part of the controlling Soviet
authorities. The Allied Control Commissions and Soviet troops in the
former enemy countries (Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary) provided the
legal means for Stalin, with the acquiescence of the other Allied powers,
to intervene to assure Soviet "security interests." In practice, this
possibility was granted to the Soviet Union in Poland, too.
Stalin, who strongly desired to maintain the war-alliance, ordered the
communist parties to remain moderate. He wanted to avoid open conflicts
with his allies. Stalin was cautious enough not to provoke Western
powers. The Soviet Union suffered the most devastating war destruction,
paid the heaviest death-toll and deteriorated in a severe postwar economic
decline. The 27 million deaths, a devastated Ukraine, an industrial
capacity cut by 42 percent and a harsh famine in the country was in

striking contrast with the considerable strength acquired by the United
States, which doubled her industrial production and GNP during the
war. The difference in industrial potential which existed between the
United States and the Soviet Union before the war quadrupled. The
military capability of the United States, with its monopoly of the Bomb,
sharply increased. "Truman expressed his pride," wrote the historian of
postwar international relations, "saying that America could tell itself that
it had come out of this war the most powerful nation on earth and perhaps
the most powerful nation in all history" (Fontaine, 1968-9 p. 267).
This is why Stalin did not rush to exploit the opportunity of an
immediate expansion. He opposed Tito's rush to introduce the Soviet
system in Yugoslavia. (Tito did not accept Stalin's ukaz, and this actually
led to the first conflict between them.)
Matyas Rakosi in Hungary obediently followed Stalin's orders and
accused the older communist generation of 1919 of being "leftist
adventurers" for urging the party to take advantage of the presence of the
Red Army and introduce socialism. Following Stalin's tactics, the
Hungarian communists encouraged private entrepreneurs to open their
businesses. At the first national party conference of May 1945, the
strongly emphasized leitmotif of communist policy was coalition,
reconstruction, private enterprise, and moderation.
On the other hand, Stalin, panicked by an imagined possibility of a
Western attack, and monomaniacal and paranoid enough to see an enemy
in every ally, concentrated on building up a controlled buffer-zone under
his unquestioned domination along the Western border of the Soviet
Union. Accepting the importance of genuine coalitions in Central and
Eastern Europe, on the one hand, he secretly began to prepare for his later
dominance, on the other. Soviet military commanders of the Allied
Control Commissions - in several cases leading associates of Stalin, such
as Kliment Voroshilov in Hungary - strongly asserted Soviet security
interests and the requirement of constant de-nazification, and did not
hesitate to use open pressure to assure communist control of key power
positions, such as the secret police, the security organs, the ministries of
interiors, or the like. They achieved this with equal effect in Czechoslovakia
and Hungary. Indeed, intervention became an everyday practice, and
assured important power positions for the communists, irrelevant of their
electoral success or failure (Hammond, 1982).
The "bogus coalition" of the "people's democracies"

The political situation, nevertheless, was deficient for Stalin, who
asserted that the Soviet Union had a vital strategic interest in Central and

22 Out from Europe
Eastern Europe. Thus, in these cases, he did not tolerate the domination
of potentially anti-Soviet, anti-communist political forces.
Hugh Seton-Watson speaks about three stages of the communist
seizure of power, beginning with a genuine coalition and followed by a
"bogus" coalition, which led to monolithic communist power (Seton-
Watson, 1961, pp. 169-71). The first stage, a genuine democratic
coalition, never existed in Poland; after a very short period of limited
pluralism in which the peasant party played a strong role, Poland
dropped immediately into the second stage, the bogus coalition.
The Polish pattern was soon followed in Romania and Bulgaria, where
Stalin attained the upper hand through his deal with Churchill. A few
months after his compromise in Greece, Stalin sought to cash Churchill's
check. The Soviet Union forced Romania and Bulgaria to oust all
independent-minded coalition partners and replace them with left-wing
fellow travelers or simply obedient collaborators.
This transition in Romania occurred in the most spectacular way.
During the period of the short-lived real coalition between August 1944
and March 1945, strong tension and bloody political and ethnic
confrontations were evident. Conservative-nationalist Maniu (National
Peasant Party) guardsmen unleashed anti-Hungarian pogroms. Battles
erupted in Moldavia as well. A communist mass demonstration took
place at the Palace Square on February 24,1945, in which the communists
led attacks against public offices, triggering a violent anti-communist
backlash.
The political crisis reached its climax at the end of February 1945. At
this point, Stalin did not hesitate to intervene openly. The Soviet troops,
present in the country, occupied the headquarters of the Romanian army
and disarmed the Romanian troops. Meanwhile, the Soviet deputy
minister of foreign affairs, Vishinsky, arrived in Bucharest and demanded
the appointment of a new premier, Petru Groza, head of the Ploughman's
Front, an ally of the communists. King Michael acceded to the Soviet
ultimatum, and, on March 6, 1945, the National Democratic Front of
the communists, socialists, Tatarascu's liberals, and the Ploughman
formed a "bogus" coalition (Giurescu, 1971). "I realize," wrote Eden
to Churchill after the March "incident" in Bucharest, "that if we invoke
the Yalta Declaration in respect of Roumania, we may expect the
Russians to do the same in regard to Greece or elsewhere" (Fontaine,
1968-9, p. 254).
Roughly the same thing happened in Bulgaria. Strong Soviet pressure
led to the resignation of Dr. Dimitrov, the leader of the Agrarian Union.
The partner parties of the coalition were taken over by fellow travelers,
loyal to the communists. Real independent groups were thus pushed

aside, and the genuine coalition ended. The Soviet type "elections" of
November 1945, held without opposition, led to the victory of the
"bogus," communist-led coalition. Genuine coalitions survived the final
year of the war only in Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
After the November elections in 1945, the absolute majority of the
Smallholder's Party was tactfully counterbalanced by the left-wing
block. The cunning communist leader Matyas Rakosi successfully
combined the mobilization of radical masses, assistance from the Soviet
Union, and heavy reliance on the secret police to mastermind his "salami
tactics," in which the majority Smallholders were gradually sliced into
smaller and smaller parts. The communists and the left-wing block
demanded the expulsion of various steadfast politicians based on false
accusations and the fabricated "anti-republic conspiracy" case. An
"unmasked conspiracy" was exploited in order to weaken the leadership
of the Smallholders centering on Secretary General Bela Kovacs. When
the parliament refused to give a green light for proceedings against
Kovacs, the Soviets directly intervened: appealing to their "security
interests," they arrested and deported Kovacs to the Gulags in February
1947. Others were expelled from the party as a result of a combination of
communist political pressure, blackmail, and arrests. Three leading
expelled Smallholder politicians, Sulyok, Pfeiffer, and Barankovics,
formed independent opposition parties.
The final blow fell in May 1947. Prime Minister Ferenc Nagy left the
country on May 14 to visit Switzerland. On May 28, at an extraordinary
meeting of the government chaired by Rakosi, the communist deputy
prime minister, a Soviet bill of indictment on the Bela Kovacs affair was
presented with Kovacs's "damning testimony" on Nagy. The government
called on him to resign and return. The manipulated timing offered an easy
solution: Nagy signed a letter of resignation but never returned to Hungary.
The genuine Smallholder's Party was destroyed and taken over by
second-rate fellow travelers. Lajos Dinnyes became prime minister;
Istvan Dobi, a former left-wing peasant politician, linked the party to the
left-wing block. The "sliced" Smallholder's Party was no longer an
obstacle. The elections of August 1947 (still a free one in spite of a
scandalous falsification of a few tens of thousands of added communist
votes), led to the victory of the government coalition: the communists
gained no more than 22 percent, but with the Social Democratic Party (17
percent), Peasant Party, and the surrendered remnants of the "Gleich-
schalted" Smallholders, the coalition received roughly 60 percent of the
votes. The newly formed opposition parties won 40 percent and remained
for a short time in the parliament until they were eliminated (Balogh, 1985).
Communist-led coalitions, declared to be Peoples' Democracies, were

24 Out from Europe
a cautiously prepared transition toward Soviet-type state socialism. In
most cases the Peoples' Democracies carried out major nationalizations.
As early as January 1946, all industrial firms employing more than fifty
workers were nationalized in Poland. Former German property was
completely expropriated, and certain sectors, such as mining, energy,
sugar, textile, printing, and flour-mills, were nationalized regardless of
size. In Hungary, after an early nationalization of coal mines, followed by
the complete state control (actual nationalization) of the four biggest
iron-steel and engineering firms "for the period of war reparations," the
ten biggest banks (and their industrial shares) were nationalized in the fall
of 1946. The bulk of Hungarian industry, with 57 percent of its
employees, was actually taken over by the state.
Similar steps were taken in Czechoslovakia, where the communists
were strong enough in the coalition to initiate them. In October 1945 the
parliament passed a law of nationalization: all banks, mines, the bulk of
the iron, steel, and chemical industries, and all firms that employed more
than 400 employees were expropriated.
In 1947 all of these countries introduced two- and three-year
reconstruction plans (planning, except in Yugoslavia, was not the
Soviet-type, but more of a radical form of state intervention), partly by
reintroducing war-economy measures (Kaser, 1987). Needless to say,
state intervention and nationalization became rather widespread in quite
a few European countries. Great Britain nationalized her coal mines soon
after the war. Huge state sectors were built up in France, Italy, and Austria.
War-devastated Central and Eastern Europe, suffering from severe
shortages of food, energy, raw materials, and transportation capacities,
and in some cases obliged to pay war reparations (both Hungary and
Romania paid $300 million, and Bulgaria $65 million), could not survive
without state rationing, distribution, and control. (War compensation
itself absorbed 15-17 percent of the national income in the immediate
postwar year, but still represented a 7-10 percent burden up to 1947.)
State intervention was thus necessary owing to the postwar economic
crisis. Hungary ended a most horrifying hyper-inflation and carried out a
successful financial stabilization without foreign help in August 1946 on a
production level which amounted to only half of the prewar one. Without
strict state control of prices, wages, credit, and production, the relative
stabilization of the currency would have been impossible. Reconstruction
of the infrastructure and war compensation deliveries also belonged to
the responsibilities of the state.
The government, therefore, became the most important buyer in a
hardly existing market. Seventy-five percent of the income of industrial
firms originated from state orders in 1946-7 in Hungary. Because of a lack
of sufficient sources, the state supplied and regulated the financial market

as well. On top of this, financial stabilization was already realized by a
special kind of planning by 1946. As a result of hyper-inflation, financial
stabilization could not automatically reconstruct price and wage structures;
all these had to be planned by the state (Berend and Ranki, 1985).
If the active role of the state in economic planning emerged from
postwar necessities, the situation was further exploited in the years of the
"bogus" coalition, in order to strengthen the state vis-d-vis the private
economy and reinforce the role of the Communist Party, which practically
ran the government and monopolized state power. Communist parties
took advantage of economic scarcity and skillfully used state intervention,
which was indeed necessary, in order to intensify their own influence and
power and also to prepare the transition toward a Soviet-type economy.
The Peoples' Democracy was thus a camouflaged transition toward a
communist takeover and the Sovietization of Central and Eastern Europe
(Brzezinski, 1961). But at the same time it was an arena for a rise of the
peasant and worker masses and the beginning of a genuine, indigenous
modernization attempt as well. A plebeian left-wing revolutionary
upswing characterized most of these countries. These mass movements
served as a natural basis for different kinds of left-wing peasant, socialist,
and communist parties. They attacked the old social hierarchy, the still
existing remnants of former "noble societies" and, in several cases, the
strong dominance of the Church, which had been the biggest landlord in
these countries; these movements quickly implemented the separation of
Church and state, and the secularization of education. The control of
large monopolies, and state intervention in general, in order to rebuild
and modernize the country, were among their political demands. It was a
great wave of emancipation of the masses, formerly excluded from
politics. For the first time in the region, mass peasant and worker parties
became part of the power structure and of government.
The communist parties, however, participating in this revolutionary
struggle, and even playing a positive leading role in it, in the meantime
started to manipulate and exploit the genuine mass movements for their
hidden ambitions. While circulating popular, democratic slogans, they
prepared for a seizure of power and the introduction of a Soviet-type regime.
The bogus coalition of the Peoples' Democracies was planned for a
longer transition. As Erno Gero, the deputy leader of the Hungarian
Communist Party, suggested at the time at an internal Party Active, the
communists could not count on a complete takeover for at least ten to
fifteen years. Stalin, at that time, obviously believed in the possibility of
the maintenance of the war alliance and wanted to keep only one of his feet
in the door. The communist-dominated regimes, without an open
adoption of monolithic Soviet communism, became subservient allies of
the Soviet Union.

26 Out from Europe
The rise of the Cold War and the "year of the turning
point": the introduction of state socialism
International relations gradually changed and arrived at a dramatic
turning point in 1947-8. The wartime alliance was gradually replaced
with confrontation, and in that year the break became manifest. Stalin's
drive to rule Central and Eastern Europe by strengthening his communist
allies was strongly motivated by his fear of a preventive Western attack.
He suspiciously counted unfriendly Western steps and sought to be
better prepared. On the other hand, the Western allies rightly recognized
Stalin's semi-hidden expansionism as an imminent danger that should be
prevented. Mutual suspicion generated desperate measures on both
sides: the Cold War was in the making.
The origins of the emerging confrontation have been heatedly debated
ever since its appearance. The most widespread view in the Western
world is that it was Stalin's aggressive expansionism which generated a
Western reaction. As John Lukacs put it: "Hitler... was alone responsible
for the outbreak of the Second World War; Stalin . . . was the principal
architect of the iron curtain and the cold war" (Lukacs, 1961, p. 65).
The Soviets, on the other hand, blamed the American administration
for an anti-Soviet conspiracy, and described the Russian stand as that of
self-defense. Since the Soviet Union lost the Cold War, recent interpreta-
tions seem to confirm the victor's view.
The history of the Cold War was a mixture of political and ideological
antagonism, misunderstanding, suspicion, fear, and panic, and hasty
reactions to all of these. Most of all, the Cold War was a consequence of
interrelated, self-generating chain reactions. The Churchill-Stalin pact
and the Yalta debates might have led Stalin to the conclusion that, to a
certain extent, he had the upper hand in the neighboring countries and his
security interests were accepted. As an old Machiavellian, he certainly
was convinced that he could go a bit further if his intentions remained
hidden.
Stalin must have also thought that he had been walking on a beaten
path since great power interference was a common practice. The British
and the Russians had jointly interfered in Persia, the British had
interfered in Egypt and Iraq, the Americans in France (in the controversies
between Darlan, Girand, and de Gaulle) and in Italy (in the controversies
between Badoglio and the opposition).
Cordell Hull recalled the American doctrine of military intervention in
other American countries in certain circumstances (Act of Chapultepec)
and noted: "Once we had agreed to this new position on intervention
Russia had more excuse to intervene in neighboring states, and we

had less reason to oppose her doing so" (Deutscher, 1967, p. 517)".
Stalin definitely believed that his Western partners might accept a
division of spheres of influence, with his interests in the East and theirs in
Western Europe (Suny, 1987). Roosevelt and Churchill agreed at
Roosevelt's home in Hyde Park, New York, a few weeks before Churchill's
trip to Moscow, that they did not want to see a communist government in
Italy. Churchill did not hesitate to seek Stalin's acceptance and cooperation
in order to achieve this aim, and "Stalin tacitly agreed to use his influence
to restrain the Italian communists" (Carlton, 1981, p. 244). Stalin
interpreted his wartime talks with the Western allies to mean that he
would have a predominant influence in Eastern Europe in exchange for
American and British influence in Western Europe.
Isaac Deutscher was convinced that
Stalin was eager to show that he was keeping his hands off the spheres of British
and American influence . . . In Western Europe, especially in France and Italy,
the Communist parties had . . . gained enormous prestige and authority . . . It was
undoubtedly under his inspiration that the French and Italian Communist parties
behaved with extraordinary, selfless moderation. (Deutscher, 1967, p. 518)
Stalin did not comment on the joint American-British action in

Belgium either, which created a critical situation in Brussels in November
1944. Members of the Belgian resistance, first of all the communists,
socialists, and Flemish nationalists, refused to turn in their arms to Allied
military authorities. The Greek incident was not repeated in Belgium,
and Stalin quietly accepted both actions.
In Central and Eastern Europe, however, he sought to strengthen his
positions. Establishing his sphere of interest was certainly also inspired
by Stalin's suspicion concerning the foundation of a world-wide network
of American air-bases. As Henry Wallace, the former vice-president
under Roosevelt and member of the Truman administration, pointed out
in a confidential letter to President Truman of July 23, 1946: "to develop
a security zone in Eastern Europe .. . [is] small change from the point of
view of military power as compared with our air bases in Greenland,
Okinawa and many other places thousands of miles from our shores."
Wallace added that "to the Russians all of the defense and security
measures of the Western powers seem to have an aggressive intent . . .
going far beyond the requirements of defense" (Bronstein, 1968, pp.
240-2). The already cited historian aptly stated that "a new and
world-wide American expansion was beginning between 1945 and 1947,
and whether it was generated or only accelerated by Stalin's actions" was
not important (Fontaine, 1968-9).
Stalin, who was suddenly dropped into the middle of great power

28 Out from Europe
world politics, simply continued his old routine based on domestic
political tactics and began to break agreements, going further inch by
inch. After the inauguration of Truman, Averell Harriman, the experienced
American ambassador, suddenly arrived in Washington to see the new
president: "one of the reasons that made me rush back to Washington,"
he explained to Truman, "was the fear that you did not understand . . .
that Stalin is breaking his agreements" (Truman, 1955-6, p. 5). Harriman
warned Truman that a "barbarian invasion of Europe" might occur.
Stalin's calculations, on the other hand, may have been strongly
influenced by his fear of a possible American attack. Did he have real or
only imagined reasons for that? Stalin carefully watched the movements
of his Western allies. In February 1945 he was informed about "Operation
Sunrise," a secret Anglo-American and German meeting in Bern.
Obergruppenfuehrer Karl Wolff, the commander of German SS forces in
Italy, initiated secret discussions regarding a German surrender, and
Allen Dulles immediately began negotiating. Even if the Soviets were
informed, Molotov was told by Harriman that they could not attend the
discussions. Since there were a lot of hints that Germany would be ready
to surrender to the Western allies and join the alliance against the Soviet
Union, Molotov was shocked and responded: "it is not a question of...
misunderstanding-it is something worse" (Kimball, 1984, p. 586).
Stalin sent a nervous and angry message to Roosevelt blaming him for not
telling the truth in saying "that there have been no negotiations yet"
(ibid., p. 610).
A further major blow, the death of President Roosevelt, contributed to
undermine Stalin's confidence in his Western allies. Churchill had cabled
to Roosevelt on October 18, 1944 that Stalin, during their Moscow
meeting, "several times . . . emphasized his earnest desire for your return
at the election and of the advantage to Russia and to the world which that
would be" (Kimball, 1984, p. 359). Roosevelt was an ally, and certainly
the only ally, that Stalin had confidence in. The succession to the
presidency of Harry Truman, a rather different character, certainly
contributed to Stalin's increasing suspicions and fear. Truman warned
Molotov in a stoic matter-of-fact manner immediately at their first
meeting, and spoke of "seriously shaken confidence." When Molotov
indignantly answered "I have never been talked to like that in my life,"
Truman did not hesitate to remark "Carry out your agreements and you
will not get talked to like that" (Truman, 1955-6, p. 82). Averell
Harriman, who was present at the Truman meeting, was greatly surprised
by the shift in attitude.
It was not, however, only a different tone; the situation dramatically
changed as well. The most important changes occurred after the successful

American landing and advance in Europe. Roosevelt, who was later
blamed for his "soft" attitude toward Stalin, had sent on April 6,1945 his
agreement to Churchill's letter to Stalin with a very characteristic
explanation: "I am pleased with your very clear strong message to Stalin
.. . Our armies will in a very few days be in a position that will permit us to
become 'tougher' than has heretofore appeared advantageous to the war
effort" (Kimball, 1984, p. 617).
If an improved military position had already generated Roosevelt's
idea to get tougher with the Russians, Truman had much stronger reason
to do so a few months later. The turning point, no doubt, was the Bomb, a
weapon with the greatest psychological effect, and "a weapon with the
greatest potential political impact" (Lukacs, 1961, p. 63).3
On July 16, 1945, the first atomic fusion bomb was exploded at the
Alamogordo Air Base in New Mexico. General Leslie Groves was
certainly mistaken when he wrote in his enthusiastic report of the test:
"The light from the explosion was seen clearly . . . at points generally to
about 180 miles away. The sound was heard [from] the same distance"
(Bronstein, 1968, pp. 38-9). Indeed, it could be seen and heard much
further than that! The very next day the Potsdam Summit was opened.
"At Potsdam," noted Truman in December 1945, "we were . . . almost
forced to agree to Russian occupation of Eastern Poland . . . At the time
we were anxious for Russian entry into the Japanese War. Of course we
found later that we didn't need Russia there . . . I do not think we should
play compromise any longer . . . I'm tired of babying the Soviets"
(Truman, 1955-6, pp. 551-2).
Upon acquiring the monopoly of the atomic bomb, American strength
was confirmed. "[W]hat did these thousands of peerless soldiers [of
Stalin] count against a few bombs that could bring their government to its
knees? At no point was Truman tempted to use America's atomic
monopoly to force Russia. But this monopoly provided him with an
'umbrella' under which he could, without too many risks, pursue his
policy" (Fontaine, 1968-9, p. 267).
The monopoly of the atom bomb changed American policy, which
suddenly shifted from wartime collaboration to confrontation with the
USSR (Nitze, 1989). From this perspective, the bomb, even though it
had tremendous military importance, shortened the war and certainly, in
a paradoxical way, saved hundred of thousands of lives. The physicist and
3
Secretary Stimson wrote: "In March 1945 our Air Force launched its first great
incendiary raid on the Tokyo area. In this raid more damage was done and more casualties
were inflicted than was the case at Hiroshima . . . Similar successive raids burned out a
great part of the urban area of Japan, but the Japanese fought on. On August 6 one B-29
dropped a single atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later a second bomb was
dropped on Nagasaki and the war was over" (Bronstein, 1968, pp. 38-9).

30 Out from Europe
Nobel-laureate P.M.S. Blackett's famous maxim was still true as well:

"The dropping of the atomic bombs was not so much the last military act
of the Second World War, as the first major operation of the cold
diplomatic war."
The Cold War "process," of course, had begun much earlier. One of its
most visible elements was Stalin's aggressive actions in Poland. From this
point of view, everything that happened later, including Churchill's
bloody intervention in Greece and Truman's "tough" policy based on the
monopoly of the Bomb, was only a Western reaction to this.
Actually, it was the point of departure of a uniquely frank and long
discussion (five meetings!) between Harry Hopkins, one of Roosevelt's
closest foreign-policy advisors, and Stalin, who received Hopkins, as
Charles Bohlen reported in a memo, as a special envoy of the new
President on May 26, 1945. Hopkins explained that the American public
had become seriously disturbed by Russia's actions, and "it would be
very difficult for President Truman to carry forward President Roosevelt's
policy." The reason for this was "centered in our inability to carry into
effect the Yalta Agreement on Poland." Stalin replied that he "desired to
have a friendly Poland but that Great Britain wanted to revive the system
of cordon sanitaire on the Soviet borders." At the second meeting Stalin
described that Soviet governmental circles "felt a certain alarm in regard
to the attitude of the United States government. It was their impression
that the American attitude towards the Soviet Union had perceptibly
cooled once it became obvious that Germany was defeated, and . . . the
Russians were no longer needed." Stalin then listed all the wrongs they
endured, among them the humiliating and brutal "manner in which Lend
Lease had been curtailed . . . If the refusal to continue Lend Lease was
designed as pressure on the Russians in order to soften them up, then it
was a fundamental mistake."
Concerning the Polish question, Stalin stressed again that "in the
course of twenty-five years the Germans had twice invaded Russia via
Poland . . . Germany had been able to do this because Poland had been
regarded as a part of the cordon sanitaire . . . and that previous European
policy had been that Polish governments must be hostile to Russia . . . It is
therefore in Russia's vital interest that Poland should be both strong and
friendly." In diplomatic language, Stalin also wanted to be remembered
for his agreement with Churchill, and remarked "that Soviet action in
Poland had been more successful than British action in Greece, and at no
time had they been compelled to undertake the measures which they had
done in Greece" (Bronstein, 1968, pp. 169-74).
At this time, needless to say, the Bomb was not yet on Stalin's list. A
few weeks later, however, this became Issue Number One. Keeping the

issue of atomic energy and the monopoly of the Bomb a secret had not
been Truman's decision, but had actually been decided in Hyde Park, at
Roosevelt's home during his meeting with Churchill in September 1944.
Truman, who didn't know about the A-bomb, was informed of its
existence by Secretary Stimson only on April 12, 1945, after his first
cabinet meeting. A few days later, Stimson discussed the broader aspects
of the subject with Truman. He underlined that the "question of sharing
it with other nations and, if so shared, upon what terms, becomes a
primary question of our foreign relations" (Bronstein, 1968, p. 4).
Seven Chicago scientists who worked on the preparation of the bomb
presented a report to the Secretary of War on June 12, in which they
suggested that "Russia . . . may be deeply shocked" by America using the
Bomb. "If an international agreement is not concluded immediately . . .
this will mean a flying start toward an unlimited armaments race"
(Bulletin, 1946). Stimson suggested an immediate agreement and the
invitation of the Soviets "into a partnership upon a basis of cooperation
and trust . . . a satisfactory international arrangement respecting the
control of this new force . . . For if we fail to approach them now . . .
having this weapon . . . their suspicions and their distrust of our purposes
and motives will increase." The Secretary of War suggested that "the
Russians and the British would agree with us that in no event will they or
we use a bomb as an instrument of war unless all three Governments
agree to that use" (Bronstein, 1968, pp. 221-3). The cabinet debated
Stimson's memorandum in mid-September, but the majority and President
Truman rejected the recommendation.
Another liberal attempt met the same fate in the summer of 1946.
Henry A. Wallace, the former one-term Vice-President and now Secretary
of Commerce in the Truman cabinet, who supported Stimson's suggestion,
tried to convince Truman to change his policy toward the Soviet Union in
a confidential letter on July 23, 1946. "[W]e are preparing ourselves to
win the war which we regard as inevitable." Stalin's policy, according to
Wallace, was understandable: "I think we would react as the Russians
appear to have done . . . [to equalize] our bargaining position . . . The
Russians will redouble their efforts to manufacture bombs, and they may
also decide to expand their 'security zone' in a serious way" (New York
Times, 1946).
Since Truman ignored the suggestion, Wallace began a public attack.
On September 20 Truman announced: "I have asked Mr. Wallace to
resign from the Cabinet. It had become clear that between his view on
foreign policy and those of the administration . .. there was a fundamental
conflict" (Bronstein, 1968, p. 247).
The policy of cooperation was defeated, the liberals were dismissed

32 Out from Europe
and the "get tough with Russia" policy gained new momentum. Secretary
of State Byrnes delivered a speech in Stuttgart denouncing Soviet policy
and offering American assistance to Germany: "The American people
want to return the government of Germany to the German people. The
American people want to help the German people to win their way back to
an honorable place among the free and peace-loving nations of the world"
(ibid., p. 238).
Roosevelt argued for disarmament and the de-industrialization of
Germany. He used strikingly strong language: "We have got to be tough
with Germany and I mean the German people, not just the Nazis. You
either have to castrate the German people or you have got to treat them in
such a manner so they can't just go on reproducing people who want to
continue in the way they have in the past." In his Quebec meeting with
Churchill, Roosevelt invited Secretary Morgenthau to present a ruthless
plan for destroying Germany's industrial economy "to push back the
Germans to their primeval agrarian origins and to start all over again."
Churchill even suggested an addendum to the statement: conversion of
"Germany into a country primarily agricultural and pastoral in its
character" (Kimball, 1984, p. 317).
This attitude was replaced by Byrnes' Stuttgart declaration offering a
helping hand to the former enemy and openly denouncing a former ally.
Was this the devilish logic of history at work? Or perhaps it was the most
prosaic realization of the "lunatic" prediction of General de Gaulle to
Colonel Passy, the chief of his Deuxieme Bureau, on the very night of
Pearl Harbor in 1941: "Now the war has been definitely won. And the
future will have two stages: the first will be the salvation of Germany by the
Allies; as for the second, I am afraid, that will be a major war between the
Russians and the Americans" (Dewavrin, 1947, p. 236). If de Gaulle could
have this vision in 1941, would not Stalin have developed the very same
suspicion after having been informed in Potsdam of the existence of the
American bomb and having experienced the change in American attitude?
His genuine aggressiveness and expansionism was reinforced by a
monomaniacal anxiety over his endangered security. He saw a kind of
security in building a buffer zone between his potential enemies and the
Soviet Union. It was a return to the traditional Russian military doctrine,
which had already been used against Napoleon and was implemented
twice during World War I, when territory offered the possibility of
withdrawal, and against surviving German offensives. The Brest-Litowsk
compromise led to the loss of huge territories, but Stalin did everything to
regain them from 1939 on. He realized how much the large size of his
country had contributed to his victory. To acquire further territories, in
his eyes, became more important in 1945-6 than ever before.

On the other hand, the victorious Western great powers learned
another lesson from World War II. The "appeasement policy" of
Chamberlain had not satiated but actually increased the appetite of the
aggressor. Hence the only sensible and rational policy was one of strength
and firm resistance.
Misunderstanding and suspicion complemented each other. One
cannot know what would have happened had a stable policy of Allied
cooperation survived Hiroshima. Was it a naive dream that trust would
generate trust, as Stimson argued? The questions above are not answerable
anymore. This alternative was lost in the sea of unrealized possibilities.
With so many others, cooperation became one of Hiroshima's countless
victims.
A self-generating Cold War rapidly emerged. Fear produced fear,
aggressiveness led to aggressiveness. Churchill, the most stable wartime
partner of the Soviets, cabled his dramatic vision to Truman on May 12:
"An iron curtain is drawn down upon their front . . . the whole of the
region east of the line Lubeck-Trieste-Corfu will soon be completely in
. . . [Soviet] hands. To this must be added the further enormous area . . .
which will, I suppose, in a few weeks be occupied, when the Americans
retreat, by the Russian power" (Fontaine, 1968-9, p. 243).
The fear of Russian occupation of the European continent (a paranoia
equivalent to Stalin's monomania?) was formulated for the first time.
Churchill expressed his fear in a more explicit way in a conversation with
Joseph Davis, the special envoy of the President, on May 26-7: "The
present lines . . . of the British and US Armies should be maintained, lest
Communism should dominate and control all of Western Europe"
(Bronstein, 1968, p. 177).
Less than a year later, on March 5, 1946, Churchill accepted the
invitation of the remote Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri,
Truman's alma mater, and delivered his dramatic message:
Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international organization
intends to d o . . . or what are the limits, if any, to their expansive... tendencies . . .
From Stettin to Trieste an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.
[Behind that] the Communist parties . . . are seeking everywhere to obtain
totalitarian control . .. throughout the world, Communist fifth columns are
established and work in complete unity . . . [which] constitute a growing challenge
and peril to Christian civilization . . . Our .. . dangers . . . will not be removed by
. . . a policy of appeasement... the old doctrine of a balance of power is unsound.
(Churchill, 1974, pp. 7290-2)
What motivated Churchill's almost hysterical declaration of a policy of
military strength and confrontation in the place of cooperation? His
suspicion and old hatred against an expansionist new communist super

34 Out from Europe
power? The lesson of the appeasement policy that he condemned and did
not want to let happen again? His effort to strengthen or rebuild Britain's
European great power position based upon his strongly advertised
concept of the unity of the English-speaking nations against a communist
evil? Probably all of these.
A week later, Stalin, in an interview, answered in the same tone: "I do
not know whether he and his friends will succeed in organizing a new
armed campaign against Eastern Europe after the Second World War;
but if they do succeed . . . it may confidently be said that they will be
thrashed just as they were 26 years ago" (Fontaine, 1968-9, pp. 267-77).
The Fulton speech was not the start of the Cold War but made it
manifest. Afterwards, both parties soon switched into the fifth gear. A
day after the Fulton speech the Truman administration sent a warning to
the Soviet government urging the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Iran;
instead they started to move toward Teheran. The United States stood
firm and, two weeks later, Stalin acceded to the demand and promised a
retreat within two months.
In August 1946, Soviet troop movements were reported along the
Turkish border to establish a permanent Soviet base in the Dardanelles.
The famous American battleship Missouri and the giant aircraft carrier
Franklin Roosevelt appeared at Istanbul. Stalin backed down.
After these incidents, a new chapter in the Greek civil war was opened.
The British informed Washington of their plans to withdraw their 40,000
troops from the country, their presence there having become a heavy
burden that they did not wish to carry anymore. But without the British
presence, the royalist government was clearly threatened with collapse.
Truman stepped in. On March 11, 1947 he declared to Congress that the
United States had to "support free peoples who are resisting attempted
subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." Truman
suggested economic and financial aid to assure "economic stability and
orderly political process . . . The seeds of totalitarian regimes are
nurtured by misery and want. They reach their full growth when the
hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive"
(Truman, 1955-6, p. 106).
The "Truman doctrine" was introduced. It was a declaration of an
anti-communist crusade or, as Senator Edwin Johnson called it, "a
declaration of war against Russia." Truman began to realize the concept
of the "containment policy," formulated by George Kennan.4
4
George Kennan, analyzing the Russian attitude, declared: "At bottom of Kremlin's
neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity . . .
Soviet power, unlike that of Hitlerite Germany, is neither schematic nor adventuristic . . .
It does not take unnecessary risks . . . it is highly sensitive to logic of force. For this reason

General Patton, the enfant terrible of the American military machine
(still in the fall of 1947), warned the world to prepare for the "inevitable
Third World War," and stated that "he could reach [Moscow] in thirty
days." (Fontaine, 1968-9, p. 299). Patton was forced to retire. In a few
months General Lucius Clay sent a secret message to Washington from
Berlin expressing his feeling that the war "may come with dramatic
suddenness" (Bronstein, 1968, p. 269). The atmosphere of panic and war
hysteria was already in the air.
The "declaration of war" and the warning for the preparation of an
inevitable Third World War occurred at the same time on the other side
of the iron curtain as well. Top delegates of eight European communist
parties gathered in the castle of Szklarska Poreba in Poland in October
1947 to establish the Cominform, which was founded "to coordinate the
activities of the Communist Parties." Zhdanov, the chief ideologue of
Stalin, delivering the opening speech, repeated Churchill's idea in
another way: two camps had been set up in the world, "the imperialist and
anti-democratic camp, on the one hand, and the anti-imperialist and
democratic camp, on the other." The latter, headed by the Soviet Union,
was to resist the threat of new wars and "imperialist expansion" (Stokes,
1991, pp. 40-2).
The open confrontation became an everyday routine. When Secretary
of State George Marshall announced his plan to help the world to "return
to normal economic health" in his speech at Harvard University on June
5, 1947, and the United States offered 13 billion dollars for this aim, the
Soviets indignantly refused it as "political pressure with the help of
dollars" and interference in the internal affairs of other countries"
(Pravda, 1947). The Central and Eastern European countries and
Finland were forced to act accordingly.5
The Big Three could no longer agree on the solution to the German
question. The American, British, then French occupation zones were
united; a "Bi-zonia" then "Tri-zonia" were established. When the
Western powers introduced a new currency in their merged occupation
zones in West Germany on June 23, 1948, the Soviet Army closed all
routes to the Western zones of Berlin in retaliation, provoking the sharpest
it can easily withdraw - and usually does - when strong resistance is encountered at any
point." (The full text of the George Kennan cable of February 22, 1946 in: Truman, pp.
202, 210.)
5
Stalin had received the invitation to join, hesitated for a few weeks, even sent Molotov
(with a delegation of eighty-nine people!) to Paris, then decided to answer in an aggressive
way. Molotov with his men left Paris at 4.00 a.m. on July 3,1947 and attacked the Plan as
an attempt to divide Europe. Allan Dulles, in a recently discovered manuscript, however,
also flatly stated that the Plan was "not a philanthropic enterprise . . . But . . . the only
peaceful cause now open to us which may answer the communist challenge" (Dulles,
1993, p. 116).

36 Out from Europe
postwar crisis. The fear of a new war swept over Europe. A top communist
leader said in a later interview that they had received information from
Stalin in the spring of 1948 that "World War III is inevitable in three to
four years." 6 Ana Pauker, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania, said
basically the same to family members in the late 1950s.7
Up to this time, one could not exclude the possibility of an alternative
to Russian domination of Central and Eastern Europe. "The pattern
exists in the case of Finland. It is surely the case that the Western powers
would have tolerated Russian influence over the countries of Eastern
Europe comparable to that exercised over Finland, and regarded it as the
legitimate outcome of Russia's anxieties for her own security" (Luard,
1964, pp. 59-60). 8
The same author cited certain interpretations of the fact that Communist
control of Central and Eastern Europe reached its final stage only in
1947-8: "The intensification of Communist control over Eastern Europe
was the consequence rather than the cause of the breakdowns of relations
with the West. . . [T]here may be some truth in this view" (ibid., p. 52). It
is certainly more accurate to say that the Sovietization of the unfortunate
region was both a cause and a consequence of the collapse of the wartime
alliance and its replacement with mutual suspicion, distrust, misunder-
standing, and hostility. Four decades of Cold War followed.
Stalin changed his tactics and decided to speed up the open Sovietization
of Central and Eastern Europe. In "the year of the turning point,"
1947-8, the communist take over was completed. The most dramatic and
thrilling change occurred in Czechoslovakia, the only country of the
region where a genuine coalition and democracy still survived. In
February 1948 a deep political crisis was provoked. Domestic communist
forces, using their legal role in the government, mobilized the Factory
Councils and the Farmers' Union and, with a kind of coup d'etat, took
over the police. As a response, non-communist members of the government
resigned (Svitak, 1990). "The current crisis of power," stated Gottwald
at a meeting in the National Theater on February 22, "is nothing more
than a general attempt by the reactionary forces to turn back the
development achieved up to now" (Gottwald, 1981, p. 433). Communist
crowds occupied the streets, and President Benes had no other alternative
6
Author's interview made in 1960 with Erno Gero, Number 2 in the Hungarian hierarchy
in the Stalinist period.
7
This fact was discovered by Robert Levy, who interviewed Tatiana Bratescu, the
daughter of Ana Pauker, in December, 1990.
8
The author also stresses the alternative to the German solution. The pattern in this case is
Austria. "The occupation of Austria, its division into zones and the further division of the
capital, lying within the Russian zone, exactly paralleled the occupation of Germany. But
there the similarity ceased" (Luard, 1964, p. 39).

9
but to appoint a communist-led People's Front government. The
minister of foreign affairs, Jan Masaryk, a symbol of Czechoslovak
democracy who decided to remain in his post, was found dead in the
grounds of a courtyard of his ministry in March.
A Soviet type "election" in May 1948, without the participation of any
kind of opposition, resulted in an 86 percent victory for the communists.
President Benes resigned in June and died a few months later. Czechoslovak
democracy died with him. The inauguration of the new president,
Klement Gottwald, head of the Communist Party, was the inauguration
of dictatorial state socialism in Czechoslovakia.
The transition from "bogus" coalition to a monolithic state socialist
system was perfected all over Central and Eastern Europe in a few
months. Two major steps characterized the elimination of coalitions. The
allied coalition partners were pushed out and the social democratic
parties absorbed. Both actions were executed in a cruel manner. Nikola
Petkov, the leader of the Agrarians in Bulgaria, was arrested in June 1947
on fabricated charges of conspiracy; he was tried, condemned and
executed in September. The opposition socialist leader Lulchev was
arrested in the summer and sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment in
November 1948. In Romania, in June 1947, Mihalache and Maniu,
National Peasant Party leaders, were arrested and given life sentences.
Titel Petrescu, the opposition socialist leader who refused fusion with the
communists, was arrested in May 1948. King Michael was forced to
abdicate at the end of 1947, but allowed to leave the country. In Poland
the peasant leader, Mikolajczik, having been informed of plans for his
arrest (two political trials presented "evidence" against him), secretly left
the country. Most of the Hungarian opposition leaders, Imre Kovacs,
Bela Sulyok, Zoltan Pfeiffer, and Karoly Peyer, also escaped. Cardinal
Jozsef Mindszenty was arrested and imprisoned.
Throughout Central and Eastern Europe in 1947-8, all non-communist
political parties were annihilated. Social democratic parties shared the
same fate, but were liquidated in a different way. Several non-collaborating
socialist leaders were promptly expelled from the parties. In Poland quite
a few did not return from exile (e.g., Arciszewski), or were arrested by the
Soviets (e.g., Puzak). In Hungary Karoly Peyer, followed by the
independent-minded centrists Antal Ban and Anna Kethly, were expelled.
The parties were taken over by either left-wing communist sympathizers
9
Gustav Husak, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the "triumphant February
revolution," as the communist coup was officially named, stated: "When the bourgeoisie
attempted to carry out their counterrevolutionary reversal in February, millions of . . .
members of the working class answered the call of the Party . . . The powerful force of the
people . . . pushed through a decisive revolutionary and constitutional resolution . . . "
(Husak, 1977, p. 139).

38 Out from Europe
and/or ambitious second-rate party officials (a Cyrankiewicz in Poland or
a Fierlinger in Czechoslovakia) who were ready to merge with the
communist parties. Social democracy was eliminated by fusion. It
happened in a uniform way in 1948: in February in Romania, in June in
Hungary and Czechoslovakia, in August in Bulgaria, and in December in
Poland.
Very many politicians, former coalition or opposition members who
were ready to collaborate, were given low governmental posts in order to
demonstrate the existence of a "broad peoples' front." Very many quietly
disappeared from political life; quite a few became victims of later purges.
Obtacles no longer existed. Andre Malraux's aphorism, each failed
communism generates its fascism and each failed fascism leads to its
communism, had materialized in this part of Europe. The communist
seizure of power was concluded in 1947-8.


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1 Communist seizure of power, 1944-8

Disrupted historical continuity

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The communist-led five-party coalition in Poland in the end represented

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Genuine communist take over in Yugoslavia and Albania

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Genuine democratic coalitions: the Czechoslovak and

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

The "bogus coalition" of the "people's democracies"

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Stalin did not comment on the joint American-British action in

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Nobel-laureate P.M.S. Blackett's famous maxim was still true as well:

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009

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