thumb|upright=1.35|Political alignments in Europe during the [[Cold War after 1961]]
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc (Combloc), the Soviet Bloc, the Socialist Bloc and the Workers Bloc, was an unofficial coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were aligned with the Soviet Union and existed during the Cold War (1947–1991). These states followed the ideology of Marxism–Leninism and various forms of socialism, and were opposed to the capitalist Western Bloc. The Eastern Bloc was often called the "Second World", while the term "First World" referred to the Western Bloc and "Third World" referred to the non-aligned countries that were mainly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America but also included the pre-1948 European Soviet ally Yugoslavia. Non-socialist countries, such as the Arab nationalist governments of Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Syria etc., are sometimes considered part of the bloc.
In Western Europe, the term 'Eastern Bloc' generally referred to the USSR and Central and Eastern European countries in the Warsaw Pact (East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania). In Asia, the Eastern Bloc comprised Mongolia, Vietnam, Laos, Kampuchea, North Korea, South Yemen and China. In the Americas, the countries aligned with the Eastern Bloc were Cuba from 1961, and for a short period Nicaragua and Grenada.
Terminology
The term Eastern Bloc was often used interchangeably with the term Second World. This broadest usage of the term would include not only Maoist China and Cambodia, but also short-lived Soviet satellites such as the Second East Turkestan Republic (1944–1949), the People's Republic of Azerbaijan (1945–1946) and the Republic of Mahabad (1946), as well as the Marxist–Leninist states straddling the Second and Third Worlds before the end of the Cold War: the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (from 1967), the People's Republic of the Congo (from 1969), the People's Republic of Benin, the People's Republic of Angola and People's Republic of Mozambique from 1975, the People's Revolutionary Government of Grenada from 1979 to 1983, the Derg/People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia from 1974, and the Somali Democratic Republic from 1969 until the Ogaden War in 1977. Although not Marxist–Leninist, leadership of Ba'athist Syria officially regarded their country as part of the Socialist Bloc and established a close economic, military alliance with the Soviet Union.
Many states were accused by the Western Bloc of being in the Eastern Bloc when they were part of the Non-Aligned Movement. The most limited definition of the Eastern Bloc would only include the Warsaw Pact states and the Mongolian People's Republic as former satellite states most dominated by the Soviet Union. Cuba's defiance of complete Soviet control was noteworthy enough that Cuba was sometimes excluded as a satellite state altogether, as it sometimes intervened in other Third World countries even when the Soviet Union opposed this. Sometimes they are more generally referred to as "the countries of Eastern Europe under communism", excluding Mongolia, but including Yugoslavia and Albania which had both split with the Soviet Union by the 1960s.
Even though Yugoslavia was a socialist country, it was not a member of the Comecon or the Warsaw Pact. Parting with the USSR in 1948, Yugoslavia did not belong to the East, but it also did not belong to the West because of its socialist system and its status as a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement. However, some sources consider Yugoslavia to be a member of the Eastern Bloc. Others consider Yugoslavia not to be a member after it broke with Soviet policy in the 1948 Tito–Stalin split.
- Comoros (1975–1978)
- (1981–1991)
- Republic of Egypt (1953–1958)
- United Arab Republic (1958–1971)
- Arab Republic of Egypt (1971–1974)
- (1968–1979)
- (1960–1966)
- (1960–1984)
- Guinea Bissau (1973–1991)
- (1980–1991)
- (1971–1991)
- Indonesia (1959–1965)
- (1979–1991)
- Republic of Iraq (1958–1963)
- Nasserist Iraq (1963–1968)
- Ba'athist Iraq (1968–1979)
- (1948–1953)
- Libyan Arab Republic (1969–1977)
- Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (1977–1991)
- (1960–1991)
- Mauritania (1961–1984)
- (1979–1990)
- (1968–1975)
- (1976–1991)
- (1975–1991)
- Democratic Republic of the Sudan (1969–1971)
- (1980–1987) (1990–1991)
- Syria (1957–1958)
- Nasserist Syria (1958–1961)
- Ba'athist Syria (1963–1991) Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who viewed the Soviet Union as a "socialist island", stated that the Soviet Union must see that "the present capitalist encirclement is replaced by a socialist encirclement".
Expansion of the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1940
In 1939, the USSR entered into the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany Eastern Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Bessarabia in northern Romania were recognized as parts of the Soviet sphere of influence.
The Soviet Union had invaded the portions of eastern Poland assigned to it by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact two weeks after the German invasion of western Poland, followed by co-ordination with German forces in Poland. During the Occupation of East Poland by the Soviet Union, the Soviets liquidated the Polish state, and a German-Soviet meeting addressed the future structure of the "Polish region". Soviet authorities immediately started a campaign of sovietization of the newly Soviet-annexed areas. Soviet authorities collectivized agriculture, and nationalized and redistributed private and state-owned Polish property.
Initial Soviet occupations of the Baltic countries had occurred in mid-June 1940, when Soviet NKVD troops raided border posts in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, followed by the liquidation of state administrations and replacement by Soviet cadres. Elections for parliament and other offices were held with single candidates listed and the official results fabricated, purporting pro-Soviet candidates' approval by 92.8 percent of the voters in Estonia, 97.6 percent in Latvia, and 99.2 percent in Lithuania. The fraudulently installed "people's assemblies" immediately declared each of the three corresponding countries to be "Soviet Socialist Republics" and requested their "admission into Stalin's Soviet Union". This formally resulted in the Soviet Union's annexation of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in August 1940.
In 1939, the Soviet Union unsuccessfully attempted an invasion of Finland, subsequent to which the parties entered into an interim peace treaty granting the Soviet Union a portion of the eastern region of Karelia (10% of Finnish territory), the Soviets entered these areas, Romania caved to Soviet demands and the Soviets occupied the territories.
Eastern Front and Allied conferences
thumb|left|The Big Three ([[Prime Minister of the United Kingdom|British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Premier of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin) at the Yalta Conference, February 1945]]
In June 1941, Germany broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact by invading the Soviet Union. From the time of this invasion to 1944, the areas annexed by the Soviet Union were part of Germany's Ostland (except for the Moldavian SSR). Thereafter, the Soviet Union began to push German forces westward through a series of battles on the Eastern Front.
In the aftermath of World War II on the Soviet-Finnish border, the parties signed another peace treaty ceding to the Soviet Union in 1944, followed by a Soviet annexation of roughly the same eastern Finnish territories as those of the prior interim peace treaty as part of the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic.
From 1943 to 1945, several conferences regarding Post-War Europe occurred that, in part, addressed the potential Soviet annexation and control of countries in Central Europe. There were various Allied plans for state order in Central Europe for post-war. While Joseph Stalin tried to get as many states under Soviet control as possible, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill preferred a Central European Danube Confederation to counter these countries against Germany and Russia. Churchill's Soviet policy regarding Central Europe differed vastly from that of American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, with the former believing Soviet leader Stalin to be a "devil"-like tyrant leading a vile system.
When warned of potential domination by a Stalin dictatorship over part of Europe, Roosevelt responded with a statement summarizing his rationale for relations with Stalin: "I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of a man. ... I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace". While meeting with Stalin and Roosevelt in Tehran in 1943, Churchill stated that Britain was vitally interested in restoring Poland as a politically independent country.
In February 1945, at the conference at Yalta, Stalin demanded a Soviet sphere of political influence in Central Europe. After resistance by Churchill and Roosevelt, Stalin promised a re-organization of the current pro-Soviet government on a broader democratic basis in Poland. However, the 1946 Polish people's referendum (known as the "Three Times Yes" referendum) and the subsequent 1947 Polish parliamentary election did not meet democratic standards and were largely manipulated.
The parties at Yalta further agreed that the countries of liberated Europe and former Axis satellites would be allowed to "create democratic institutions of their own choice", pursuant to "the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live". The parties also agreed to help those countries form interim governments "pledged to the earliest possible establishment through free elections" and "facilitate where necessary the holding of such elections". In addition to reparations, Stalin pushed for "war booty", which would permit the Soviet Union to directly seize property from conquered nations without quantitative or qualitative limitation.
Concealed transformation dynamics
At first, the Soviets concealed their role in other Eastern Bloc politics, with the transformation appearing as a modification of Western "bourgeois democracy". Stalin felt that socioeconomic transformation was indispensable to establish Soviet control, reflecting the Marxist–Leninist view that material bases, the distribution of the means of production, shaped social and political relations.
Moscow-trained cadres were put into crucial power positions to fulfill orders regarding sociopolitical transformation. Elimination of the bourgeoisie's social and financial power by expropriation of landed and industrial property was accorded absolute priority. These measures were publicly billed as "reforms" rather than socioeconomic transformations. The bloc system permitted the Soviet Union to exercise domestic control indirectly.
Crucial departments such as those responsible for personnel, general police, secret police and youth were strictly Communist run.
Early events prompting stricter control
Marshall Plan rejection
thumb|left|Political situation in Europe during the [[Cold War]]
In June 1947, after the Soviets had refused to negotiate a potential lightening of restrictions on German development, the United States announced the Marshall Plan, a comprehensive program of American assistance to all European countries wanting to participate, including the Soviet Union and those of Eastern Europe. The Soviets rejected the Plan and took a hard-line position against the United States and non-communist European nations. However, Czechoslovakia was eager to accept the US aid; the Polish government had a similar attitude, and this was of great concern to the Soviets.
In one of the clearest signs of Soviet control over the region up to that point, the Czechoslovak foreign minister, Jan Masaryk, was summoned to Moscow and berated by Stalin for considering joining the Marshall Plan. Polish Prime minister Józef Cyrankiewicz was rewarded for the Polish rejection of the Plan with a huge 5-year trade agreement, including $450 million in credit, 200,000 tons of grain, heavy machinery and factories.
In July 1947, Stalin ordered these countries to pull out of the Paris Conference on the European Recovery Programme, which has been described as "the moment of truth" in the post-World War II division of Europe. When it appeared that, in spite of heavy pressure, non-communist parties might receive in excess of 40% of the vote in the August 1947 Hungarian elections, repressions were instituted to liquidate any independent political forces. At a late September 1947 meeting of all communist parties in Szklarska Poręba, Eastern Bloc communist parties were blamed for permitting even minor influence by non-communists in their respective countries during the run up to the Marshall Plan. The blockade was caused, in part, by early local elections of October 1946 in which the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) was rejected in favor of the Social Democratic Party, which had gained two and a half times more votes than the SED. The United States, Britain, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several other countries began a massive "Berlin airlift", supplying West Berlin with food and other supplies.
The Soviets mounted a public relations campaign against the western policy change and communists attempted to disrupt the elections of 1948 preceding large losses therein, while 300,000 Berliners demonstrated and urged the international airlift to continue. In May 1949, Stalin lifted the blockade, permitting the resumption of Western shipments to Berlin.
Tito–Stalin split
After disagreements between Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito and the Soviet Union regarding Greece and Albania, a Tito–Stalin split occurred, followed by Yugoslavia being expelled from the Cominform in June 1948 and a brief failed Soviet putsch in Belgrade. The split created two separate communist forces in Europe.
The first country to experience this approach was Albania, where leader Enver Hoxha immediately changed course from favoring Yugoslavia to opposing it. The preservation of the Soviet bloc relied on maintaining a sense of ideological unity that would entrench Moscow's influence in Eastern Europe as well as the power of the local Communist elites.
The port city of Trieste was a particular focus after the Second World War. Until the break between Tito and Stalin, the Western powers and the Eastern bloc faced each other uncompromisingly. The neutral buffer state Free Territory of Trieste, founded in 1947 with the United Nations, was split up and dissolved in 1954 and 1975, also because of the détente between the West and Tito.
Politics
thumb|left|upright=1.35|Countries which once had overtly [[Marxism–Leninism|Marxist–Leninist governments in bright red and countries the USSR considered at one point to be "moving toward socialism" in orange]]
Despite the initial institutional design of communism implemented by Joseph Stalin in the Eastern Bloc, subsequent development varied across countries. In satellite states, after peace treaties were initially concluded, opposition was essentially liquidated, fundamental steps towards socialism were enforced, and Kremlin leaders sought to strengthen control therein. Right from the beginning, Stalin directed systems that rejected Western institutional characteristics of market economies, capitalist parliamentary democracy (dubbed "bourgeois democracy" in Soviet parlance) and the rule of law subduing discretional intervention by the state. The resulting states aspired to total control of a political center backed by an extensive and active repressive apparatus, and a central role of Marxist–Leninist ideology.
The first or General Secretary of the central committee in each communist party was the most powerful figure in each regime. The party over which the politburo held sway was not a mass party but, conforming with Leninist tradition, a smaller selective party of between three and fourteen percent of the country's population who had accepted total obedience. Those who secured membership in this selective group received considerable rewards, such as access to special lower priced shops with a greater selection of high-quality domestic and/or foreign goods (confections, alcohol, cigars, cameras, televisions, and the like), special schools, holiday facilities, homes, high-quality domestic and/or foreign-made furniture, works of art, pensions, permission to travel abroad, and official cars with distinct license plates so that police and others could identify these members from a distance. While the institutional design of the communist systems were based on the rejection of rule of law, the legal infrastructure was not immune to change reflecting decaying ideology and the substitution of autonomous law. Thus, "politically unreliable" non-communists initially had to fill such roles.
Communist regimes in the Eastern Bloc viewed marginal groups of opposition intellectuals as a potential threat because of the bases underlying Communist power therein. The suppression of dissidence and opposition was considered a central prerequisite to retain power, though the enormous expense at which the population in certain countries were kept under secret surveillance may not have been rational. Juries were replaced by a tribunal of professional judges and two lay assessors that were dependable party actors.
The police deterred and contained opposition to party directives. Before the late 1980s, Eastern Bloc radio and television organizations were state-owned, while print media was usually owned by political organizations, mostly by the local communist party. Youth newspapers and magazines were owned by youth organizations affiliated with communist parties. The dissemination and portrayal of knowledge were considered by authorities to be vital to communism's survival by stifling alternative concepts and critiques.
From 1967 to 1991, the Soviet Union launched 18 Interkosmos missions, drawing crew from primarily Eastern Block nations
including:
- Bulgaria
- Czechoslovakia
- East Germany
- Hungary
- Mongolia
- Poland
- Romania
Religion
thumb|The [[Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Baku|Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, once the most dominant landmark in Baku, was demolished in the 1930s under Stalin.]]
Under the state atheism of many Eastern Bloc nations, religion was actively suppressed. Since some of these states tied their ethnic heritage to their national churches, both the peoples and their churches were targeted by the Soviets.
Organizations
In 1949, the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania founded the Comecon in accordance with Stalin's desire to enforce Soviet domination of the lesser states of Central Europe and to mollify some states that had expressed interest in the Marshall Plan, and which were now, increasingly, cut off from their traditional markets and suppliers in Western Europe. The Comecon's role became ambiguous because Stalin preferred more direct links with other party chiefs than the Comecon's indirect sophistication; it played no significant role in the 1950s in economic planning. Initially, the Comecon served as cover for the Soviet taking of materials and equipment from the rest of the Eastern Bloc, but the balance changed when the Soviets became net subsidizers of the rest of the Bloc by the 1970s via an exchange of low cost raw materials in return for shoddily manufactured finished goods.
In 1955, the Warsaw Pact was formed partly in response to NATO's inclusion of West Germany and partly because the Soviets needed an excuse to retain Red Army units in Hungary. This Soviet formalization of their security relationships in the Eastern Bloc reflected Moscow's basic security policy principle that continued presence in East Central Europe was a foundation of its defense against the West.
Beginning in 1964, Romania took a more independent course. Nicolae Ceaușescu's assumption of leadership one year later pushed Romania even further in the direction of separateness. following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Emigration restrictions and defectors
In 1917, Russia restricted emigration by instituting passport controls and forbidding the exit of belligerent nationals. In 1922, after the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, both the Ukrainian SSR and the Russian SFSR issued general rules for travel that foreclosed virtually all departures, making legal emigration impossible. Border controls thereafter strengthened such that, by 1928, even illegal departure was effectively impossible.
thumb|left|The [[Berlin Wall in 1975]]
After the creation of the Eastern Bloc, emigration out of the newly occupied countries, except under limited circumstances, was effectively halted in the early 1950s, with the Soviet approach to controlling national movement emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern Bloc. However, in East Germany, taking advantage of the Inner German border between occupied zones, hundreds of thousands fled to West Germany, with figures totaling 197,000 in 1950, 165,000 in 1951, 182,000 in 1952 and 331,000 in 1953. One reason for the sharp 1953 increase was fear of potential further Sovietization with the increasingly paranoid actions of Joseph Stalin in late 1952 and early 1953. 226,000 had fled in just the first six months of 1953.
With the closing of the Inner German border officially in 1952, the Berlin city sector borders remained considerably more accessible than the rest of the border because of their administration by all four occupying powers. Accordingly, it effectively comprised a "loophole" through which Eastern Bloc citizens could still move west. In August 1961, East Germany erected a barbed-wire barrier that would eventually be expanded through construction into the Berlin Wall, effectively closing the loophole.
With virtually non-existent conventional emigration, more than 75% of those emigrating from Eastern Bloc countries between 1950 and 1990 did so under bilateral agreements for "ethnic migration". About 10% were refugee migrants under the Geneva Convention of 1951. The fall of the Iron Curtain was accompanied by a massive rise in European East-West migration.
Population
Eastern Bloc countries such as the Soviet Union had high rates of population growth. In 1917, the population of Russia in its present borders was 91 million. Despite the destruction in the Russian Civil War, the population grew to 92.7 million in 1926. In 1939, the population increased by 17 percent to 108 million. Despite more than 20 million deaths suffered throughout World War II, Russia's population grew to 117.2 million in 1959. The Soviet census of 1989 showed Russia's population at 147 million people.
The Soviet economical and political system produced further consequences such as, for example, in Baltic states, where the population was approximately half of what it should have been compared with similar countries such as Denmark, Finland and Norway over the years 1939–1990. Poor housing was one factor leading to severely declining birth rates throughout the Eastern Bloc. also depressed the birth rate and forced a shift to pro-natalist policies by the late 1960s, including severe checks on abortion and propagandist exhortations like the 'heroine mother' distinction bestowed on those Romanian women who bore ten or more children.
In October 1966, artificial birth control was proscribed in Romania and regular pregnancy tests were mandated for women of child-bearing age, with severe penalties for anyone who was found to have terminated a pregnancy. Despite such restrictions, birth rates continued to lag, in part because of unskilled induced abortions.
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: right"
|+Eastern Bloc population
|-
!Country
!Area (000s)
!1950 (mil)
!1970 (mil)
!1980 (mil)
!1985 (mil)
!Annual growth<br /> (1950–1985)
!Density (1980)
|-
|align=left|Albania || || 1.22 || 2.16 || 2.59 || 2.96 || +4.07% || 90.2/km<sup>2</sup>
|-
|align=left|Bulgaria || || 7.27 || 8.49 || 8.88 || 8.97 || +0.67% || 80.1/km<sup>2</sup>
|-
|align=left|Czechoslovakia || || 13.09 || 14.47 || 15.28 || 15.50 || +0.53% || 119.5/km<sup>2</sup>
|-
|align=left|Hungary || || 9.20 || 10.30 || 10.71 || 10.60 || +0.43% || 115.2/km<sup>2</sup>
|-
|align=left|East Germany || || 17.94 || 17.26 || 16.74 || 16.69 || −0.20% || 154.6/km<sup>2</sup>
|-
|align=left|Poland || || 24.82 || 30.69 || 35.73 || 37.23 || +1.43% || 114.3/km<sup>2</sup>
|-
|align=left|Romania || || 16.31 || 20.35 || 22.20 || 22.73 || +1.12% || 93.5/km<sup>2</sup>
|-
|align=left|Soviet Union || || 182.32 || 241.72 || 265.00 || 272.00 || +1.41% || 11.9/km<sup>2</sup>
|-
|align=left|Yugoslavia || ||16.34 ||20.4 ||22.36 ||23.1 || +1.15% ||92.6/km<sup>2</sup>
|}
Social structure
Eastern Bloc societies operated under anti-meritocratic principles with strong egalitarian elements. For example, Czechoslovakia favoured less qualified individuals, as well as providing privileges for the nomenklatura and those with the right class or political background. Eastern Bloc societies were dominated by the ruling communist party, dubbed "partyocracy" by Pavel Machonin. Former members of the middle-class were officially discriminated against, though the need for their skills allowed them to re-invent themselves as good communist citizens.
Housing
A housing shortage existed throughout the Eastern Bloc. In Europe it was primarily due to the devastation during World War II. Construction efforts suffered after a severe cutback in state resources available for housing starting in 1975. Cities became filled with large system-built apartment blocks Moreover, completed houses possessed noticeably poor quality finishes. East German authorities viewed large cost advantages in the construction of Plattenbau apartment blocks such that the building of such architecture on the edge of large cities continued until the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc. For all countries for which data existed, 60% of dwellings had a density of greater than one person per room between 1966 and 1975.
|-
!Country
!Adequate sanitation % (year)
!Piped water %
!Central heating %
!Inside toilet %
!More than 1 person/room %
|-
|align=left|Albania || n/a || n/a || n/a || n/a || n/a
|-
|align=left|Bulgaria || n/a || 66.1% || 7.5% || 28.0% || 60.2%
|-
|align=left|Czechoslovakia || 60.5% (1983) || 75.3% || 30.9% || 52.4% || 67.9%
|-
|align=left|East Germany || 70.0% (1985) || 82.1% || 72.2% || 43.4% || n/a
|-
|align=left|Hungary || 60.0% (1984)|| 64% (1980) || n/a || 52.5% (1980) || 64.4%
|-
|align=left|Poland || 50.0% (1980) || 47.3% || 22.2% || 33.4% || 83.0%
|-
|align=left|Romania || 50.0% (1980) || 12.3% (1966) || n/a || n/a || 81.5%
|-
|align=left|Soviet Union || 50.0% (1980) || n/a || n/a || n/a || n/a
|-
|align=left|Yugoslavia || 69.8% (1981)|| 93.2% || 84.2% || 89.7% || 83.1%
|}
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: right"
|+Housing quality in Hungary (1949–1990)
|-
!Year
!Houses/flats total
!With piped water
!With sewage disposal
!With inside toilet
!With piped gas
|-
|align=left|1949 || 2,466,514 || 420,644 (17.1%) || – || 306,998 (12.5%) || 174,186 (7.1%)
|-
|align=left|1960 || 2,757,625 || 620,600 (22.5%) || – || 440,737 (16%) || 373,124 (13.5%)
|-
|align=left|1970 || 3,118,096 || 1,370,609 (44%) || 1,167,055 (37.4%) || 838,626 (26.9%) || 1,571,691 (50.4%)
|-
|align=left|1980 || 3,542,418 || 2,268,014 (64%) || 2,367,274 (66.8%) || 1,859,677 (52.5%) || 2,682,143 (75.7%)
|-
|align=left|1990 || 3,853,288 || 3,209,930 (83.3%) || 3,228,257 (83.8%) || 2,853,834 (74%) || 3,274,514 (85%)
|}
The worsening shortages of the 1970s and 1980s occurred during an increase in the quantity of dwelling stock relative to population from 1970 to 1986. Even for new dwellings, average dwelling size was only in the Eastern Bloc compared with in ten western countries for which comparable data was available.
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: right"
|+Housing characteristics in new dwellings of the Eastern Bloc
|-
! || colspan=3|Floor space/dwelling || colspan="3" |People/dwelling
|-
!Country
!1970
!1980
!1986
!1970
!1986
|-
|align=center|Western Bloc ||colspan=3 align=center| || n/a || n/a
|-
|align=left|Albania || n/a || n/a || n/a || n/a || n/a
|-
|align=left|Bulgaria || || || ||3.8 || 2.8
|-
|align=left|Czechoslovakia || || || || 3.4 || 2.7
|-
|align=left|East Germany || || || || 2.9 || 2.4
|-
|align=left|Hungary || || || || 3.4 || 2.7
|-
|align=left|Poland || || || || 4.2 || 3.5
|-
|align=left|Romania || || || || 3.6 || 2.8
|-
|align=left|Soviet Union || || || || 4.1 || 3.2
|-
|align=left|Yugoslavia || || || || n/a || 3.4
|}
Poor housing was one of the four major factors (others being poor living conditions, increased female employment and abortion as an encouraged means of birth control) which led to declining birth rates throughout the Eastern Bloc.
Economies
thumb|During World War II, [[Destruction of Warsaw|85% of buildings in Warsaw were destroyed by German troops.]]
Because of the lack of market signals, Eastern Bloc economies experienced mis-development by central planners. The Eastern Bloc also depended upon the Soviet Union for significant amounts of materials.
Technological backwardness resulted in dependency on imports from Western countries and this, in turn, in demand for Western currency. Eastern Bloc countries were heavily borrowing from Club de Paris (central banks) and London Club (private banks) and most of them by the early 1980s were forced to notify the creditors of their insolvency. This information was however kept secret from the citizens and propaganda promoted the view that the countries were on the best way to socialism.
Social conditions
As a consequence of World War II and the German occupations in Eastern Europe, much of the region had been subjected to enormous destruction of industry, infrastructure and loss of civilian life. In Poland alone the policy of plunder and exploitation inflicted enormous material losses to Polish industry (62% of which was destroyed), agriculture, infrastructure and cultural landmarks, the cost of which has been estimated as approximately €525 billion or $640 billion in 2004 exchange values.
Throughout the Eastern Bloc, both in the USSR and the rest of the Bloc, Russia was given prominence and referred to as the naiboleye vydayushchayasya natsiya (the most prominent nation) and the rukovodyashchiy narod (the leading people). The Soviets promoted the reverence of Russian actions and characteristics, and the construction of Soviet structural hierarchies in the other countries of the Eastern Bloc. The Soviet-style "replica regimes" that arose in the Bloc not only reproduced the Soviet command economy, but also adopted the brutal methods employed by Joseph Stalin and Soviet-style secret polices to suppress real and potential opposition. emigration was effectively halted in the early 1950s, with the Soviet approach to controlling national movement emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern Bloc. Stalin had sealed off outside access to the Soviet Union since 1935 (and until his death), effectively permitting no foreign travel inside the Soviet Union such that outsiders did not know of the political processes that had taken place therein. During this period, and even for 25 years after Stalin's death, the few diplomats and foreign correspondents permitted inside the Soviet Union were usually restricted to within a few kilometres of Moscow, their phones were tapped, their residences were restricted to foreigner-only locations and they were constantly followed by Soviet authorities. Before World War II, the Soviet Union used draconian procedures to ensure compliance with directives to invest all assets in state planned manners, including the collectivisation of agriculture and utilising a sizeable labor army collected in the gulag system. Eastern Bloc states were required to provide coal, industrial equipment, technology, rolling stock and other resources to reconstruct the Soviet Union. Between 1945 and 1953, the Soviets received a net transfer of resources from the rest of the Eastern Bloc under this policy of roughly $14 billion, an amount comparable to the net transfer from the United States to western Europe in the Marshall Plan. "Reparations" included the dismantling of railways in Poland and Romanian reparations to the Soviets between 1944 and 1948 valued at $1.8 billion concurrent with the domination of SovRoms. Using that control vehicle, several enterprises were required to sell products at below world prices to the Soviets, such as uranium mines in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, coal mines in Poland, and oil wells in Romania.
Trade and Comecon
The trading pattern of the Eastern Bloc countries was severely modified. Before World War II, no greater than 1%–2% of those countries' trade was with the Soviet Union.
Soviet dominance further tied other Eastern Bloc economies Following resistance to Comecon plans to extract Romania's mineral resources and heavily utilise its agricultural production, Romania began to take a more independent stance in 1964. Apartment rent on average amounted to only 1 percent of the family budget, a figure which reached 4 percent when municipal services are factored in. Tram tickets were 20 kopecks, and a loaf of bread was 15 kopecks. The average monthly salary of an engineer was 140–160 rubles.
The Soviet Union made major progress in developing the country's consumer goods sector. In 1970, the USSR produced 679 million pairs of leather footwear, compared to 534 million for the United States. Czechoslovakia, which had the world's highest per-capita production of shoes, exported a significant portion of its shoe production to other countries.
According to official statistics, the rising standard of living under socialism led to a steady decrease in the workday and an increase in leisure. In 1974, the average workweek for Soviet industrial workers was 40 hours. Paid vacations in 1968 reached a minimum of 15 workdays. In the mid-1970s the number of free days per year-days off, holidays and vacations was 128–130, almost double the figure from the previous ten years.
Because of the lack of market signals in such economies, they experienced mis-development by central planners resulting in those countries following a path of extensive (large mobilisation of inefficiently used capital, labor, energy and raw material inputs) rather than intensive (efficient resource use) development to attempt to achieve quick growth.
Since that model involved the prodigal exploitation of natural and other resources, it has been described as a kind of "slash and burn" modality.
Factories were sometimes inefficiently located, incurring high transport costs, while poor plant-organisation sometimes resulted in production hold-ups and knock-on effects in other industries dependent on monopoly suppliers of intermediates. In addition, the plans' emphasis on quantity rather than quality made Eastern Bloc products less competitive in the world market. Many premium goods could be bought either in a black market or only in special stores using foreign currency generally inaccessible to most Eastern Bloc citizens, such as Intershop in East Germany, Pewex in Poland, Tuzex in Czechoslovakia, Corecom in Bulgaria, or Comturist in Romania. Much of what was produced for the local population never reached its intended user, while many perishable products became unfit for consumption before reaching their consumers. The second, "parallel economy" flourished throughout the Bloc because of rising unmet state consumer needs. Black and gray markets for foodstuffs, goods, and cash arose. Some service workers moonlighted illegally providing services directly to customers for payment. By 1960, massive urbanisation occurred in Poland (48% urban) and Bulgaria (38%), which increased employment for peasants, but also caused illiteracy to skyrocket when children left school for work. It required the forced consolidation of small-scale peasant farms and larger holdings belonging to the landed classes for the purpose of creating larger modern "collective farms" owned, in theory, by the workers therein. In reality, such farms were owned by the state. Rural collectivization proceeded differently in non-Soviet Eastern Bloc countries than it did in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s.
Nor could they risk mass starvation or agricultural sabotage (e.g., holodomor) with a rapid collectivization through massive state farms and agricultural producers' cooperatives (APCs).
Unlike Soviet collectivization, neither massive destruction of livestock nor errors causing distorted output or distribution occurred in the other Eastern Bloc countries. Instead of liquidating large farmers or barring them from joining APCs as Stalin had done through dekulakisation, those farmers were utilised in the non-Soviet Eastern Bloc collectivizations, sometimes even being named farm chairman or managers.
In 1980, the number of scientific personnel in the USSR was 1.4 million. The number of engineers employed in the national economy was 4.7 million. Between 1960 and 1980, the number of scientific personnel increased by a factor of 4. In 1975, the number of scientific personnel in the USSR amounted to one-fourth of the total number of scientific personnel in the world. In 1980, as compared with 1940, the number of invention proposals submitted was more than 5 million. In 1980, there were 10 all-Union research institutes, 85 specialised central agencies, and 93 regional information centres.
The world's first nuclear power plant was commissioned on 27 June 1954 in Obninsk. Soviet scientists made a major contribution to the development of computer technology. The first major achievements in the field were associated with the building of analog computers. In the USSR, principles for the construction of network analysers were developed by S. Gershgorin in 1927 and the concept of the electrodynamic analog computer was proposed by N. Minorsky in 1936. In the 1940s, the development of AC electronic antiaircraft directors and the first vacuum-tube integrators was begun by L. Gutenmakher. In the 1960s, important developments in modern computer equipment were the BESM-6 system built under the direction of S. A. Lebedev, the MIR series of small digital computers, and the Minsk series of digital computers developed by G.Lopato and V. Przhyalkovsky.
Author Turnock claims that transport in the Eastern Bloc was characterised by poor infrastructural maintenance. The road network suffered from inadequate load capacity, poor surfacing and deficient roadside servicing. Private car ownership remained low by Western standards. Large thermal power stations burning lignite and other items became notorious polluters, while some hydro-electric systems performed inefficiently because of dry seasons and silt accumulation in reservoirs. Kraków was covered by smog 135 days per year while Wrocław was covered by a fog of chrome gas.
Several villages were evacuated because of copper smelting at Głogów. The resulting drinking water became so polluted in Hungary that over 700 villages had to be supplied by tanks, bottles and plastic bags. some operators lacking an even basic understanding of the reactor's processes and authoritarian Soviet bureaucracy, valuing party loyalty over competence, that kept promoting incompetent personnel and choosing cheapness over safety. The consequent release of fallout resulted in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people leaving a massive desolate Zone of alienation containing extensive still-standing abandoned urban development.
Tourism from outside the Eastern Bloc was neglected, while tourism from other Stalinist countries grew within the Eastern Bloc. Tourism drew investment, relying upon tourism and recreation opportunities existing before World War II. By 1945, most hotels were run-down, while many which escaped conversion to other uses by central planners were slated to meet domestic demands. Because of the worry of the subversive effect of the tourist industry, travel was restricted to 6,000 visitors per year.
Growth rates
Growth rates in the Eastern Bloc were initially high in the 1950s and 1960s. Meanwhile, West Germany, Austria, France and other Western European nations experienced increased economic growth in the Wirtschaftswunder ("economic miracle"), Trente Glorieuses ("thirty glorious years") and the post-World War II boom.
From the end of World War II to the mid-1970s, the economy of the Eastern Bloc steadily increased at the same rate as the economy in Western Europe, with the non-reformist Stalinist nations of the Eastern Bloc having a stronger economy than the reformist-Stalinist states. While most western European economies essentially began to approach the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) levels of the United States during the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Eastern Bloc countries did not,
The following table displays a set of estimated growth rates of GDP from 1951 onward, for the countries of the Eastern Bloc as well as those of Western Europe as reported by The Conference Board as part of its Total Economy Database. In some cases data availability does not go all the way back to 1951.
{|class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align: right"
|+The Conference Board GDP growth rates in percent for the given years
|-
!Country
!1951
!1961
!1971
!1981
!1989
!1991
!2001
!2015
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|People's Socialist Republic of Albania||6.608||4.156||6.510||2.526||2.648||−28.000||7.940||2.600
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|People's Republic of Bulgaria||20.576||6.520||3.261||2.660||−1.792||−8.400||4.248||2.968
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Hungarian People's Republic||9.659||5.056||4.462||0.706||−2.240||−11.900||3.849||2.951
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Polish People's Republic||4.400||7.982||7.128||−5.324||−1.552||−7.000||1.248||3.650
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Socialist Republic of Romania||7.237||6.761||14.114||−0.611||−3.192||−16.189||5.592||3.751
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Czechoslovak Socialist Republic/Czech Republic||–||–||5.215||−0.160||1.706||−11.600||3.052||4.274
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Czechoslovak Socialist Republic/Slovakia||–||–||–||–||1.010||−14.600||3.316||3.595
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Soviet Union/Russia||–||7.200||4.200||1.200||0.704||−5.000||5.091||−3.727
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Austria||6.840||5.309||5.112||−0.099||4.227||3.442||1.351||0.811
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Belgium||5.688||4.865||3.753||−1.248||3.588||1.833||0.811||1.374
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Denmark||0.668||6.339||2.666||−0.890||0.263||1.300||0.823||1.179
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Finland||8.504||7.620||2.090||1.863||5.668||−5.914||2.581||0.546
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|France||6.160||5.556||4.839||1.026||4.057||1.039||1.954||1.270
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Germany (West)||9.167||4.119||2.943||0.378||3.270||5.108||1.695||1.700
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Greece||8.807||8.769||7.118||0.055||3.845||3.100||4.132||−0.321
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Ireland||2.512||4.790||3.618||3.890||7.051||3.098||9.006||8.538
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Italy||7.466||8.422||1.894||0.474||2.882||1.538||1.772||0.800
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Netherlands||2.098||0.289||4.222||−0.507||4.679||2.439||2.124||1.990
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Norway||5.418||6.268||5.130||0.966||0.956||3.085||2.085||1.598
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Portugal||4.479||5.462||6.633||1.618||5.136||4.368||1.943||1.460
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Spain||9.937||12.822||5.722||0.516||5.280||2.543||4.001||3.214
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Sweden||3.926||5.623||2.356||−0.593||3.073||−1.146||1.563||3.830
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Switzerland||8.097||8.095||4.076||1.579||4.340||−0.916||1.447||0.855
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|United Kingdom||2.985||3.297||2.118||−1.303||2.179||−1.257||2.758||2.329
|}
The United Nations Statistics Division also calculates growth rates, using a different methodology, but only reports the figures starting in 1971 (for Slovakia and the constituent republics of the USSR data availability begins later). Thus, according to the United Nations growth rates in Europe were as follows:
{|class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align: right"
|+United Nations Statistics Division GDP growth rates in percent for the given years
|-
!Country
!1971
!1981
!1989
!1991
!2001
!2015
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|People's Socialist Republic of Albania||4.001||5.746||9.841||−28.002||8.293||2.639
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|People's Republic of Bulgaria||6.897||4.900||−3.290||−8.445||4.248||2.968
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Hungarian People's Republic||6.200||2.867||0.736||−11.687||3.774||3.148
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Polish People's Republic||7.415||−9.971||0.160||−7.016||1.248||3.941
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Socialist Republic of Romania||13.000||0.112||−5.788||−12.918||5.592||3.663
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Czechoslovak Socialist Republic/Czech Republic||5.044||−0.095||0.386||−11.615||3.052||4.536
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Czechoslovak Socialist Republic/Slovakia||–||–||–||−14.541||3.316||3.831
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Soviet Union/Russia||5.209||5.301||6.801||−5.000||5.091||−3.727
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Ukraine||–||–||–||−8.699||8.832||−9.870
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Lithuania||–||–||–||−5.676||6.524||1.779
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Yugoslavia/Serbia||9.162||1.400||1.500||−11.664||4.993||0.758
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Austria||5.113||−0.144||3.887||3.442||1.351||0.963
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Belgium||3.753||−0.279||3.469||1.833||0.812||1.500
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Denmark||3.005||−0.666||0.645||1.394||0.823||1.606
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Finland||2.357||1.295||5.088||−5.914||2.581||0.210
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|France||5.346||1.078||4.353||1.039||1.954||1.274
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Germany (West)||3.133||0.529||3.897||5.108||1.695||1.721
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Greece||7.841||−1.554||3.800||3.100||4.132||−0.219
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Ireland||3.470||3.325||5.814||1.930||6.052||26.276
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Italy||1.818||0.844||3.388||1.538||1.772||0.732
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Netherlands||4.331||−0.784||4.420||2.439||2.124||1.952
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Norway||5.672||1.598||1.038||3.085||2.085||1.611
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Portugal||6.632||1.618||6.441||4.368||1.943||1.596
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Spain||4.649||−0.132||4.827||2.546||4.001||3.205
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Sweden||0.945||0.455||2.655||−1.146||1.563||4.085
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Switzerland||4.075||1.601||4.331||−0.916||1.447||0.842
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|United Kingdom||3.479||−0.779||2.583||−1.119||2.726||2.222
|}
thumb|upright=1.8|Per capita GDP in the Eastern Bloc from 1950 to 2003 (1990 base [[International dollar|Geary-Khamis dollars) according to Angus Maddison]]
thumb|upright=1.6|GDP per capita of the Eastern Bloc in relations with the GDP per capita of the United States during 1900–2010
The following table lists the level of nominal GDP per capita in certain selected countries, measured in US dollars, for the years 1970, 1989, and 2015:
{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align: right"
|+Nominal GDP per Capita, according to the UN
|-
!rowspan =2 |Country
!colspan=3 |US dollars
|-
!1970
!1989
!2015
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|United Kingdom||2,350||16,275||44,162
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Italy||2,112 ||16,239||30,462
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Austria||2,042 ||17,313||44,118
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Japan||2,040 ||25,054||34,629
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Soviet Union/Russia||||||9,243
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Ukraine||-||-||2,022
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Lithuania||-||-||14,384
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Greece||1,496 ||7,864||17,788
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Ireland||1,493 ||11,029||60,514
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Spain||1,205||10,577||25,865
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Czechoslovak Socialist Republic/Czech Republic||||||17,562
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Slovakia||-||-||16,082
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|People's Republic of Bulgaria||||||6,847
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|People's Socialist Republic of Albania||||||3,984
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Cyprus||1,004 ||9,015||21,942
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Polish People's Republic||||||12,355
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Portugal||935||6,129||19,239
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Yugoslavia/Serbia||||||5,239
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Cuba||||||
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Socialist Republic of Romania||||||9,121
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Hungarian People's Republic||||||12,351
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|China||||||
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Vietnam||||||
|}
While it can be argued the World Bank estimates of GDP used for 1990 figures underestimate Eastern Bloc GDP because of undervalued local currencies, per capita incomes were undoubtedly lower than in their counterparts. Until the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, East Germany was considered a weak state, hemorrhaging skilled labor to the West such that it was referred to as "the disappearing satellite". Only after the wall sealed in skilled labor was East Germany able to ascend to the top economic spot in the Eastern Bloc. As a result, a large productivity gap of nearly 50% per worker existed between East and West Germany.
Moreover, the purchasing power of wages differed greatly, with only about half of East German households owning either a car or a color television set as late as 1990, both of which had been standard possessions in West German households.
Once installed, the economic system was difficult to change given the importance of politically reliable management and the prestige value placed on large enterprises. Performance declined during the 1970s and 1980s due to inefficiency when industrial input costs, such as energy prices, increased. Hungarian steel costs doubled those of western Europe.
During the years 1957–1965, housing policy underwent several institutional changes with industrialisation and urbanisation had not been matched by an increase in housing after World War II. Housing shortages in the Soviet Union were worse than in the rest of the Eastern Bloc due to a larger migration to the towns and more wartime devastation and were worsened by Stalin's pre-war refusals to invest properly in housing. However, during that period the total number of dwellings increased.
During the last fifteen years of this period (1960–1975), an emphasis was made for a supply side solution, which assumed that industrialised building methods and high rise housing would be cheaper and quicker than traditional brick-built, low-rise housing. This led to higher demolition rates and higher costs to repair poorly constructed dwellings. This occurred in Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Romania (with an earlier peak in 1960 also), Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia while the Soviet Union peaked in 1960 and 1970.
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: right"
|+Housing shortages in the Eastern Bloc and Yugoslavia
|-
!Country
!Initial year
!Initial year<br /> shortage
!% of total stock
!1986 <br />shortage
!1986 <br />% of total stock
|-
|align=left|Albania || n/a || n/a || n/a || n/a || n/a
|-
|align=left|Bulgaria || 1965 || 472,000 || 23.0 || 880,400 || 27.4
|-
|align=left|Hungary || 1973 || 6,000 || 0.2 || 257,000 || 6.6
|-
|align=left|East Germany || 1971 || 340,000 || 5.6 || 1,181,700 || 17.1
|-
|align=left|Poland || 1974 || 1,357,000 || 15.9 || 2,574,800 || 23.9
|-
|align=left|Romania || 1966 || 575,000 || 11.0 || 1,157,900 || 14.0
|-
|align=left|Soviet Union || 1970 || 13,690,000 || 23.1 || 26,662,400 || 30.2
|-
|align=left|Czechoslovakia || 1970 || 438,000 || 9.9 || 877,600 || 15.3
|-
|align=left|Yugoslavia || n/a || n/a || n/a || 1,634,700 || 23.9
|}
These are official housing figures and may be low. For example, in the Soviet Union the figure of 26,662,400 in 1986 almost certainly underestimates shortages for the reason that it does not count shortages from large Soviet rural-urban migration; another calculation estimates shortages to be 59,917,900. By the late 1980s, Poland had an average 20-year wait time for housing while Warsaw had between a 26- and 50-year wait time. Toward the end of the Eastern Bloc allegations of misallocations and illegal distribution of housing were raised in Soviet CPSU Central Committee meetings. In Bulgaria, a prior emphasis on monolithic high-rise housing lessened somewhat in the 1970s and 1980s. In staunchly Stalinist Albania, housing blocks (panelka) were spartan, with six-story walk-ups being the most frequent design. The East German government then raised "norms" – the amount each worker was required to produce – by 10%. By 17 June, strikes were recorded in 317 locations involving approximately 400,000 workers. Responding to popular demand, in October 1956, the Polish government appointed the recently rehabilitated reformist Władysław Gomułka as First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party, with a mandate to negotiate trade concessions and troop reductions with the Soviet government. After a few tense days of negotiations, on 19 October, the Soviets finally gave in to Gomułka's reformist requests.
The revolution began after students of the Technical University compiled a list of Demands of Hungarian Revolutionaries of 1956 and conducted protests in support of the demands on 22 October. Protests of support swelled to 200,000 by 6 pm the following day, The demands included free secret ballot elections, independent tribunals, inquiries into Stalin and Rákosi Hungarian activities and that "the statue of Stalin, symbol of Stalinist tyranny and political oppression, be removed as quickly as possible." By 9:30 pm the statue was toppled and jubilant crowds celebrated by placing Hungarian flags in Stalin's boots, which was all that remained the statue.
By 2 am on 24 October, under orders of Soviet defense minister Georgy Zhukov, Soviet tanks entered Budapest. Protester attacks at the Parliament forced the dissolution of the government. A ceasefire was arranged on 28 October, and by 30 October most Soviet troops had withdrawn from Budapest to garrisons in the Hungarian countryside. Fighting had virtually ceased between 28 October and 4 November, while many Hungarians believed that Soviet military units were indeed withdrawing from Hungary.
thumb|Budapest in 1956
The new government that came to power during the revolution formally disbanded ÁVH, declared its intention to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact and pledged to re-establish free elections. The Soviet Politburo thereafter moved to crush the revolution. On 4 November, a large Soviet force invaded Budapest and other regions of the country. The last pocket of resistance called for ceasefire on 10 November. Over 2,500 Hungarians and 722 Soviet troops were killed and thousands more were wounded.
Thousands of Hungarians were arrested, imprisoned and deported to the Soviet Union, many without evidence. Approximately 200,000 Hungarians fled Hungary, some 26,000 Hungarians were put on trial by the new Soviet-installed János Kádár government, and of those, 13,000 were imprisoned. Imre Nagy was executed, along with Pál Maléter and Miklós Gimes, after secret trials in June 1958. Their bodies were placed in unmarked graves in the Municipal Cemetery outside Budapest. By January 1957, the new Soviet-installed government had suppressed all public opposition.
Prague Spring and the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia
A period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia called the Prague Spring took place in 1968. The event was spurred by several events, including economic reforms that addressed an early 1960s economic downturn. The event began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Slovak Alexander Dubček came to power. In April, Dubček launched an "Action Program" of liberalizations, which included increasing freedom of the press, freedom of speech and freedom of movement, along with an economic emphasis on consumer goods, the possibility of a multiparty government and limiting the power of the secret police.
Initial reaction within the Eastern Bloc was mixed, with Hungary's János Kádár expressing support, while Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and others grew concerned about Dubček's reforms, which they feared might weaken the Eastern Bloc's position during the Cold War. On 3 August, representatives from the Soviet Union, East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia met in Bratislava and signed the Bratislava Declaration, which affirmed unshakable fidelity to Marxism–Leninism and proletarian internationalism and declared an implacable struggle against "bourgeois" ideology and all "anti-socialist" forces.
thumb|left|Czechoslovak protestors carrying their national flag past a burning Soviet tank in Prague, 1968
On the night of 20–21 August 1968, Eastern Bloc armies from five Warsaw Pact countries (the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, Hungary and Bulgaria) invaded Czechoslovakia. The invasion comported with the Brezhnev Doctrine, a policy of compelling Eastern Bloc states to subordinate national interests to those of the Bloc as a whole and the exercise of a Soviet right to intervene if an Eastern Bloc country appeared to shift towards capitalism. The invasion was followed by a wave of emigration, including an estimated 70,000 Czechoslovaks initially fleeing, with the total eventually reaching 300,000.
In April 1969, Dubček was replaced as first secretary by Gustáv Husák and a period of "normalization" began. Husák reversed Dubček's reforms, purged the party of liberal members, dismissed opponents from public office, reinstated the power of the police authorities, sought to re-centralize the economy and re-instated the disallowance of political commentary in mainstream media and by persons not considered to have "full political trust".
Dissolution
thumb|upright=1.35|The Cold War in 1980 before the [[Iran–Iraq War]]
Soviet control of the Eastern Bloc was first tested by the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état and the Tito–Stalin split over the direction of the People's Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the Chinese Communist Revolution (1949) and Chinese participation in the Korean War. After Stalin's death in 1953, the Korean War ceased with the 1954 Geneva Conference. In Europe, anti-Soviet sentiment provoked the East German uprising of 1953. Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 anti-Stalinist speech On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences was a factor in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which the Soviet Union suppressed, and the Sino–Soviet split. The Sino–Soviet split gave North Korea and North Vietnam more independence from both and facilitated the Albanian–Soviet split. The Cuban Missile Crisis and the failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion preserved the Cuban Revolution from rollback by the United States but Cuban leader Fidel Castro became increasingly independent of Soviet influence afterwards, most notably during the 1975 Cuban intervention in Angola. He announced what was jokingly called the "Sinatra Doctrine" after the singer's "My Way" to allow the countries of Central and Eastern Europe to determine their own internal affairs during this period.
Gorbachev initiated a policy of glasnost (openness) in the Soviet Union, and emphasized the need for perestroika (economic restructuring). The Soviet Union was struggling economically after the long war in Afghanistan and did not have the resources to control Central and Eastern Europe.
The start of the disintegration of the Eastern Bloc can be attributed to June 1989 Polish parliamentary election, to the opening of a border gate between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic on 19 August 1989, and to the fact that the Hungarian Government granted 108 GDR citizens permission to cross the Iron Curtain. These citizens had stayed in the Embassy of Western Germany in Budapest. This permission became publicly known. Nine days later, 1,400 had come to the Embassy, on 2 September there were 3,500 and on 4 September 4,700 GDR citizens. At the evening of 9 September 1989, Hungary opened its border to Austria for all GDR citizens.
On 3 October 1990 East Germany reunited with West Germany following the November 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. Unlike previous Soviet leaders in 1953, 1956 and 1968, Gorbachev refused to use force to end the 1989 Revolutions against Marxist–Leninist rule in Eastern Europe. The fall of the Berlin Wall and end of the Warsaw Pact spread nationalist and liberal ideals throughout the Soviet Union. In 1991, Conservative communist elites launched a 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, which hastened the end of Marxist–Leninist rule in Eastern Europe. However, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in China were violently repressed by the communist government there, which maintained its grip on power.
In 1989, a wave of revolutions, sometimes called the "Autumn of Nations", swept across the Eastern Bloc.
Major reforms occurred in Hungary following the replacement of János Kádár as General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1988. In Poland in April 1989, the Solidarity organization was legalized and allowed to participate in parliamentary elections. In the elections on 4 June 1989, it captured 99% of available parliamentary seats.
thumb|upright|[[Otto von Habsburg, who played a leading role in opening the Iron Curtain]]
The opening of the Iron Curtain between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic on 19 August 1989 then set in motion a chain reaction, at the end of which there was East Germany and the Eastern Bloc had disintegrated.
Extensive advertising for the planned picnic was made by posters and flyers among the GDR holidaymakers in Hungary. The Austrian branch of the Paneuropean Union, which was then headed by Karl von Habsburg, distributed thousands of brochures inviting them to a picnic near the border at Sopron.
It was the largest escape movement from East Germany since the time before the Berlin Wall was built in 1961. After the picnic, which was based on an idea by Otto von Habsburg to test the reaction of the USSR and Mikhail Gorbachev to an opening of the border, tens of thousands of media-informed East Germans set off for Hungary. Hungary was then no longer prepared to keep its borders completely closed or to commit its border troops to use force of arms. Erich Honecker dictated to the Daily Mirror for the Paneuropa Picnic: "Habsburg distributed leaflets far into Poland, on which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic. When they came to the picnic, they were given gifts, food and Deutsche Mark, and then they were persuaded to come to the West". The leadership of the GDR in East Berlin did not dare to completely block the borders of their own country and the USSR did not respond at all. Thus the bracket of the Eastern Bloc was broken.
thumb|upright|[[Erich Honecker]]
thumb|left|upright=1.35|Changes in national boundaries after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc
On 9 November 1989, following mass protests in East Germany and the relaxing of border restrictions in Czechoslovakia, tens of thousands of Eastern Berliners flooded checkpoints along the Berlin Wall and crossed into West Berlin. Parts of the wall were torn down, leading to the reunification of Germany on 3 October 1990; around this time, most of the remains of the wall were torn down. In Bulgaria, the day after the mass crossings through the Berlin Wall, the leader Todor Zhivkov was ousted by his Politburo and replaced with Petar Mladenov.
In Czechoslovakia, following protests of an estimated half-million Czechs and Slovaks demanding freedoms and a general strike, the authorities, which had allowed travel to the West, abolished provisions guaranteeing the ruling Communist Party its leading role. President Gustáv Husák appointed the first largely non-Communist government in Czechoslovakia since 1948 and resigned in what was called the Velvet Revolution. The Romanian military sided with protesters and turned on Ceaușescu. They executed him after a brief trial three days later.
Even before the Eastern Bloc's last years, all of the countries in the Warsaw Pact did not always act as a unified bloc. For instance, the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia was condemned by Romania, which refused to take part in it. Albania withdrew from the Pact, and the Eastern Bloc altogether, in response to the invasion. In Cambodia, communist rule ended in 1992 and monarchy was restored in 1993.
The only surviving communist states are China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. Their state-socialist experience was more in line with decolonization from the Global North and anti-imperialism towards the West instead of the Red Army occupation of the former Eastern Bloc. The five states all adopted economic reforms to varying degrees. China and Vietnam are usually described as more state capitalist than the more traditionalist Cuba, Laos, and North Korea. This was previously the case in Kazakhstan until 2022, Uzbekistan until 2016, Turkmenistan until 2006, Kyrgyzstan until 2005, Azerbaijan and Georgia until 2003, Armenia until 1998, Moldova until 1997, Ukrainia and Belarus until 1994, Tajikistan until 1992. All presidents of post-Soviet Russia were members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Boris Yeltsin before 1990, Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev before 1991). Azerbaijan is an authoritarian dominant-party state yet it has officially eliminated mentions of communism from its constitution.
Legacy
Aftermath
The fall of the Eastern Bloc had varying impacts on former Communist countries in the short and long term. Many factors shaped how post-Communist countries performed economically, both in the transition period of the 1990s and into the 21st century. These included the legacy of the Communist-era planned economy and one-party state—both overall and in each individual country—the state of the economy on the eve of reform, the pace and execution of economic reforms, the status of the rule of law, and the relevant international situation. Some factors applied to every post-Communist country, while others depended on a wide variety of country-specific circumstances.
By the time the Eastern Bloc fell, the economies of former Communist countries were dominated by obsolete and inefficient heavy industry that was largely uncompetitive in a market environment. The planned economies had long stifled innovation, and it often cost more to produce goods than the final product ultimately cost. By the late 1980s, economic imbalances had reached critical levels, and there was a consensus on the need for reform. .
Thus, every former Communist country experienced a period of economic recession, decline in industrial production, and during the transition to a market economy. How deep this recession went, how long it lasted, and how fast a given country recovered depended on various domestic and international factors.
Writing in 2016, German historian Philipp Ther asserted that neoliberal policies of liberalization, deregulation, and privatization "had catastrophic effects on former Soviet Bloc countries", and that the imposition of Washington Consensus-inspired "shock therapy" had little to do with future economic growth.
An estimated seven million premature deaths took place in the former USSR after it collapsed, with around four million in Russia alone. Russia experienced the largest drop in life expectancy during peacetime in recorded history after the fall of the USSR.
The scholars Kristen Ghodsee and Mitchell A. Orenstein have referred to this as the "mortality belt of the European former Soviet Union" and assert that it could have been avoided with the implementation of "an aggressive health policy intervention" which could have "prevented tens of thousands of excess deaths."
This economic decline was also linked to a wide variety of social consequences, including rising crime and poverty. These varied by country in severity and speed of recovery. By the end of the 1990s, the number of people living below the international poverty line went from 3% in 1987–88 to 20%, or around 88 million people. Only 4% of the region lived on $4 a day or less before the USSR dissolved, but by 1994, this number skyrocketed to 32%.
Crime, alcohol use, drug use and suicides all skyrocketed after the fall of the Eastern Bloc.
In 2011, The Guardian published an analysis of the former Soviet countries twenty years after the fall of the USSR. They found that "GDP fell as much as 50 percent in the 1990s in some republics... as capital flight, industrial collapse, hyperinflation and tax avoidance took their toll", but that there was a rebound in the 2000s, and by 2010 "some economies were five times as big as they were in 1991." Life expectancy has grown since 1991 in some of the countries, but fallen in others; likewise, some held free and fair elections, while others remained authoritarian. Bulgaria and Romania followed this trend after the introduction of more serious economic reforms in the late 1990s. By the turn of the century, most of their economies had strong growth rates, boosted by the enlargement of the European Union in 2004 and 2007 which saw Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, the Baltic States, Romania and Bulgaria admitted to the European Union. This led to significant improvements in living standards, quality of life, human health and economic performance in the post-Communist Central European states, relative to the late Communist and early post-Communist periods. Certain former Eastern Bloc countries have even become wealthier than certain Western European ones in the decades since 1989. In 2006, the Czech Republic was reported to have become wealthier than Portugal, something also reported to be true of Poland in 2019.
In 2016, the libertarian think tank Cato Institute stated that the analyses done of post-communist countries in the 1990s were "premature" and "that early and rapid reformers by far outperformed gradual reformers" on GDP per capita, the United Nations Human Development Index, political freedom, and developed better institutions. The institute also stated that the process of privatization in Russia was "deeply flawed" due to Russia's reforms being "far less rapid" than those of Central Europe and the Baltic states.
A 2009 Pew Research Center poll showed that 72% of Hungarians, 62% of both Ukrainians and Bulgarians, 48% of both Lithuanians and Slovaks, 45% of Russians, 39% of Czechs, and 35% of Poles felt that their lives were worse off after 1989, when free markets were made dominant. A follow-up poll by Pew Research Center in 2011 showed that 45% of Lithuanians, 42% of Russians, and 34% of Ukrainians approved of the change to a market economy. Writing in 2018, the scholars Kristen R. Ghodsee and Scott Sehon assert that "subsequent polls and qualitative research across Russia and eastern Europe confirm the persistence of these sentiments as popular discontent with the failed promises of free-market prosperity has grown, especially among older people".
In 2019, a Pew Research Survey on European public opinion asked citizens of Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary and the former East Germany two questions: whether they approved of the change to a multi-party democracy, and whether they approved of the change to a market economy. The change to a multi-party democracy was approved by 85% of Poles and East Germans, 82% of Czechs, 74% of Slovaks, 72% of Hungarians, 70% of Lithuanians, 54% of Bulgarians, 51% of Ukrainians and 43% of Russians. The transition to a market economy was approved by 85% of Poles, 83% of East Germans, 76% of Czechs, 71% of Slovaks, 70% of Hungarians, 69% of Lithuanians, 55% of Bulgarians, 47% of Ukrainians, and 38% of Russians.
List of existing communist states
thumb|upright=1.6|A map of current communist states
Since 1993, the following countries have remained communist states:
{|class="wikitable sortable"
!Country
!Local name
!Since
!Ruling party
|-
|China
|In Chinese: 中华人民共和国<br />In Pinyin: Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó
|1 October 1949
|Chinese Communist Party
|-
|Cuba
|In Spanish: República de Cuba
|1 July 1961
|Communist Party of Cuba
|-
|
|In Lao: Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao
|2 December 1975
|
|-
|Vietnam
|
|
|Communist Party of Vietnam
|-
|}
See also
- Communist nostalgia
- Eastern European Group
- Eurasian Economic Union
- Military occupations by the Soviet Union
- Soviet empire
- Telephone tapping in the Eastern Bloc
- State socialism
- Western Bloc
- Sino-Soviet Split
- First World
- Second World
- Third World
Notes
References
Citations
Works cited
Further reading
- Fuchs-Schündeln, Nicola, and Matthias Schündeln. "The long-term effects of communism in Eastern Europe". Journal of Economic Perspectives 34.2 (2020): 172–191. online
External links
- Candid photos of the Eastern Bloc September–December 1991, in the last months of the USSR
- Photographic project "Eastern Bloc" "Eastern Bloc" examines the specificities and differences of living in totalitarian and post totalitarian countries. The project is divided into chapters, each dedicated to one of the Eastern European countries—Slovak Republic, Poland, ex-GDR, Hungary, Czech Republic and ex-Yugoslavia.
- RFE/RL East German Subject Files, Blinken Open Society Archives, Budapest
- RFE Czechoslovak Unit, Blinken Open Society Archives, Budapest
- Museum of occupations of Estonia – Project by the Kistler-Ritso Estonian Foundation
- Gallery of events from Poznań 1956 protests
- OSA Digital Archive Videos of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
- RADIO FREE EUROPE Research, RAD Background Report/29: (Hungary) 20 October 1981, A CHRONOLOGY OF THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION, 23–4 October November 1956, compiled by RAD/Hungarian Section-Published accounts
- Chronology Of Events Leading To The 1968 Czechoslovakia Invasion
- Solidarity, Freedom and Economical Crisis in Poland, 1980–81
- The Lost Border: Photographs of the Iron Curtain