Why did communism become established in Eastern Europe after the Second World War?

Résumé du document

Shortly before the official end of the Second World War, on 25th April 1945, American and Soviet soldiers met at the Elbe. In order to reach the Elbe River, the Russian troops had to come all the way across Europe, thus crossing Eastern Europe. By the end of the same year, seven states occupied by the Red Army were governed by communist parties, as were and Albania and Yugoslavia. Adding to this was the fact that most of the eastern part of Europe remained under communist rule until the end of the 1980s. In this context, the question of why communism became established in those countries seems natural.

Extraits

[...] Why did communism become established in Eastern Europe after the Second World War? On the 25th of April 1945, shortly before the official end of the Second World War, American and Soviet soldiers meet at the Elbe river.1 But to reach the Elbe river, the Russian troops had to come all the way across Europe, and so across Eastern Europe. By the end of the same year, seven states occupied by the Red Army were led by communist parties2, and Albania and Yugoslavia were also ruled by local communists. [...]

[...] This is the phase in which the communists take advantage of the success of first stage. Finally, in the third phase, coalitions were transformed into 'monolithic blocks'. The communists centrally controlled all the political parties, which allowed them to remain in the governments. Socialist and communist parties had to fuse and no more political opposition was tolerated31. SetonWatson also gives examples of the transition between second and third phases. During the autumn of 1947, democratic political leaders of Poland, Romania and Bulgaria had to flee or were put in trial, the ones from Hungary had to endure the same treatments in the spring of 194832, and in Czechoslovakia, the transition was effective through the Prague coup of February 1948. [...]

[...] It placed under Soviet control all the communist parties of Eastern Europe, plus the ones from France and Italy. It is officially under a Cominform mandate that the coup of February 1948 in Prague was organized. Swain argues that 'the Cominform served both as a vehicle for disciplining Eastern Europe and a propaganda machine to blacken the name of the one communist who dared to stand up to Stalin'34, namely, Tito. Franz Borkenau states that the 'establishment of absolute communist control [was] masked by the formula ''Popular Democracy'''35. [...]

[...] Hugh SetonWatson gives a definition of what the first phase was: 'government was by a genuine coalition of parties of left and left centre. The coalitions in all cases included communist and socialist parties'27. He also adds that Yugoslavia, Albania, Poland and East Germany never passed through that stage. Meanwhile and as early as in the first stage, the communists took control of certain key ministries and institutions, such as the Ministry of Interior, allowing a control of both the police and the elections. [...]

[...] But it is not to forget that the Soviet Union was not the sole representative of communism in Eastern Europe. Both Albania and Yugoslavia liberated themselves from the Nazis, without the 'help' of the Red Army. Geoffrey Swain and Nigel Swain note that 'in the Balkans, communists came to power at the head of their own revolutions, and, as they ''sovietised'' themselves'15, the Soviet troops didn't need to intervene. Even though Tito broke away from Stalin as early as 1948, it is interesting to realize that communism was not only brought by the Soviets, but also by other communities. [...]