The Collapse of Eastern Bloc

Anjali

M.Phil, (European Studies)

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During World War II, the Allies were compelled to cooperate in order to defeat the

aggression of the Axis powers. By September, 2, 1945, the Allied forces consisting of

Britain, the Soviet Union and the U.S managed to defeat the Axis Powers consisting of

Germany, Italy and Japan. As once the defeat of the Axis was assured, the need for

cooperation ended and since by then the Soviet Union had already entered the Eastern

European countries, the Soviets established Communist regimes in these countries they had

occupied and refused to permit free elections. Because if the Soviet Union had allowed the

elections in the eastern countries, the Soviets would have surely lose its influence there, so to

make them loyal to the USSR and not to some other power, controlling the states of Eastern

Europe was the best solution.

Stalin also refused to be part with the eastern part of the Germany as he didn’t want to

take another chance with it after suffering twice (attacked) by the hands of Germany. Stalin

probably would have surely fought to maintain control of Eastern Europe, had the Allies

objected more but war was not an option for the Allies after getting exhausted from two wars

in the last three decades. Thus the Allies took control of the western part of the Germany and

that is how Germany remained under two different influences until their re-unification in

1990. The countries such as Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Romania and others,

together these communists’ countries formed the Eastern Bloc.

 World War II had left the European countries with a humongous task of reviving their

economies. However not all of the European countries have to reconstruct their economies,

few of them like Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland and Spain who had all remained neutral during

the war fared slightly better but for those countries that were had taken part in the war were in

bad shape. But the destruction caused by the war was not the only reason that these countries

suffered so much as in Britain’s economy was majorly strengthened through the capital

generated were her colonies and post war, Britain had to do give up her colonies which made

the path to a quick recovery seemed unlikely. However few years later Western Europe

mainly with the American aid managed to achieve to return to normality and economic

strength while the Eastern Bloc under the iron-fisted leadership of Stalin’s communist rule

struggled to revive its war ravaged economy.

Although the communism didn’t start off to be completely exploiting in nature as in

the provision of free education, basic health care and full employment and other such benefits

to the Eastern Europeans did reaped some benefits from the communism. However, rigid

communist central planning proved unable to meet a growing thirst for consumer goods,

while this system protected the status of the elite within the party system, the system towards

the citizens within the Soviet bloc was largely apathetic and economy was dwindling. By the

1970s east European industries were grossly uncompetitive in world terms while the Western

European markets were flourishing especially their industries like computers and

telecommunications. This economic backwardness along with the unjust, unequal treatment

by the hands of the Soviets created a wave of unrest among the civilians.

The corruption among officials and the social problems like alcoholism, drug abuse

and crime etc were rampantly increasing while both the leaders Brezhnev and Andropov did

try to resolve these problems but their untimely deaths made it possible. Mikhail Gorbachev

was appointed as the leader of the Soviet Union after the death of the previous leader,
Chernenko. Mikhail Gorbachev realising that the Communism had not been able to keep up

with Western capitalism and technology, which had caused the Soviet Union’s status as a

superpower to erode.  He therefore initiated a series of fundamental reforms to revitalize the

Soviet system. He attempted to be a different leader and hoped to reform the Soviet economic

system and was determined to support policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika

(economic reconstruction). The program perestroika provided easing of government

controlled price controls on some goods; more independence for state enterprises; and

allowed private cooperatives to provide consumer services at a profit; a notably capitalist

arrangement. The reforms had only limited success; and by 1988, widespread shortages of

consumer goods threatened Gorbachev’s reform program. However his both principles were

not completely a failure, between his two principles, more successful was Glasnost which

provided a complete break with the past rules laid down by the Soviets which had included

censorship, uniformity, and occasionally fabrications designed by the government for public

consumption. Under Glasnost, the works of writers previously banned were published and

sold millions of copies.

However these ‘openness’ program backfired so much that it in a way led to the

downfall of the Eastern bloc and ultimately the Soviet Union. As these policies in the Soviet

Union paved way for the encouragement of opposition movements against the Communist

regimes in the Soviet bloc countries. Demonstrations became more frequent. Governments

were forced to accept measures, recommended, moreover, by Gorbachev, towards

liberalisation. However, these measures were not deemed to be sufficient. Hopes of freedom,

long suppressed by the Communist regimes in the countries of the Soviet bloc and in the

USSR itself, were inevitably fuelled by Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempted reforms in the Soviet

Union and his conciliatory policy towards the West. It proved impossible to maintain

reformed Communist regimes as the people were swayed by a cultural revolution with
freedom of expression and economic liberty. As the author, “The Collapse of Soviet Union

puts in:

Unwittingly, however, Gorbachev had unleashed a force which could not be

easily contained. Democratization was a third element of Gorbachev’s

reforms, and also (perhaps unintentionally) further undercut support for the old

Soviet system. The first free elections since 1917 were held in April, 1989; and

although Gorbachev intended for him and his party to remain in control of the

government, a minority of independents critical of his government were

elected to the Congress of People’s Deputies. Gorbachev and his deputies were

forced to watch as the new Congress rejected many communist programs. The

end result was a new political culture which was completely alien to and at

odds with the old Communist system of power and control by a single party.

The insurgency first appeared in Poland, a country where attempts to impose collectivization

as in Russia and to break the power of the Catholic Church had failed. In Poland, economic

reforms led to strikes in the spring and summer of 1988. The Solidarity movement called for

trade union pluralism. During the Round Table negotiations, which enabled the gradual

creation of the Third Polish Republic, the Polish Communist leaders recognised the social

movement in April 1989. Solidarność was therefore able to take part in the first semi-legal

elections since the Second World War. The elections held on 4 and 18 June, saw the collapse

of the Communist Party, and Tadeusz Mazowiecki became the first non-Communist head of

government in Eastern Europe. He was nominated on 19 August 1989 and endorsed by an

overwhelming majority by the Polish Sjem on 8 September 1989 as a result of a coalition

between Solidarity, the agricultural party and the Democratic party. In December 1989, Lech

Wałęsa, symbolic leader of Solidarność, replaced General Jaruzelski of the Polish United
Workers’ Party as President. The victory of the trade union’s candidates in these elections

triggered a wave of peaceful anti-communist wave of protest.

In Hungary, demonstrations against the regime increased during 1987 and 1988. The

Opposition became more organised, and reformers entered the government in June 1988. On

18 October 1989, the Stalinist Constitution was abandoned, and Hungary adopted political

pluralism. Earlier that year, in May, the ‘Iron Curtain’ separating Hungary from Austria had

been dismantled, which enabled many East Germans to flee to the West.

In Czechoslovakia, a programme of reforms inspired by those of the USSR was

adopted in December 1987 but was not widely implemented. The regime became more

oppressive and suppressed demonstrations in 1988.

In the German Democratic Republic (GDR), opposition to the Stalinist regime grew.

Huge demonstrations took place, and increasing numbers of East Germans fled the country.

The government would not consider any kind of reform, counting on the intervention of

Soviet troops stationed in the GDR. Gorbachev, however, refused to help, having renounced

Brezhnev’s doctrine of legitimate intervention in fellow Communist countries. From that

point on, the Communist regime crumbled. The Wall which had divided Berlin since 1961

came down on 9 November 1989, and East Germans were interested only in reunification

with the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG).

The fall of the Berlin Wall had a significant impact. The collapse of the Communist

regime in East Germany, which had gone ahead with the Soviet Union being powerless to put

up any effective opposition, led to German reunification, an event which had a direct

influence on the European integration process. In order to integrate a reunified Germany

successfully into Europe, it was vital to strengthen the European Community by establishing

a European Union which would comprise an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and a

political union. This was the objective of the Maastricht Treaty of 7 February 1992.
 The reunification of Germany further accelerated the demise of the Communist

governments. In Czechoslovakia, the Opposition leader, Václav Havel, was unanimously

elected interim President of the Republic by the parliament of the Socialist Republic on 29

December 1989. In the same vein, the anti-establishment Civic Forum movement won the

first free parliamentary elections on 8 June 1990 and reappointed Václav Havel as President

of the Republic in July of that year. In Hungary, the parliamentary elections held on 2 April

1990 resulted in the formation of the Democratic Forum government. On 9 December 1990,

Lech Wałęsa became President of the Republic of Poland. In Bulgaria, a coalition

government was formed on 7 December 1990, and a new Constitution was adopted on 9 July

1991.

In Romania, following violent demonstrations, the Communist dictator Nicolae

Ceauşescu was executed on 25 December 1989, and a new Constitution establishing

pluralism was adopted on 8 December 1991. This transformation proceeded, for the most

part, in a peaceful manner. Nevertheless, in Romania, the revolution against the dictator

Ceauşescu resulted in heavy bloodshed, and the fragmentation of Yugoslavia led to a long

and bitter civil war.

Therefore we could to a certain extent conclude that Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempt to

liberalize Soviet political and cultural practices somewhere unleashed forces which forever

transformed Eastern Europe. Within three years, the Communist regimes collapsed and

individual nations gained freedom, initially in the USSR’s satellite countries and then within

the Soviet Union itself. The structures of the Eastern bloc disintegrated with the dissolution

of the Warsaw Pact and Comecon eventually led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union that

broke up into independent republics a year later in 1990.

References

Farmer, Alan. “Europe and the Cold War: 1945-90.” In An Introduction to Modern History of

Europe: 1890-1990, 270-298. London: Hodder Education, 2009.

HistoryDoctor. The Collapse of Communism, <http://www.historydoctor.net/Placement

%20European%20History/collapse_of_communism.html (6 February, 2017.)

Viault, S. Birdsall. “The Collapse of Communism.” In Modern European History. 379-407.

Auckland:Mcgraw-Hill Inc, 2011.