Formation of the Eastern Bloc
[9] This was especially pronounced in eastern European Axis countries, such as Romania and Hungary, where such a policy was considered as punitive reparations (a principle accepted by Western powers).
[11] Other Eastern Bloc states were required to provide coal, industrial equipment, technology, rolling stock and other resources to reconstruct the Soviet Union.
[20][21] If statements or decisions deviated from the prescribed line, reprimands and, for persons outside public attention, punishment would ensue, such as imprisonment, torture and even death.
[30] Hopes for a new free start were immediately dampened when the PKWN claimed they were entitled to choose who they wanted to take part in the government, and the Soviet NKVD seized sixteen Polish underground leaders who had wanted to participate in negotiations on the re-organisation in March 1945 brought them to the Soviet Union for a show trial in June.
[37] Polish government-in-exile figures, including Stanisław Mikołajczyk then returned to a popular reception, and were able to lure several parties to their cause, effectively undermining Bloc politics.
[45] After occupying Hungary, the Soviets imposed harsh conditions allowing it to seize important material assets and control internal affairs.
[47][48] After the Red Army set up police organs to persecute class enemies, the Soviets assumed that the impoverished Hungarian populace would support Communists in coming elections.
[50] Soviet intervention, however, resulted in a government that disregarded Tildy, placed Communists in important ministries, and imposed restrictive and repressive measures, including banning the victorious Independent Smallholders, Agrarian Workers and Civic Party.
[51] Battling the initial postwar political majority in Hungary ready to establish a democracy,[52] Mátyás Rákosi invented the term, which described his tactic slicing up enemies like pieces of salami.
[54] Dubbed the “bald murderer,” Rákosi imitated Communist political and economic programs, resulting in Hungary experiencing one of the harshest dictatorships in Europe.
[52] Thousands were arrested, tortured, tried, and imprisoned in concentration camps, deported to the east, or were executed, including ÁVH founder László Rajk.
[57][58] Gati describes "the most gruesome forms of psychological and physical torture...The reign of terror (by the Rákosi government) turned out to be harsher and more extensive than it was in any of the other Soviet satellites in Central and Eastern Europe."
[59] The Soviet military commander in Sofia assumed supreme authority, and the Communists and their allies in the Fatherland Front whom he instructed, including Kimon Georgiev, took full control of domestic politics.
The nine-year-old king Simeon II of Sax-Cobourg-Gotta was sent to exile accompanied by his mother the Queen Jovana of Savoy and his sister princess Maria-Louisa.
On 6 June 1947, parliamentary leader Nikola Petkov, a critic of Soviet rule,[49] was arrested in the Parliament building, subjected to a show trial, found guilty of espionage, sentenced to death,[61] and hanged on 23 September 1947.
[63] Beneš promised Stalin a "close postwar collaboration" in military and economic affairs, including confiscation and nationalisation of large landowners' property, factories, mines, steelworks and banks under a Czechoslovakian "national road to socialism".
[67] In contrast to countries occupied by the Red Army, there were no Soviet occupation authorities in Czechoslovakia upon whom the USSR could rely to assert a leading role.
[69] As the Red Army battled the Wehrmacht and Romanian forces in August 1944, Soviet agent Emil Bodnăraș organised an underground coalition to stage a coup d'état that would put Communists—who were then two tiny groups—into power.
[37] In March 1945, Stalin aide Andre Vyshinskii traveled to Bucharest and installed a government that included only members subservient to the National Front.
The potential of army resistance was neutralised by the removal of major troop leaders and the inclusion of two divisions staffed with ideologically trained prisoners of war.
[37] Political persecution of local leaders and strict radio and press control were designed to prepare for an eventual unlimited Communist totalitarianism, including the liquidation of opposition.
In December, Groza and Gheorghiu-Dej forced Michael to abdicate at gunpoint, and hours later the Communist-dominated legislature proclaimed Romania a "People's Republic."
He changed the name of the country to the Socialist Republic of Romania, and ruled one of the most (by some accounts, the most) brutal states in the Eastern bloc for nearly 25 years.
It swiftly took control of the police, the court system and the economy, while eliminating several hundred political opponents through a series of show trials conducted by judges without legal training.
The country subsequently came under threat of invasion by the Warsaw Pact, with the Yugoslav People's Army planning defenses against both Eastern and Western Bloc attacks.
Throughout the Cold War period, the country steered an independent course, founding the Non-Aligned Movement in collaboration with Ghana, Egypt and India.
At the end of World War II, Yugoslavia was considered a victor power and had neither an occupation force nor an allied control commission.
[75] A cabinet for the new Democratic Federal Yugoslavia was formed, with 25 of the 28 members being former Communist Yugoslav Partisans led by Josip Broz Tito.
