The Establishment Of Communist Regimes In Eastern Europe, 1944-1949

Norman Naimark, Norman M. Naimark, Leonid Gibianskii

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429976216
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The collaborative effort of scholars from Russia and the United States, this book reevaluates the history of postwar Eastern Europe from 1944 to 1949, incorporating information gleaned from newly opened archives in Eastern Europe. For nearly five decades, the countries of Yugoslavia, Poland, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet zone of Germany were forced to live behind the ?iron curtain.? Though their experiences under communism differed in sometimes fundamental ways and lasted no longer than a single generation, these nations were characterized by systematic assaults on individual rights and social institutions that profoundly shaped the character of Eastern Europe today. The emergence of the former People's Democracies from behind the iron curtain has been a wrenching process, but, as this book demonstrates, the beginning of the communist era was equally as traumatic as its end.With the opening of the archives in Russia and Eastern Europe, the contributors have been able to get a much firmer grasp on Soviet policies in the region and on East European responses and initiatives, which in turn has yielded more satisfying answers to vexing questions about Soviet intentions in the region and the origins of the Cold War. Exploring these events from a new, better-informed perspective, the contributors have made a valuable contribution to the historiography of postwar Europe.

1
War as Revolution¹

Jan Gross

The general thrust of my thinking on the subject matter that concerns us here is to conceive of a society's experiences of war and occupation as if they were endogenous. This may not be a particularly original insight, but it departs from routinely adopted historiographical approaches in which states or societies drawn into war or put under occupation are studied primarily as objects exposed to external, imposed, circumstances. What this means in practical terms is that we are much more likely to find political histories of occupation regimes, than social histories of countries under occupation.

And yet all social systems, at all times, operate within sets of constraints that they do not control, or cannot anticipate.² This is a trivial point again, and one should be reminded that in some historical circumstances (such as war between states, for example) these externalities might be uniquely non-negotiable and intrusive. But then, conversely, we might think of internal circumstances that are uniquely, so to speak, non-negotiable and intrusive. And the impact of some such factors would be no less decisive and disruptive on the course of [otherwise "normal"?] societal development. Pace assorted Marxist writings about the role of individual in history, no serious student of the 20th century would hesitate to list Hitler's willfulness as a major force shaping the destiny of Russia.

I would propose, accordingly, that the wartime history of Poland, for example, ought to be written within the same mind-set and methodological approach as the wartime history of, say, Germany. Even though the substance of respective narratives would be unique, we would still seek answers to similar sets of questions. What effect does prolonged stress has on collective life? Where do people look for authority under stress or terror? When new elites emerge in various walks of life, given new opportunities for social mobility, what are they like? What happens when adult men are absent from their households? How is the labor force, and family structure and life, affected by the unprecedented activation of young people and women?

Such a research agenda, expanded and refined well beyond a few sample questions, would enable us to view how a given society copes with the enormous jolt which a war delivers to its various institutions and patterns of interaction. In this sense a social history of society/state subject to war and /or occupation could make us think of war as a revolution. Before they were confined to a common lot in the Soviet bloc, the countries of East Central Europe were not particularly interested in one another. What little regional cooperation there was among them during the interwar period - the Little Entente - was directed against one of the countries of the region, namely Hungary. Attempts to develop federalist solutions during World War II were also scuttled, this time by Soviet diplomacy.³ From the perspective of the year 1950, when all countries of East Central Europe had been securely fitted into the "camp" of People's Democracies with a remarkably similar framework of mono-party institutions ("geographically contiguous replica-regimes" they were called in a recent study)⁴, it would have been impossible to guess how much these countries' internal developments had differed throughout the decades prior to the consolidation of Communist rule. Their wartime histories were as varied as could be. Some ended up in the Axis camp, some with the Allies; some occupied, some not; some dismembered, some with their territory actually expanded. When the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact was signed in August 1939, it met with gloom and confused disbelief all over Europe, except in Bulgaria. There, the pact was widely acclaimed and the position of the CPB significantly enhanced. Soon, several hundred Bulgarian leftists who fought in the Spanish Civil War had their citizenship restored, while Russian books, films, and newspapers were allowed into the country. A loyal Axis member, Bulgaria nevertheless managed to maintain diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union through the summer of 1944. It did not send troops to the Eastern front, or its Jewish citizens to extermination camps.⁵

Bulgaria's neighbor, Romania, and also Hungary, would not tolerate any overt pro-Russian activity. Politics in both countries were quite lively, with cabinets changing, coalitions being worked out, and opposition politicians speaking out. The leaderships oscillated between the conservative and the radical right, with the latter gaining the upper hand in the last months of the war in Hungary. This, as we know, led to horrible consequences for the Jewish minority there. Romanian Jews, though not surrendered to the Germans, suffered murderous pogroms by the Iron Guard and mass deportations to Transistria where many thousands died.

Yugoslavia vacillated at first between a pro-Western and a pro-Axis orientation. It was then occupied and dismembered, and a ferocious civil war ensued in which the Communist underground, in the context of a complex tribal and national mosaic, proved victorious in the end. Over 10% of Yugoslavia's population died of war-related causes. This was the second highest casualty rate in World War II, surpassed only by the tragedy in Poland.⁶

Divided in September 1939 between the USSR and Germany, Poland suffered proportionally the greatest material and population losses of all belligerents in the Second World War.⁷ In a unique response to the long lasting terrorism of the German occupation, Polish society went underground and built a complex set of institutions encompassing a framework of political parties, welfare administration, cultural outlets, numerous daily and periodical publications, a school system, a parallel economy, and a clandestine volunteer army.

Czechoslovakia, dismembered even prior to the outbreak of the war, had a segment of its territory integrated into the Reich, another one set-up as a new state, and yet another given the transitory status of Protectorate and placed under a "Quisling" administration. But it was a "Quisling" administration which deferred for a long time to the exiled President of the Republic who headed a pro-Allied government in London, while the leader of the newly created puppet state defied German orders from the time he became convinced that they were incompatible with Slovak patriotism or Christian ethics. After the summer of 1942, Father Tiso halted further deportations of Jews to extermination camps, and only after Germany had occupied Slovakia in September 1944 to suppress the Slovak National Uprising did the killings resume. Still, one third of Slovak Jews survived the war.⁸

Already from these brief outlines we can see that there were indeed many different national roads to socialism.

So much for variety. But the same story can be told in a number of ways. What I have sketched so far conforms to the more or less standard account of wartime experiences in East Central Europe. Yet when we adopt another lens, we can focus on the social fabric of these societies rather than on political outcomes - on material life and processes rather than on the facades of institutions and policies. If we further consider the meaning of demographic trends rather than police actions, and that of public opinion rather than government's declarations, we are likely to get a different handle on the story. Let me direct attention first to the political economy of the war years, to the material life, where even a brief perusal of a few important themes reveals the complexity of the issues. We know, of course, that the region's economy suffered a widespread destruction of infrastructure under Nazi domination. But this result of the war, which we all grasp intuitively, should not prevent us from scrutinizing the economic processes that went on for the half a decade when Nazi influence was paramount. War is a powerful stimulus of economic growth. It turns out that a significant part of the area in question was not an exception to this general rule.

Perhaps the most dynamic growth was in the production of raw materials. Extraction of hard coal in Poland increased by 50% from 1939 to 1944, and the production of brown coal increased at a similar pace in Czechoslovakia. Polish oil fields increased production by 60%, while in Hungary the oil industry was virtually created during those years and by 1944, had attained a respectable one-fourth of the annual Romanian output. The production of natural gas doubled in Poland and in Romania. The production of chrome trippled in Yugoslavia, while production of bauxite (the basis of the aluminum industry and a substitute for copper) doubled in Hungary where, incidentally, the production of aluminum during those years increased nine-fold. Taking 1939 as the base, the combined index for electrical power produced in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland reached 141 by the year 1944.⁹

The years 1938-1944 in Hungary, for instance, were a boom period of industrialization financed in large part by German capital. In only two years, from 1938 to 1940, the growth of manufacturing industry exceeded that achieved over the preceding two decades. In 1943, at the peak of production, industrial output was 38% higher than before the war. "Livestock increased by 11 percent during the war and at the time of the Russian invasion [i.e. at the end of the war] eighteen million metric quintals of cereals were housed in public stores."¹⁰ On a smaller scale, Bohemia, and Moravia registered a robust growth at the time as well (particularly in the 1941-1944 period). Even in such backwards regions as Slovakia "the regime managed to solve economic problems to the surprise even of those who were favorably inclined to the regime... the situation in Slovakia is better from the point of view both of real wages and of the supply of goods,"¹¹ wrote a Slovak Communist functionary, Gustav Husak, in a secret report dispatched to Moscow in July 1944. Starting with a very low base in 1939, industrial production during the war increased in Slovakia more rapidly than in the Protectorate. The index of total industrial production for Bulgaria: industrial production shows less robust change after a significant spurt in 1939-1941 but, nevertheless, it stands at 112 for the year 1945 (with 1939 taken as a base). And among important the economic legacies of war in Albania should be counted considerable road networks and numerous bridges constructed by the Italians.¹²

Depending on the degree of integration, or planned future integration with the Reich,¹³ the overall pattern of development in a given area (such development as there was) targeted intensification of agricultural production and favored raw-materials production to the neglect of consumer goods or industry. But even with respect to parts of Poland - that is, the most devastated country during the war incorporation into the Reich was followed by a policy of comprehensive development. In what was called Warthegau (an area wedged between the Vistula and Oder rivers) industrial employment increased threefold - from 90,000 to 263,000 workers - between 1940 and 1943.¹⁴ As a general indicator of trends, let me quote the cautious assessment of economic historians regarding Bulgaria, which was least affected during the war by occupation and military activity, and where "agricultural development was less favorable than that of some other countries which were more directly involved in the war."¹⁵

Clearly, one must recognize that there were processes under way at the time in East Central Europe which cannot be simply subsumed under some notion of "war ravages." Of course, we must take this "rosy" account with a grain of salt. I drew a deliberately one-sided picture to be polemical with standard accounts. But what moves me to do so is not simply contentiousness but also the conviction that conventional narratives lose sight of a process that lasted several years and left important imprints on the affected societies.

What kind of insights can we gain by considering the political economy of the war years? With respect to structural changes, for instance, I would point out that economies of the region experienced growing autarky and a decoupling from international trade comprising the whole continent. Most of the industrial potential of the area was harnessed to supply the needs of the German war economy. In the territories directly under German control, such as Poland or Bohemia and Moravia, this was a simple matter resolved through administrative measures. But massive German acquisitions of French-, British-, and Belgian-held capital took place in Yugoslavia, Romania, and Hungary as well. "In 1940, 44 percent of Romanian exports went to Germany, compared to 19 percent in 1937. In the same year 59 percent of Bulgarian, 49 percent of Hungarian, and 36 percent of Yugoslav exports went to Germany." German capital participation in Slovak industry increased from 4 percent in 1938 to 52 percent in 1942.¹⁶

Accordingly, we ought to note that the area partook during this period in a new international division of labor designed to support the imperial ambitions of the German Reich. It was an ideologically motivated division of labor as the economic role of various territories was to a significant degree determined by Nazi racial doctrines, or, should we rather say, Hitler's idiosyncrasies.¹⁷ Furthermore, throughout the period, local economies were gradually taken over by the state. This was most conspicuous in the countries under direct German occupation, and in the expropriation of Jewish property. But measures to this effect were executed in every country in the region.

Hence, at least five years before the Soviet Union established its domination in the region, local economies were redirected away from the West and gradually taken over by the state. And as government intervention in an economy fosters coordination and planning - indeed German planning for coal and steel production, for example, was particularly effective in stimulating Czech and Polish output - we may surmise that the conclusions of a leading authority on Balkan economic history, that "the Bulgarian experience during the Second World War laid important economic groundwork for the postwar practice of central planning,"¹⁸ could apply equally to other countries in the region. They apparently do, as anoth...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 War as Revolution
• 2 The CPSU, the Comintern, and the Bulgarians
• 3 The Soviet Leadership and Southeastern Europe
• 4 Postwar Hungary, 1944-1946
• 5 "Bandits and Reactionaries": The Suppression of the Opposition in Poland, 1944-1946
• 6 The Soviet Administrators and Their German "Friends"
• 7 The Gomułka Alternative: The Untravelled Road
• 8 Polish Workers and the Stalinist Transformation
• 9 Peasants and Partisans: A Dubious Alliance
• 10 Communist Higher Education Policies in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and East Germany
• 11 Censorship in Soviet-Occupied Germany
• 12 The Czech Road to Communism
• 13 The Marshall Plan, Soviet-American Relations, and the Division of Europe
• 14 The Soviet-Yugoslav Split and the Cominform
• About the Contributors
• Index
• About the Book and Editors