Korean War Cuban Missile Crisis
1962






Soviet Clampdown on Democratic Movements



The history of the Soviet satellite states in Eastern Central Europe bares many similarities with the French satellite states during the French Revolution and under Napoleon Bonaparte. Moscow was interested in reproducing a copy of its own political system in these countries and basically expected every turn in Moscow to be followed there.
Under Stalin, pressure for conformity was especially high, party purges Soviet style even exported to Czechoslovakia. Stalin's death thus caused a sigh of relief all over the Soviet block. Yet with Stalin gone, the authorities seemed to have lost a part of their authority; in the GDR sudden shortenings of piece-time work and coinciding price increases caused vehement demonstrations, which went out of hand as some demonstrators called for the communist administration to step down. The latter called in Soviet tanks; the Red Army intervened openly for the first time, an event repeated in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
The official version was always that the Red Army was called to intervene to 'combat counterrevolutionary tendencies', often blamed on 'imperialist propaganda'. The administrations of the socialist countries of Eastern Central Europe, to a certain extent were willing to compromise; in the GDR, private ownership of houses and small-size workshops were tolerated, in Poland privately-owned farms and the structure of the Catholic church. Yet an open defiance of the socialist system and Soviet supremacy could not be tolerated.
Criticism based on socialist ideology, such as in Czechoslovakia 1968 (SOCIALISM WITH A HUMAN FACE, DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM), and later the Free Trade Union SOLIDARNOSC in Poland, was perceived most threatening, as it questioned the ideological fundament of the entire system.

There was one exception worthy to note, RUMANIA, which under NICOLAE CEAUCESCU in 1969 withdrew from the WARSAW PACT. Rumania turned into the Soviet Block's enfant terrible. As for why the USSR did not interfere, it has been speculated that they wanted to avoid the repetition of a Czechoslovakian experience, and/or that the Soviet leadership wanted Rumania to encourage the French, and potential other NATO members considering a similar step, in their defiance of NATO.

Clampdown was usually accompanied by the installment of a new, docile leadership (CONCRETE HEADS), a strengthening of CENSORSHIP, reforms intended to replace structures which have facilitated the formation of an independent political program by more docile ones, reforms which aimed at a CENTRALIZATION (to facilitated a more strict control) and by concessions intended to prevent the repetition of such movements. The emergence of a socialist version of a CONSUMER and LEISURE SOCIETY was encouraged in order to distract people from political activity.
The clampdowns, in the GDR in 1953, in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968, had caused massive emigration; the clampdown was perceived by many in the west as the verification of the image of the USSR as the 'EVIL EMPIRE'.


Soviet Foreign Policy
1949-1956 		Soviet Foreign Policy,
1956-1964 		Soviet Foreign Policy
1964-1985
GDR, 1949-1969
Domestic Policy 		Hungary
1953-1956 		Czechoslovakia
1948-1968



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This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted on July 9th 2001, last revised on November 11th 2004

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