Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe 1945-49

Letter to US President Truman

23rd of December, 1948

Dear Mr President,
I am submitting my report to you on the situation in eastern Europe in 1948.
Albania, Bulgaria and East Germany in 1945, Romania, Poland and Hungary in 1947 and
Czechoslovakia in 1948 have fallen under the complete control of the Soviet “sphere of influence”.
Communist minorities have emerged through the neutralization of oppositional parties in initial left-wing
coalitions, leading to complete Communist domination through the violent repression of dissidents,
election rigging, show trials and executions.
In Albania, in light of the country’s liberation in August of 1944, the communist-directed National
Liberation Movement gradually ousted oppositional parties in their coalition(led by the nationalist Balli
Kombëtar who had collaborated with the Nazis), establishing a fully-fledged Communist regime.
Following the ostracism of King Zog I, the condemnation of non-Communist politicians considered
“enemies of the people”, either by being sent to labour camps or sentenced to execution, as well as the
implementation of legislation that permitted the state regulation of foreign and domestic trade and
confiscation of German and Italian-owned properties, an election took place in 1945, presenting as a sole
candidate the Democratic Front(previously LNE). With the party’s secretary Enver Hoxha becoming the
prime minister, foreign minister, defense minister, and the army's commander in chief, the People's
Republic of Albania took the final steps towards establishing a central planned economy, nationalizing
industries, redistributing half of Albania’s arable land under the Agrarian Reform Law while the
government placed under its direct authority the justice system, the police and the press.
In East-Germany, the first Soviet-supervised elections in 1946 led to the narrow victory of the
SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany), which was preceded by campaigns of oppression of political
opposition and terrorization. Property and industry were nationalised under their government. 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. The incorporation of
the Marxist-Lenin doctrine in school curricula, the close surveillance of the population by mechanisms
such as the Soviet SMERSH secret police and the scrutinized censoring of the press, were adopted after
the election of the government. In early 1948, during the Tito–Stalin split, the SED underwent a
transformation into an authoritarian party dominated by functionaries subservient to Moscow, where
important decisions had to be cleared with the CPSU Central Committee apparatus or even with Stalin
himself.
Following the invasion of Soviet-troops in Poland in July 1944, Polish government-in-exile prime
minister Stanisław Mikołajczyk requested alongside with Winston Churchill, from the USSR to
renegotiate the annexation of regions of Eastern Poland, as specified in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
With the intervention of president Roosevelt, an agreement was reached at the Yalta Conference in 1945,
permitting the annexation of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact portion of Eastern Poland, in exchange for granting
Poland part of the fertile land east of the Oder–Neisse line of East Germany. The agreement also
encompassed the promise of reorganizing the provisional government of the Polish Committee National
Liberation( PKWN), so as to allow the participation of the Polish government-in-exile and the realization
of "free and unfettered elections" elections. These hopes were disillusioned with constant persecutions of
non-Stalinists and the PKWN’s unwillingness to cooperate. Mikołajczyk’s People’s party(PPP) refusal to
revoke an independent nomination in the elections led to the disqualification of PPP candidates in one
quarter of the districts and the arrest of over 1000,000 PPP activists, followed by vote rigging that resulted
in Gomułka's(First Secretary of the Communist Polish Workers' Party) candidates winning a majority in
the carefully controlled poll. Following the forged referendum, in October 1946, the new government
nationalised all enterprises employing over 50 people and all but two banks. Fraudulent Polish elections
held in January 1947 resulted in Poland's official transformation to a non-democratic Communist state by
1949, the People's Republic of Poland.
In Romania, King Michael staged a coup where he removed Ion Antonescu in August 1944 and
accepted the occupation by Soviet troops in order to fight against the Germans. The Soviets had already
annexed in 1940 Bessarabia and part of Northern Bukovina to create the important agricultural region of
the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Moscow Armstice in September 1944, the decisions during
the Yalta conference in February 1945 and the Paris Peace Treaties of 1947 acknowledged the USSR’s
full dominion over Romania. The Communists, as all political parties, played only a minor role in the first
Michael's wartime governments, but this changed in March 1945, when Dr. Petru Groza of the
Ploughmen's Front, a party closely associated with the Communists, became prime minister. Groza
installed a government that included many parties, though Communists held the key ministries. 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. Bodnăraş, a Soviet agent who had
supported the coup, was appointed General Secretary and initiated re-organisation of the general police
and secret police. Traditional parties were excluded from government and subjected to intensifying
persecution of local leaders(show trial of National Peasants' Party leaders and merges of other left-wing
parties with the PCR) while complete radio and press censoring prevailed. When King Michael attempted
to force Groza's resignation by refusing to sign any legislation ("the royal strike"), Groza enacted laws
without Michael's signature. By 1947, most non-Communist politicians were either executed, in exile or in
prison. With Michael’s abdication in 1947, legislation was promulgated declaring Romania a People’s
Republic. The country's resources were also drained by the Soviet's SovRom agreements, which facilitated
shipping of Romanian goods to the Soviet Union at nominal prices while all banks and large businesses
were nationalized on 11 June 1948.
In Hungary, where people had experienced the deportation system “malenki robot” during the
USSR’s occupation(1944-45), the Soviets expected that impoverished Hungarians would support the
Communist Party on the 1945 elections. Ultimately, the Independent Smallholders' Party won 57 percent
of the vote, while the Hungarian Communist Party, under the leadership of Mátyás Rákosi and Ernő Gerő,
received support from only 17 percent of the population. The Soviet commander in Hungary, Marshal
Kliment Voroshilov, refused to allow the Smallholders Party to form a government. Instead, Voroshilov
established a coalition government, under Prime Minister Zoltán Tildy, with the Communists holding
some of the key posts, utilising, as Mátyás Rákosi phrased it, the famous salami tactics. As the secret
police (the AVO) was steered by the Communists, Rakosi’s opponents were executed and arrested. Tildy
was forced to resign and Cardinal Mindzenty, head of the Catholic Church, was imprisoned. Today,
Rakosi has complete control of the People’s Republic of Hungary.
 In Bulgaria, a coup d’etat initiated by the Red Army on 8 September 1944 enabled the Soviet
Union, through the army’s supreme commander, to assume complete control in Sofia, while the
“Fatherland Front”, a Communist-dominated resistance group during the war, governed domestic affairs.
The 1946 elections were etched by the persecution against and lynching of opposition figures(Regent
Prince Kiril, former Prime Minister Bogdan Filov, and hundreds of other officials of the kingdom were
arrested on charges of war crimes)leading to the formation of the People's Republic of Bulgaria with
Vasil Kolarov appointed by the Parliament as a President (Chairman) of the Republic and Georgi
Dimitrov becoming the incumbent Prime-minister. In line with the repression of dissenters, such as the
Goryani Movement, an armed guerilla resistance movement that had materialized since 1944, on 6 June
1947, parliamentary leader of the Agrarians party, Nikola Petkov, a critic of Soviet rule, was arrested in
the Parliament building, subjected to a show trial, found guilty of espionage, sentenced to death, and
hanged on 23 September 1947.
In 1943, Czechoslovakian leader in exile Edvard Beneš agreed to Stalin's demands for
unconditional agreement with Soviet foreign policy, including the expulsion of over one million Sudeten
ethnic Germans identified as "rich people" and ethnic Hungarians, directed by the Beneš decrees. 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". In April 1945, the Third Republic, a national front coalition
ruled by three socialist parties, was formed. Because of the USSR's strength (they held 114 of 300 seats)
and Beneš' loyalty, unlike in other Eastern Bloc countries, the Kremlin decided not to drastically meddle
in shifting traditional political ranks. However, the failure of eliminating "bourgeois" influence in the
army or expropriating industrialists and large landowners, as well as the existence of other parties beside
the “National Front”, displeased Moscow. Furthermore, the activities of the police—headed by Interior
Minister Václav Nosek, a Communist—were acutely offensive to many citizens as farmers objected to
talk of collectivization, and some workers were angry at Communist demands that they increase output
without being given higher wages. In 1948, leading non-Communist minister, Jan Masaryk, was also
found dead. This did not favour the Communist party’s bid in the May 1948 elections. Following
Czechoslovakia's brief consideration of taking Marshall Plan funds, the Communist Party of
Czechoslovakia seized complete power, though the coup d'état of February 1948, and the country was
declared a people's republic after the Ninth-of-May Constitution became effective.
As illustrated, Stalin’s promises of democratic elections and provision of aid, especially in
Poland and Czechoslovakia, constitute one of the main tools for the Soviet Union to gradually infiltrate
the administrative apparatus and establish ultimately a communist totalitarian regime, seemingly with the
approval of the Allies.
Stalin’s plans on Soviet expansion may rely on ideological and geopolitical motives. WWII had
decimated the USSR with 27 million deaths and the depletion of industrial power and agricultural
resources due to the Soviets’ adoption of the “scorched earth” policy during Nazi Germany’s operation
Barbarossa. Therefore, the recuperation of the Soviet Union’s infrastructure could be achieved by
transferring labour, materials and industrial assets to the Soviet Union from satellite Eastern European
countries. This would explain Stalin’s plans of annexing part of Eastern Poland, Romania and enforcing
mass deportations to gulags. Moreover, the creation of this buffer zone of friendly states would ensure the
USSR’s safety from a potential invasion. Nevertheless, Soviet expansion could be attributed to
ideological reasons, with the ultimate purpose of propagating communism, through the establishment, for
example, of Cominform by Stalin in 1947, the blockade of Berlin and the ultimate take-over of
Czechoslovakia.
 The surge of communism’s appeal in Western Europe has raised particular concerns, taking into
consideration the dictatorships of the Eastern bloc. The rise of these communist parties has been
dissipated, as you are aware, through the Marshall Plan by assisting the British troops who supported the
anticommunist monarchists during the Greek Civil War and by promising financial aid to De Gaspari’s
government and financing the propaganda campaigns of Italy’s Christian Democrat, Liberal, Social
Democratic and Republican parties, leading up to the April 1948 elections. In France, amid apprehension
over communist expansion, the Communist party(PCF) was excluded from government in May 1947.
Concerns about these developments have been expressed not only at the Potsdam conference in
July 1945, especially after the events in Poland and the imprisonment of Polish negotiators who were
invited to Moscow, but have been highlighted by-now former British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill,
who condemned the Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe in his Iron Curtain speech on 5 March 1946,
following your invitation at Fulton, Missouri. During his speech, he noted that “from Stettin in the Baltic
to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent”.
To conclude, the impediments that these regimes impose on the rehabilitation of Europe, the
revival of prosperity which is essential for Europe’s repayment of US-issued debt, the resurgence of
interactive markets, the preservation of peace as well as fundamental human rights and freedoms, which
you highlighted during your speech on March 12, 1947 in Congress, render Soviet expansion a catalyst
issue that is extended beyond the borders of Europe.

Most respectfully,
Dionysia Balafa