Central Europe under Soviet rule (1944-1989)

author: cartesdhistoire/instagram, added on: 2025-04-05

cartesdhistoire:

“Collins atlas of world history”, HarperCollins, 2004

After the Second World War, the USSR established a network of satellite states in Central Europe. Europe was thus divided in two by the "Iron Curtain," denounced by Churchill at Fulton in March 1946. The Cominform conference in Sklarszka Poreba in September 1947 initiated a total repression, similar to the "Prague Coup" of February 1948, when the communists seized all power.

Strict control was maintained by Soviet diplomats and advisers in the relevant armies (the Warsaw Pact was founded in 1955, and Soviet troops were stationed in the GDR, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia), but also in the ministries of state security and the economic sector (the CMEA was established in 1949). In June 1953, Soviet tanks suppressed worker riots in East Berlin, then intervened in Hungary in 1956 and against the Prague Spring in 1968.

This system collapsed in the decade 1980-1989, beginning in Poland. Following massive strikes in Gdansk, a free trade union, Solidarity, was authorized in September 1980, but General Jaruzelski's declaration of a state of war in December 1981 ushered in a period of reinforced dictatorship: Jerzy Popiełuszko, Solidarity's chaplain, was assassinated on October 19, 1984, after trade union leader Lech Wałęsa received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983.

The Polish elections of June 1989, followed in August by the opening of the border between Hungary and Austria, initiated a process that Gorbachev, Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, was powerless to control, particularly thanks to the influence of Polish Pope John Paul II (the Soviet secret services had, incidentally, attempted to assassinate him on May 13, 1981).

Huge demonstrations in the GDR led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989; the last pro-Soviet regimes fell, then Lech Wałęsa was elected President of Poland in 1990 and the Warsaw Pact was dissolved in 1991.

Collection: european-history - Tags: europe, eastern-europe, cold-war - Source: instagram.com