Eastern bloc

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A map of the Eastern Bloc.

During the Cold War, the term Eastern Bloc (or Soviet Bloc) was used to refer to the Soviet Union and its allies in Central and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and - until the early 1960s - Albania). The "Eastern Bloc" is also used as another name for the Warsaw Pact (a Soviet-led military alliance) or the Comecon (an international economic organization of Communist states).

Yugoslavia was never part of the Eastern Bloc or the Warsaw Pact. Although it was a Communist state, its leader, Marshal Tito, came to power through his efforts as a partisan resistance leader during World War II, and thus he was not installed by the Soviet Red Army, and he owed the Soviet leadership no allegiance. The Yugoslav government established itself as a neutral state during the Cold War, and the country was one of the founders of the Non-Aligned Movement.

Similarly, the Stalinist Albanian government also came to power independently of the Red Army as a consequence of World War II. Albania broke with the Soviet Union in the early 1960s as a result of the Sino-Soviet split, aligning itself instead with the People's Republic of China and its anti-revisionist stance.

Nations within the Eastern Bloc were sometimes held in the Soviet sphere of influence through military force. Hungary was invaded by the Red Army in 1956 after it had overthrown its pro-Soviet government and replaced it with one that sought a more democratic communist path independent of Moscow; when Polish communist leaders tried to elect Władysław Gomułka as First Secretary, they were issued an ultimatum by the Soviet military, demanding that Gomułka's election be canceled.[link] Czechoslovakia was invaded in 1968 after a period of liberalization known as the Prague Spring. The latter invasion was codified in formal Soviet policy as the Brezhnev Doctrine.

During the late 1980s, the Soviet Union gradually stopped interfering in the internal affairs of Eastern Bloc nations. The abrogation of the Brezhnev Doctrine in favor of the so-called "Sinatra Doctrine" had dramatic effects across Eastern Europe. The Eastern Bloc eventually came to an end with the collapse of the pro-Soviet regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989 (see Revolutions of 1989).

See also

• Soviet Empire
• Iron Curtain
• NATO
• Post-Soviet states
• Western world

External Links

• [Photographs of Russia in 1967]
• [Candid photos of the Eastern Bloc] September-December 1991, in the last months of the USSR
• [Photographic project "Eastern bloc"] “Eastern Block” examines the specificities and differences of living in totalitarian and post totalitarian countries. The project is divided into chapters, each dedicated to one of the Eastern European countries – Slovak Republic, Poland, ex GDR, Hungary, Czech Republic and ex Yugoslavia.

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