Editing Eastern Europe (section)

===World War II and onset of the Cold War===
Russia ended its participation in World War I in March 1918 and lost territory, as the Baltic countries and Poland became independent. The region was the main battlefield in the Second World War (1939–45), with the German and Soviet Armies sweeping back and forth; millions of Jews and others being killed by the Nazis in ''[[Generalplan Ost]]''; and millions of others killed by disease, starvation, and military action, or executed after being deemed as politically dangerous.<ref>Timothy Snyder, ''Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin'' (2011) [https://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465031471/ excerpt and text search] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170919203522/https://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465031471 |date=2017-09-19 }}</ref> During the final stages of World War II, the future of Eastern Europe was decided by the overwhelming power of the Soviet Army, which swept the Germans aside. It did not reach Yugoslavia and Albania, however. Finland was free but forced to be neutral in the upcoming Cold War.

Throughout Eastern Europe, [[History of German settlement in Central and Eastern Europe|German-speaking populations]] [[Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)|were expelled]] to the [[West Germany|reduced borders of Germany]] (or even [[Austria]]) in one of the largest ethnic cleansing operations in history.<ref>{{cite book|title=Uprooted: How Breslau Became Wroclaw during the Century of Expulsions|author=Gregor Thum|publisher=Princeton University Press}}</ref> Regions where Germans had formed the local population majority were re-settled with Polish- or Czech-speakers.

The region fell to Soviet control, and communist governments were imposed. Yugoslavia, Albania and later Romania had their own communist regimes independent of Moscow. The [[Eastern Bloc]] at the onset of the Cold War in 1947 was far behind the Western European countries in economic rebuilding and economic progress. Winston Churchill, in his well-known "[[Sinews of Peace]]" address of 5 March 1946, at [[Westminster College, Missouri|Westminster College]] in [[Fulton, Missouri|Fulton]], Missouri, stressed the geopolitical impact of the "iron curtain":
{{Blockquote|From [[Szczecin|Stettin]] in the [[Baltic Sea|Baltic]] to [[Trieste]] in the [[Adriatic Sea|Adriatic]] an ''iron curtain'' has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of [[Central Europe|Central]] and Eastern Europe: [[Warsaw]], [[Berlin]], [[Prague]], [[Vienna]], [[Budapest]], [[Belgrade]], [[Bucharest]], and [[Sofia]].|sign=|source=}}

[[File:Eastern-Europe-small.png|thumb|Pre-1989 division between the "West" (grey) and "Eastern Bloc" (orange) superimposed on current borders:
{{legend|#CB8807|Russia (the former [[Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic|RSFSR]])}}
{{legend|#EAB34D|Other countries formerly part of the [[USSR]]}}
{{legend|#EEC77F|Members of the [[Warsaw Pact]]}}
{{legend|#E9D2A5|Other former Communist states not aligned with Moscow}}]]

====Eastern Bloc====
{{Further|Eastern Bloc}}
Eastern Europe after 1945 usually meant all the European countries liberated from Nazi Germany and then occupied by the Soviet Army. It included the [[German Democratic Republic]] (also known as East Germany), formed by the [[Soviet occupation zone]] of Germany. All countries in Eastern Europe adopted communist modes of control by 1948. They were officially independent of the Soviet Union, but the practical extent of this independence was quite limited. Yugoslavia and Albania had Communist control that was independent of the Kremlin.

The communists had a natural reservoir of popularity in that they had destroyed the German invaders.<ref>Applebaum, pp. 312–33.</ref> Their goal was to guarantee long-term working-class solidarity. The Soviet secret police, the [[NKVD]], working in collaboration with local communists, created secret police forces using leadership trained in Moscow. This new secret police arrived to arrest political enemies according to prepared lists.<ref>Anne Applebaum, ''Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–1956'' (2012) p. xxix.</ref> The national communists then took power in a gradualist manner and were backed by the Soviets in many, but not all, cases. For a while, co-operative non-communist parties were tolerated.<ref name="Applebaum, p. xxx">Applebaum, p. xxx</ref> The communist governments nationalized private businesses, placed them under state ownership and monitored the media and the churches.<ref name="Applebaum, p. xxx"/> When dividing up government offices with coalition partners, the communists took control of the interior ministries, which controlled the local police.<ref>Applebaum, p. 71.</ref> They also took control of the mass media, especially radio,<ref>Applebaum, pp. 174–191.</ref> as well as the education system.<ref>Applebaum, pp. 172–173.</ref> They confiscated and redistributed farmland<ref>Applebaum, pp. 223–228.</ref> and seized control of or replaced the organizations of civil society, such as church groups, sports, youth groups, trade unions, farmers' organizations, and civic organizations. In some countries, they engaged in large-scale ethnic cleansing by moving ethnic groups such as Germans, Poles, Ukrainians and Hungarians far away from where they had lived, often with high loss of life, and relocating them within the new post-war borders of their respective countries.<ref>Applebaum, pp. 1162–147.</ref>

Under Stalin's direct instructions, these nations rejected grants from the American [[Marshall Plan]]. Instead, they joined the [[Molotov Plan]], which later evolved into the [[Comecon]] (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance). When [[NATO]] was created in 1949, most countries of Eastern Europe became members of the opposing [[Warsaw Pact]], forming a geopolitical concept that became known as the ''[[Eastern Bloc]]''. This consisted of:
* First and foremost was the [[Soviet Union]] (which included the modern-day territories of [[Russia]], [[Belarus]], [[Ukraine]] and [[Moldova]] and the illegally occupied [[Lithuania]], [[Latvia]] and [[Estonia]]). Other countries dominated by the Soviet Union were the [[East Germany|German Democratic Republic]], [[People's Republic of Poland]], [[Czechoslovak Socialist Republic]], [[People's Republic of Hungary]], [[People's Republic of Bulgaria]], and [[Socialist Republic of Romania]].
* The [[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia]] (SFRY; formed after World War II and before its later dismemberment) was not a member of the [[Warsaw Pact]] but was a founding member of the [[Non-Aligned Movement]], an organization created in an attempt to avoid being assigned to either the NATO or Warsaw Pact blocs. The movement was demonstratively independent of both the Soviet Union and the Western bloc for most of the Cold War, which allowed Yugoslavia and its other members to act as a business and political mediator between the blocs.<ref>Jeronim Perović, "The Tito-Stalin split: a reassessment in light of new evidence." ''Journal of Cold War Studies'' 9.2 (2007): 32-63 [https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/62735/1/Perovic_Tito.pdf online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220704114441/https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/62735/1/Perovic_Tito.pdf |date=2022-07-04 }}.</ref>
* The [[Socialist People's Republic of Albania]] broke with the Soviet Union in the early 1960s as a result of the [[Sino-Soviet split]] and aligned itself instead with China. Albania formally left the Warsaw Pact in September 1968 after the suppression of the [[Prague Spring]]. When China established diplomatic relations with the United States in 1978, Albania also broke away from China.

Albania and especially Yugoslavia were not unanimously appended to the Eastern Bloc, as they were neutral for a large part of the Cold War.<ref>Stavro Skendi, "Albania and the Sino-Soviet Conflict." ''Foreign affairs'' 40.3 (1962): 471-478.</ref>{{clear}}