Editing Eastern Bloc (section)

===Social conditions===
{{further|Eastern Bloc emigration and defection|Eastern Bloc information dissemination|Eastern Bloc politics}}

As a consequence of [[World War II]] and the German occupations in Eastern Europe, much of the region had been subjected to enormous destruction of industry, infrastructure and loss of civilian life. In Poland alone the policy of plunder and exploitation inflicted enormous material losses to Polish industry (62% of which was destroyed),<ref>Historia Polski 1918–1945: Tom 1 Czesław Brzoza, Andrzej Sowa, p. 697, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2006</ref> agriculture, infrastructure and cultural landmarks, the cost of which has been estimated as approximately €525&nbsp;billion or $640&nbsp;billion in 2004 exchange values.<ref>[http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,1324630,00.html Poles Vote to Seek War Reparations] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100403152040/http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,1324630,00.html |date=3 April 2010 }}, ''[[Deutsche Welle]]'', 11 September 2004</ref>

Throughout the Eastern Bloc, both in the USSR and the rest of the Bloc, Russia was given prominence and referred to as the ''naiboleye vydayushchayasya natsiya'' (the most prominent nation) and the ''rukovodyashchiy narod'' (the leading people).<ref name="graubard150">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Graubard|1991|p=150}}</ref> The Soviets promoted the reverence of Russian actions and characteristics, and the construction of Soviet structural hierarchies in the other countries of the Eastern Bloc.<ref name="graubard150"/>

[[File:Bucur Obor (1986).jpg|thumb|A line for distribution of cooking oil in [[Bucharest]], [[Socialist Republic of Romania|Romania]], May 1986]]
The defining characteristic of [[Stalinist]] [[totalitarianism]] was the unique symbiosis of the state with society and the economy, resulting in politics and economics losing their distinctive features as autonomous and distinguishable spheres.<ref name="hardt11"/> Initially, Stalin directed systems that rejected Western institutional characteristics of [[market economy|market economies]], [[democracy|democratic governance]] (dubbed "bourgeois democracy" in Soviet parlance) and the rule of law subduing discretional intervention by the state.<ref name="hardt12"/>

The Soviets mandated expropriation and ''etatisation'' of private property.<ref name="roht83">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Roht-Arriaza|1995|p=83}}</ref> The Soviet-style "replica regimes" that arose in the Bloc not only reproduced the Soviet [[command economy]], but also adopted the brutal methods employed by [[Joseph Stalin]] and Soviet-style secret polices to suppress real and potential opposition.<ref name="roht83"/>

Stalinist regimes in the Eastern Bloc saw even marginal groups of opposition intellectuals as a potential threat because of the bases underlying Stalinist power therein.<ref name="Pollackxiv"/> The suppression of dissent and opposition was a central prerequisite for the security of Stalinist power within the Eastern Bloc, though the degree of opposition and dissident suppression varied by country and time throughout the Eastern Bloc.<ref name="Pollackxiv"/>

In addition, media in the Eastern Bloc were organs of the state, completely reliant on and subservient to the government of the USSR with radio and television organisations being state-owned, while print media was usually owned by political organisations, mostly by the local party.<ref name="oneil15"/> While over 15&nbsp;million Eastern Bloc residents migrated westward from 1945 to 1949,<ref>{{Harvard citation no brackets|Böcker|1998|pp=207–9}}</ref> emigration was effectively halted in the early 1950s, with the Soviet approach to controlling national movement emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern Bloc.<ref name="dowty114"/>