The Eastern Bloc is a collective term for the former Communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe. This generally encompasses the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact.

When Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov expressed concern that the Yalta Agreement's wording might impede Stalin's plans in Central Europe, Stalin responded "Never mind. We'll do it our own way later." After Soviet forces remained in Eastern and Central European countries, with the beginnings of Communist puppet regimes installed in those countries, by falsified elections, Churchill referred to the region as being behind an "Iron Curtain" of control from Moscow.Muller, James W., Churchill's "Iron Curtain" Speech Fifty Years Later, University of Missouri Press, 1999, , pages 1–8

Initial control process

The initial problem in countries occupied by the Red Army in 1944–45 was how to transform occupation power into control of domestic development. Because Communists were small minorities in all countries but Czechoslovakia, they were initially instructed to form coalitions in their respective countries. Soviet takeover of control at the outset generally followed a process: a general coalition of left-wing, Anti-fascist forces; a reorganised 'coalition' in which the Communists would have the upper hand and neutralise those in other parties who were not willing to accept their supremacy; complete Communist domination.

It was only in the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia that former partisans entered their new government independently of Soviet influence. It was the latter's publicly stubborn independent political stances, its insistence on specifically not being a puppet regime, that led to the Tito–Stalin split and the other moves towards a "Titoism" that quickly made SR Yugoslavia unique within the context of overall Eastern Bloc politics.

Property relocation By the end of World War II, most of Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union in particular, suffered vast destruction. The Soviet Union had suffered a staggering 27 million deaths, and the destruction of significant industry and infrastructure, both by the Nazi Wehrmacht and the Soviet Union itself in a "scorched earth" policy to keep it from falling in Nazi hands as they advanced over to within of Moscow. Thereafter, the Soviet Union physically transported and relocated east European industrial assets to the Soviet Union.

This was especially pronounced in eastern European Axis countries, such as Romania and Hungary, where such a policy was considered as punitive reparations (a principle accepted by Western powers). In some cases, Red Army officers viewed cities, villages and farms as being open to looting.Beevor, Antony, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Penguin Books, 2002, . Specific reports also include Report of the Swiss legation in Budapest of 1945 and Hubertus Knabe: Tag der Befreiung? Das Kriegsende in Ostdeutschland (A day of liberation? The end of war in East Germany), Propyläen 2005, German. Other Eastern Bloc states were required to provide coal, industrial equipment, technology, rolling stock and other resources to reconstruct the Soviet Union. Between 1945 and 1953, the Soviets received a net transfer of resources from the rest of the Eastern Bloc under this policy roughly comparable to the net transfer from the United States to western Europe in the Marshall Plan.

East Germany

Most of Germany east of the Oder–Neisse line, which contained much of Germany's fertile land, was transferred to what remained of unilaterally Soviet-controlled Poland. At the end of World War II, political opposition immediately materialised after occupying Soviet army personnel conducted systematic pillaging and rapes in their zone of then divided Germany, with total rape victim estimates ranging from tens of thousands to two million.Schissler, Hanna The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949–1968When members of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) reported to Stalin that looting and rapes by Soviet soldiers could result in negative consequences for the future of socialism in post-war East Germany, Stalin reacted angrily: "I shall not tolerate anybody dragging the honor of the Red Army through the mud." (Wolfgang Leonhard, Child of the Revolution ,Pathfinder Press, 1979, Norman M. Naimark. The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949. Harvard University Press, 1995. ) Accordingly, all evidence of looting, rapes and destruction by the Red Army was deleted from archives in the Soviet occupation zone.(Wolfgang Leonhard, Child of the Revolution, Pathfinder Press, 1979, .)

Factories, equipment, technicians, managers and skilled personnel were forcibly transferred to the Soviet Union. In the non-annexed remaining portion of Soviet-controlled East Germany, like in the rest of Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe, the major task of the ruling regime was to channel Soviet orders down to both the administrative apparatus and the other bloc parties pretending that these were initiatives of its own.

The SED won a first narrow election victory in Soviet-zone elections in 1946, even though Soviet authorities oppressed political opponents and prevented many competing parties from participating in rural areas. Property and industry were nationalised under their government.The political process contrasted with that in western German zones occupied by Britain, France and the United States, where minister-presidents were chosen by freely elected parliamentary assemblies. (Turner, Henry Ashby The Two Germanies Since 1945: East and West, Yale University Press, 1987, , page 20) 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.

Indoctrination of Marxism–Leninism became a compulsory part of school curricula, sending professors and students fleeing to the west. Applicants for positions in the government, the judiciary and school systems had to pass ideological scrutiny. An elaborate political police apparatus kept the population under close surveillance, including Soviet SMERSH secret police. A tight system of censorship restricted access to print or the airwaves.

What remained of SED opposition parties were also infiltrated to exploit their relations with their "bourgeois" counterparts in western zones to support Soviet unity along Soviet lines, while a "National Democratic" party (NDPD) was created to attract former Nazis and professional military personnel in order to rally them behind the SED. In early 1948, during the Tito–Stalin split, the SED underwent a transformation into an authoritarian party dominated by functionaries subservient to Moscow. Important decisions had to be cleared with the CPSU Central Committee apparatus or even with Stalin himself.

By early 1949, the SED was capped by a Soviet-style Politburo that was effectively a small self-selecting inner circle. The German Democratic Republic was declared on 7 October 1949, within which the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs accorded the East German state administrative authority, but not autonomy, with an unlimited Soviet exercise of the occupation regime and Soviet penetration of administrative, military and secret police structures.In a congratulatory telegram, Stalin emphasised that, with the creation of East Germany, the "enslavement of European countries by the global imperialists was rendered impossible." (Wettig, Gerhard, Stalin and the Cold War in Europe, Rowman && Littlefield, 2008, , page 179)

Poland

After the Soviet invasion of German-occupied Poland in July 1944, Polish government-in-exile prime minister Stanisław Mikołajczyk flew to Moscow with Churchill to argue against the annexation of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact portion of eastern Poland by the Soviet Union. Poland served as the first real test of the American President Roosevelt's Soviet policy of "giving" to Stalin assuming noblesse oblige, with Roosevelt telling Mikołajczyk before the visit, "Don't worry. Stalin doesn't intend to take freedom from you" and after assuring U.S. backing, concluding "I shall see to it that your country does not come out of this war injured."

Mikołajczyk offered a smaller section of land, but Stalin declined, telling him that he would allow the exiled government to participate in the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN and later "Lublin Committee"), which consisted of Communists and satellite parties set up under the direct control by the Soviet plenipotentiary Colonel-General Nikolai Bulganin. An agreement was reached at the Yalta Conference permitting the annexation of most of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact portion of Eastern Poland, while granting Poland part of East Germany in return. Thereafter, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic were expanded to include eastern Poland.Cohen, Saul Bernard, Geopolitics: The Geography of International Relations, Rowman & Littlefield, 2008, , page 211

The Soviet Union then compensated what remained of Poland by ceding to it the portion of Germany east of the Oder–Neisse line, which contained much of Germany's fertile land. An agreement was reached at Yalta that the Soviets' Provisional Government made up of PKWN members would be re-organised "on a broad democratic basis" including the exiled government, and that the re-organised government's primary task would be to prepare for elections.11 February 1945 Potsdam Report, reprinted in Potsdam Ashley, John, Soames Grenville and Bernard Wasserstein, The Major International Treaties of the Twentieth Century: A History and Guide with Texts, Taylor & Francis, 2001

Pretending that it was an indigenous body representing Polish society, the PKWN took the role of a governmental authority and challenged the pre–World War II Polish government-in-exile in London. Doubts began to arise whether the "free and unfettered elections" promised at the Yalta Conference would occur. Non-Stalinists and partisans, including those that fought the Nazis, were systematically persecuted. Hopes for a new free start were immediately dampened when the PKWN claimed they were entitled to choose who they wanted to take part in the government, and the Soviet NKVD seized sixteen Polish underground leaders who had wanted to participate in negotiations on the re-organisation in March 1945 brought them to the Soviet Union for a show trial in June.

While underground leaders were sentenced to long prison terms, assurances that political prisoners would be released and that Soviet forces and security would leave failed to be supported by concrete safeguards or implementation plans. Polish government-in-exile figures, including Stanisław Mikołajczyk then returned to a popular reception, and were able to lure several parties to their cause, effectively undermining Bloc politics.

When the Mikołajczyk's People's Party (PSL) continued to resist pressure to renounce a ticket of its own outside the party bloc, it was exposed to open terror, including the disqualification of PSL candidates in one quarter of the districts and the arrest of over 80,000 PSL activists, followed by vote rigging that resulted in Gomułka's candidates winning a majority in the carefully controlled poll.Tom Buchanan, Europe's Troubled Peace, 1945–2000: 1945–2000, Blackwell Publishing, 2005, , Google Print, p.84A brief history of Poland: Chapter 13: The Post-War Years, 1945–1990 . Polonia Today Online. Retrieved 28 March 2007."Poland." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved on 7 April 2007