Can a parallel be established between the relations of the USSR with the countries of East-Central Europe and of the USA with those of Western Europe during the period 1945-70? Answer with particular reference to Poland and Bulgaria and EITHER Spain and Britain OR France and Italy

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the two emergent superpowers developed increasingly close relations with a partitioned Europe; the USSR brought East-Central Europe under its control, whilst the USA increasingly gained economic and military influence over the states of Western Europe. With particular reference to Poland, Bulgaria, Spain and Britain, this essay will discuss the parallels that can often be drawn between the two emergent relationships, why the existed where they did, and how they changed over time. Parallels can be drawn, to greater or lesser extents, between political, economic, military, social and foreign affairs, whilst differences in methods certainly existed. In order to analyse such relationships, it is first imperative to discuss why each respective relationship existed in each case.
Relations between the USSR and East-Central Europe between 1945-1970 were typified by the totalitarian imposition of Soviet Communism which rapidly transformed the social, political and economic systems of those countries into a distinct and monolithic model. (Crampton, 2003) Whilst in the initial post-war period, the political arena in Eastern Europe was far from uniform, from 1948 onwards Stalin was not satisfied with merely influencing his neighbouring governments and instead sought direct control over what would become satellites of the USSR. As Stalin saw cooperation with the allied states decreasingly viable, he focussed increasingly on the role of Soviet foreign policy in expanding the aims of the Soviet Union in the face of Western confrontation. (Brzenski, 1967) The partisanship of the UN and announcement of the Truman Doctrine brought such a trajectory in parallel to how the perceived threat from the USSR incentivised the USA to intensify relations with Western Europe for its own interests.
Soviet motivations were both political and economic. Firstly, the USSR had been ravaged by war and in desperate need to continue its industrialisation process, which would be aided by harvesting the natural resources of Eastern Europe. Secondly, there was an ideological goal of the USSR to further ‘Marxist-Leninism’, although this was subordinate to the motivations of realpolitik. Thirdly, the origins of the Cold War can be seen to raise the stakes in the face of Western confrontation, necessitating a defence based strategy. Stalin also wished to prevent the domestic influences in Eastern Europe from becoming hostile to the USSR. (Brzenski, 1967) In 1945, the USSR had not sought to alienate the Allies, with Molotov stating that, ‘it was to our benefit to stay allied with America’. (Mazower, 1999: Page 257). However, it soon became the imperative of the Soveits to prevent, or at least counter, the emergence of a West European bloc led by the USA. (Roberts, 2004: Page 1371) It was primarily as a response to the politically loaded criteria of the Marshall Plan that the USSR sought to intervene so directly with the affairs of Eastern Europe, which is in a clear parallel with the preoccupation of the US bloc with the Soviet-funded development of Eastern Europe. (Roberts, 2004: Page 1373).
Eastern Europe had by 1953 become a mirror image of the Soviet system: economically, politically and socially. In order to ferment the Soviet model in each respective country, the collectivisation of land was implemented, agriculture was ruthlessly exploited and heavy industrialisation was pursued under centralised Five-Year Plans with the satellite states, including Bulgaria and Poland, subordinate to Moscow.
In post-war Poland for example, the elections of January 1947 were controlled by the Communist Party, despite ‘free elections’ being agreed at Yalta. The Communists established a regime entirely under their domination. In Bulgaria, the Communists came to power initially under Dimitrov who was replaced by Chervenkov, a hard-line Stalinist, in 1950. Bulgaria’s Stalinist phase saw the process of industrialisation accelerated, agriculture collectivised, and peasant resistance quashed. Work camps were established and at the zenith of repression imprisoned about 80,000 Bulgarians. However, this is not to assume that Stalinisation did not have support throughout Eastern Europe. (Crampton, 2003)
Many of the Communist parties in Eastern Europe faced with government welcomed Stalinisation in a way to actually kick-start economies which they had no experience in managing before. ‘The East European Communists…rapidly came to face with a situation in which politics had few links with reality and in which their ideology had become a sterile guidebook for dubiously relevant socio-economic practices.’ (Brzenski, 1967: Page 139) From here on, any rebellion against the Stalinist ideology was nothing else but a way to make the Soviet Union your own enemy. As such, the Polish Communist Party in particular provided extortionate amounts of finance to the USSR in order to fund its defence industry in light of the arms race of the Cold War with the USA, in return for economic and political expertise; a process of ‘sterility in thought and policy’ began. (Brzenski, 1967: Page 140) Bulgaria was amongst the most responsive to Stalin’s impositions, followed by Poland on a somewhat disparate course, with Romania and Czechoslovakia slowest to embrace Stalinism. (Brzenski, 1967)
The numbers of Communist Party members increased dramatically as people sought the trappings of power and suffered discrimination for being non-Communist. For example, in Bulgaria, membership raised from 25,000 to 460,000 at the death of Stalin, almost 20 times its size prior to Soviet intervention. Freedom of speech and censorship of the media was also coordinated indirectly from Moscow, combined with repression of religious institutions – in Bulgaria; the Orthodox Church came under state control, with the Patriarch under virtual house arrest. An exception was Poland, where the Catholic Church was indeed too strong and too popular for even Stalin to suppress fully.
Owing to five year plans between 1949-1955, it became possible to introduce ‘socialist forms of state budget’. (Brzenski, 1967: Page 189) Turnover taxes were introduced in order to systematically seize power from the capitalist classes in by repeatedly siphoning away their profits:
‘In people’s democracies taxes serve as the ends of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They are the efficient tool of class warfare and are devised to help in the process of limiting and ousting capitalist elements from the national economy.’ (Brzenski, 1967: Page 145)
Whilst after the death of Stalin, there was some degree of ‘destalinisation’ under Khrushchev, relations between the USSR and Eastern European states stayed strong, if only by military force. The fulcrum of such military domination was the creation if the Warsaw Pact in 1955 to counter the threat from the NATO alliance and was prompted by the accession of re-militarised West Germany into NATO in May 1955. The signatories pledged to defend each other if one or more of the members were ever attacked and also assured that relations among the signatories were based on mutual non-interference in internal affairs and respect for national sovereignty and independence. However, the non-interference assurance would later be effectively violated with the Soviet military interventions in Hungary in 1956 and again to suppress the Prague Spring in 1968 (Best et al., 2004: Page 274).
For Poland destalinisation brought a liberalisation of internal policies under Gomułka and Khrushchev accepted that Poland would remain largely uncollectivised. (Swain and Swain, 2003: Page 157) However, subordination to the USSR still remained and in 1968, liberalisation was curtailed when student demonstrations were suppressed at the behest of Moscow. In late 1970, strikes and protests in the cities of Gdynia, Gdańsk and Szczecin, triggered by high prices, reflected dissatisfaction with conditions in the country, but the threat of Soviet intervention kept the Polish government in league with Soviet ideological objectives.
Bulgaria remained on an overt Stalinist trajectory in terms of foreign policy, despite following a more moderate policy at home. (Swain and Swain, 2003: 156) The upheavals in Poland and Hungary were not emulated in Bulgaria, but the Party placed firm limits and restraint to intellectual and literary freedom to curb dissent. (Swain and Swain, 2003: Page 157) Bulgaria demonstrated its loyalty to the USSR by participating in the invasion of Prague and became generally regarded as the Soviet Union’s most loyal Eastern European satellite. (Crampton, 2003)
All Soviet satellites undertook some liberalisation in the 1960s, embracing a limited form of ‘polycentralism’, involving a more supra-national approach and decentralization to some extent. (Crampton, 2003: Page 308) However, in October 1968 (after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia) Brezhnev made the following in a speech:
‘The Communist Party of the Soviet Union has always laboured to enable each Socialist country to determine for itself the concrete forms of its evolution on the way to Socialism, taking into account its specific national conditions…and when eternal forces, hostile to Socialism seek to steer the evolution of a Socialist country and to press for the restoration of the capitalist state of affairs, when in other words there is a serious threat to the cause of Socialism in that country, a danger for the security of the whole Communist community – then that becomes not only a problem for the people of that country, but also a common problem, a matter of concern for all the Socialist countries.’ (Brezhnev, 1968) This ‘Brezhnev doctrine’ maintained that whilst some internal differences would be tolerated, there was to remain the homogenisation of Eastern European societies under the yoke of the Soviet Union, which could not be seen, to the same extent in this period at least, in the relationship between the USA and Western Europe. (Best et al, 2004)
The USA emerged from the Second World War victorious, like the USSR but without the same level of casualties and economic losses. Despite this, its relationship with Western Europe was driven by very similar political and economic objectives as that of the USSR and Eastern Europe, and similarly had an ideological imperative to maintain a sphere of influence. It can be seen that particularly through the use of its economic power, the USA obtained a similar level of control over Western Europe that the Soviet Union held over the Eastern bloc between 1945-1970. (Best et al., 2004)
In exchange for preferential economic loans through the Marshall Plan in 1947, the USA sought to exert political influence over the whole of Europe and prevent it from falling into the Soviet sphere. However, given the percentage agreements at Yalta had divided the European continent into two, it was inevitable that America would seek to emphasise its influence over Western Europe economically and politically as a buttress against the Soviet Union. As such it lent $13 billion of economic and technical assistance as part of its European Recovery Programme to garner influence over Western Europe, in the same way that the USSR did with the East. (Best et al., 2004: Page 222)
By the time the plan had come to fruition by the end of the 1940’s, the economy of every participant state, with the exception of Germany, had grown past pre-war levels. Over the next two decades, many regions of Western Europe would enjoy unprecedented growth and prosperity. An intended consequence was the systematic adoption of American managerial and business methodologies, similar to the Soviet export of its economic expertise to Eastern European states such as Poland and Bulgaria. Another affect of the Marshall Plan was the prosperity of capitalist ideals that allowed for markets to stabilise through economic growth and similar to Soviet Union, the USA imposed its economic framework and ideology on its half of Europe, particularly in Britain, and eventually Spain.
One other obvious parallel between the two relationships is the fashion in which America sought to achieve a military alliance to prevent the ideological spread of its nemesis and maintain the security of liberal capitalist states. (Kulski, 1950)
As such the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) was created in 1949. The incorporation of West Germany saw the Soviets seek to emulate such a multilateral military alliance. Indeed its result was the creation of the Warsaw Pact as a formal response to this event, firmly establishing the two opposing sides of the Cold War. (Best et al., 2004)
However, one key difference between the relationship of the USA and that of the USSR with its sphere of influence is that the USA, at least regarding Western Europe, tolerated a degree of dissension. This is exemplified by the withdrawal of France from NATO. By 1966 all French armed forces were removed from NATO’s integrated military command and all non-French NATO troops were asked to leave France without American reprisals. This clearly contrasts with the failed moves of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia to manoeuvre away from the Soviet sphere of influence and in this sense a parallel cannot be drawn.
However, a move by the USA to obtain influence in Western Europe, stopping short of military intervention, is exemplified by the case of Spain. The increasing tensions between America and the USSR in the 1950s, forced the USA to search for new allies in Europe. Franco was a regarded as anti-Communist, which made Spain a very lucrative ally. (Preston, 1995)
Spanish neutrality was broken in 1953 when several treaties forming the Pact of Madrid, opening American military bases in Spain, were signed with the USA. The Pact committed the United States to provide economic and military aid to Spain. The United States, in return, was permitted to construct and utilise air and naval bases on Spanish territory. Between 1954- 1961 military aid amounted to $500 million, whilst Spanish officers received US training, in the same way that Polish and Bulgarian officers received training in the USSR.
The Pact did not end anti-Americanism sentiments; however, in the same way anti-Soviet feeling existed in Poland and Bulgaria. Akin to Poland and Bulgaria, external interference was also resented in Spain. Whereas Francoists resented the United States for its insufficient military supplies in return for basing rights, the leftist opposition in Spain perceived the United States as the primary supporter of the fascist regime and therefore as a major obstacle to democratisation, such was its increasing influence. (Preston 1995)
Similar to the benefits that Poland and Bulgaria experienced as a result of Soviet intervention, American co-operation and economic aid led to the so called ‘Spanish miracle’ between 1959 and 1973. The boom was bolstered by economic reforms promoted by US trained technocrats, who put in place development policies imposed by the IMF and USA.
In contrast to Spain, the relationship of the USA with Britain between 1945-1970 was somewhat closer. After Churchill’s ‘Sinews of Peace Address’ in Fulton, Missouri, which referred to a ‘special relationship’, American influence in Britain was extremely pronounced, particularly economically and militarily, in the post-war period.
One aspect of the relationship that mirrors that of the USSR with its Polish and Bulgarian satellites is that of intelligence sharing and co-operation with regards to military matters, with the USA always in the driving seat, as the Soviets were in the East. This aspect of the relationship between the US and UK originally grew from the common goal of countering the threat of communism. However, it should be noted that Western Europe generally was not as preoccupied by the ‘threat’ of communism as the United States, but had such a pre-occupation imposed upon in by its new financier. (Baylis and Smith, 2006: Page 100) This is similar to how Bulgaria and Poland had its foreign policy decided in Moscow.
Nevertheless, Britain and its ailing Empire also provided geographical resources for the Americans to station its troops; the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia became a US military base and whilst since the Berlin Blockade the USA has maintained substantial military forces in Britain itself. (Baylis and Smith, 2006: Page 99) Britain has also served as an important nuclear client for the USA. The Quebec Agreement in 1943 committed the two countries to developing nuclear weapons, with Britain handing over information regarding its ‘Tube Alloys’ project and providing assistance in the development of the ‘Manhattan Project’. The Soviets too procured scientific expertise, particularly of Hungary and Bulgaria, to facilitate its own nuclear ambitions.
Economically, the United States became the principal source of Foreign Direct Investment to the UK, likewise the UK the biggest single foreign investor in the USA. British trade remained an important driver of the US economy for decades and only recently has the UK repaid its financial debt to the USA for loans granted after the Second World War. Such economic dependence certainly mirrors that of Bulgaria on the Soviet Union, but less so Poland which became increasingly independent and Western orientated in the 1960’s onwards.
Another parallel that can be witnessed is with regards to foreign policy and direct US intervention to serve its own interests above those of Western European countries. The most acute example of this is with regards to the Suez Crisis in 1956. For its own interests, the USA forced a cease-fire on Britain and France. The pressure that the United States used against Britain was primarily financial, as the US poised to sell reserves of British sterling and induce a collapse of the British currency. After Saudi Arabia initiated an oil embargo against France and Britain, the US refused to fill the gap, until both agreed to withdraw from Egypt. Such economic and political pressure effectively demonstrates that the USA had a similar level of power that the USSR had over its satellite states, but simply chose to exercise it in a different, less violent fashion. Despite such interference, the Western powers were in no doubt that they required the economic support of the USA in order to prosper in the post-war period. (Westad, 2005: Page 132)
The US also emerged as the training ground for the political and economic elites of much of the capitalist Third World, in the same way as the USSR served the same function for the socialist bloc. As such both superpowers undermined away the primacy of Western Europe as the most influential arena for higher education and a theoretical model of Americanism emerged to rival that of Communism. (Westad, 2005: Page 32) This was at the same time that the USA served to undermine domestic interests of Western Europe by demonstrating to the Third World that a multiracial society could prosper independently from an imperial power, and the political primacy of Western Europe became stunted in the same way that it had been in the East by the Soviets. (Westad, 2005: Page 132)
In conclusion, many parallels can be drawn between the relationship of the USSR with East-Central Europe and that of the USA with Western Europe. Both superpowers obtained considerable economic, military and political influence over their respective spheres and the main difference lies in their method of coordination. Whereas the USA was more subtle in using economic and political influence, rather than the military threat that the USSR exercised, it should not be mistaken for any lesser extent of influence. The main distinction, therefore, is with regards to direct intervention, where the USSR was overt in its influence compared with the more covert and incentive based approach of the USA. However, whilst the methods may have varied, the effective political, social and the economic relationship of both superpowers with their respective spheres of influence are highly comparable.