The Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, 1945–89 PDF
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THE SOVIET UNION IN EASTERN EUROPE, 1945-89 The Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, 1945-89 Edited by Odd Arne Westad Director ofR esearch Nobel Institute. Oslo Sven Holtsmark Senior Research Associate Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies Oslo Iver B. Neumann Research Fellow Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies Oslo Selection and editorial mailer © Odd Arne Westad, Svcn Holtsmark and I vcr B. Neumann 1994 Introduction and Chapters 1-10 © The Macmillan Press Ltd 1994 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1 st edition 1994 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 TOllenham Court Road, London WI P 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published in Great Britain 1994 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-349-23236-9 ISBN 978-1-349-23234-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-23234-5 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 06 05 04 0:1 02 01 00 99 First published in the United States of America 1994 by Scholarly and Reference Division, ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York. N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-10298-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. 1945-891 edited by Odd Arne Westad. Svcn Holtsmark. Iver B. Neumann. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-312-10298-2 I. Europe. Eastern-Relations-Soviet Union. 2. Soviet Union -Relations-Europe, Eastern. 3. Europe. Eastern-Politics and government-I 945-1 989. I. Westad, Odd Arne. II. Holtsmark, Sven G. III. Neumann. Iver B. DJK45.S65S69 1994 303.48'247-dc20 93-8746 CIP Contents Acknowledgements vi Notes on the Contributors vii Introduction: The Rise and Fall of the Communist Bloc 1 Odd Arne Westad 111Czec1ho1slovakia, the Soviet Union, and the Marshall Plan 9 Karel Kratkj 2 The 1948 Soviet-Yugoslav Conflict and the Formation of the 'Socialist Camp' Model 26 Leonid Gibianski 3 1956 - The Turning Point 47 Krystyna Kersten 4 Soviet Policy in the Annexed East European Borderlands: Language, Politics, and Ethnicity in Moldova 63 Charles E. King 5 When the Mouse Challenges the Cat: Bessarabia in Post-War Soviet-Romanian Relations 94 Adrian Pop 6 East European Mass Media: The Soviet Role Ito Tomasz Goban-Klas and Pdl Kolst(J 7 Romania and Hungary 1985-90: The Soviet Perspective 137 Mariana Hausleitner 8 The Kremlin's Impact on the Peaceful Revolution in East Germany (August 1989-March 1990) 150 Gerhard Wettig 9 Civil Resistance in the East European and Soviet Revolutions of 1989-91 175 Adam Roberts to Conclusion: Soviet Foreign Policy Towards Its European Allies 207 Iver B. Neumann Index 223 v Acknowledgements The essays collected in this volume could not have been written without the revolutionary improvements in international scholarly contacts and access to archival materials which recently have taken place in Russia and in Eastern Europe. We are all indebted to those scholars who fought for such improvements during the years dealt with in the book. The editors want to thank all the participants at the 1992 conference in Oslo on 'The Soviet Union in Eastern Europe', where these papers were first presented. The comments and the discussion at the conference assisted in the revision of the papers into their present form. We also want to express our gratitude to the Norwegian Nobel Institute, which organized and funded the conference, to its staff, and to the Norwe gian Research Council for Science and the Humanities which sponsored travel for several of the Russian and East European participants. Torill Johansen provided expert secretarial services for the final manuscript. The editors have kept the original spelling of place and personal names in each essay. They are therefore as divergent as the approaches and the conclusions of the essays themselves. ODD ARNE WESTAD SVEN HOLTSMARK IVER B. NEUMANN vi Notes on the Contributors Leonid Gibianski is Professor of History at the Institute for Slavonic and Balkan Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. Tomasz Goban-Klas is Professor at the Department of Sociology, Jagiellonian University, Cracow. Mariana Hausleitner is Research Fellow at the Ost-Europa Institut, Freie Universitat, Berlin. Sven Holtsmark is Research Associate at the Institute for Defence Studies, Oslo. Krystyna Kersten is Professor of History at the Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw. Charles E. King is a postgraduate research student in politics at St Antony's College, Oxford. Pal Kolstff is a lecturer at the Department of Slavonic and Baltic Studies, University of Oslo. Karel Kratky is a senior Research Fellow at the Institute of International Relations and lecturer at the Jan Masaryk Center for International Studies, School of Economics, Prague. Iver B. Neumann is Research Fellow and head of the Security and Foreign Policy Section at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Oslo. Adrian Pop is senior researcher at the Association of International Law and International Relations, Bucharest. Adam Roberts is the Montague Burton Professor of International Rela tions at Oxford University and a Fellow of Balliol College. Odd Arne Westad is head of research at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, Oslo. vii viii Notes on the Contributors Gerhard Wettig is Director of International Security Studies at the Bundesinstitut fUr ostwissenschaftliche und intemationale Studien, Cologne. Introduction: The Rise and Fall of the Communist Bloc Odd Arne Westad In 1945, as Soviet tanks rolled westward, the countries between the Baltic and the Adriatic started on their third transformation this century. The first had taken place in the early decades, as nationalism and war broke down empires and created new, unstable states. The second was carried out in the inter-war years, as authoritarian regimes replaced constitutional republics. And in 1945, after yet another round with European war, the Communist parties would have their chance at remaking the political map of Eastern Europe. It is too easy, too comfortable, to conclude after the end of 50 years of Communist dominance that these attempts at reshaping the area were just failures, worthy not only of the dustbin of history, but also of the historians' dustbins. As Eastern Europe's fourth transformation - another attempt at liberal politics and markets - gets under way, it is important to 'defrost' the last fifty years of history. We need to use new opportunities to look at connections and developments both within the regimes, between parties and societies, and between Moscow and its local allies. Even if we cannot learn from history - and the present state of affairs in Europe shows that that is rarely the case - we may still attempt to demystify the past and thereby increase our understanding of it. This essay is an introduction to some of the debates on the Soviet role in Eastern Europe since 1945. It deals with periodization, with the character of the Communist takeovers, with the problems of collaboration and party purges, with interventions and - finally - with the collapse of Soviet power in 1989. STAGES OF SOVIET CONTROL Researchers have never agreed on a comprehensive and clear periodization of the post-war Soviet involvement in Eastern Europe. As in most other cases, the analyst's vantage point has generally informed what has been 2 Introduction seen as years of decision; those looking primarily at Soviet policy have often seen changes in the Moscow leadership as fundamental, while those writing on the political or economic developments in one or more of the East European countries have chosen other dates. Periodization tends to be a divisive, but useful, way of looking at history. The period from 1945 to 1948 is generally seen as laying the foundation for Soviet power. By the end of 1948, Communists controlled the govern ments of all East European countries, and had forced the opposition either into exile or into marginal positions at home. With the exception of Yugo slavia and Albania, all the Communist regimes depended on Soviet armed backing for their survival. However, the basis for the regimes - and indeed for Soviet power - varied. Poland, on the one hand, had already been made into a virtual Soviet protectorate in 1945, while, on the other, Czechoslova kia saw a long drawn-out feud between a powerful Communist party and its domestic opponents. In the one major case where Soviet military power was not vital - Yugoslavia - Leonid Gibianski documents how by 1948 Stalin had already wrecked the relationship by attempting to replace the leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party. Between 1949 and 1956 Soviet control of the East European countries was institutionalized, through the Warsaw Pact, the economic exchange mechanisms, and through the inner-party purges directed from Moscow. But Stalin's purges also weakened the Communist parties, and, after his death in 1953, the parties' monopoly on power became seriously challenged both in Hungary and Poland, leading up to the tragic events of 1956. As Krystyna Kersten argues, 1956 is a turning point in Soviet-East European affairs in more than one way. The popular manifestations against Com munist rule demonstrated the parties' weaknesses and their complete de pendence on support from Moscow. But the Polish and Hungarian events also showed that the institutionalization of control had its limits - that the Soviets had been unable to destroy non-conformist modes of political and cultural interaction, what today is often referred to as civil societies. In the period from 1956 to 1968 the Soviets put an increasing emphasis on enhancing the domestic political credentials of the East European Com munist parties. Soviet advisers gradually played a less visible part in run ning the economic, military and political systems of the other countries, and the institutions binding the East Europeans to the Soviet Union were pre sented in the light of equality and cooperation. In different ways, the parties in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania used this opportunity for cau tious experimentation, and attempted to employ the Soviet political and economic model in ways which would increase their legitimacy within their own popUlations. The Czechoslovak party's acceleration of this moderate
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