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By 1989, the Soviet government deemed it impractical for the Soviet Union to continue asserting its control over the Eastern Bloc, so it took a neutral stance regarding the events happening in East Germany. Soviet troops stationed in eastern Europe were under strict instructions from the Soviet leadership not to intervene in the political ...
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc (Combloc), the Socialist Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc, was an unofficial coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were aligned with the Soviet Union and existed during the Cold War (1947–1991).
By the end of World War II, most of Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union in particular, suffered vast destruction. [9] 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 1,600 ...
While the Iron Curtain remained in place, much of Eastern Europe and many parts of Central Europe – except West Germany, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and most of Austria (all of Austria after the withdrawal of occupying Allied forces and the declaration of Austria's neutrality that resulted from the Austrian State Treaty in 1955) – found ...
Organizations that the Soviet Union created in order to solidify its control over Eastern Europe, and which tied the Eastern Bloc together, included: Comecon – the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance was founded in accordance with Joseph Stalin's desire to enforce Soviet domination of the lesser states of Central Europe. Initially, the ...
It took effective control over most of the countries of Eastern Europe (except Yugoslavia and later Albania), turning them into satellite states. The USSR bound its satellite states in a military alliance, the Warsaw Pact , in 1955, and an economic organization, Council for Mutual Economic Assistance or Comecon , a counterpart to the European ...
In the course of World War II, the Soviet Union's armies occupied Eastern Europe, where they established or supported Communist puppet governments. By 1949, the Cold War had started between the Western Bloc and the Eastern (Soviet) Bloc, with the Warsaw Pact (created 1955) pitched against NATO (created 1949) in Europe.
The Soviet Union sought an official acceptance of the state borders drawn up in post-war Europe by the United States and Western Europe. The Soviets were largely successful; some small differences were that state borders were "inviolable" rather than "immutable", meaning that borders could be changed only without military interference, or ...