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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).
As such, the bloc was opposed to the political systems and foreign policies of communist countries, which were centered on the Soviet Union, other members of the Warsaw Pact, and usually the People's Republic of China. The name "Western Bloc" emerged in response to and as the antithesis of its communist counterpart, the Eastern Bloc.
Eastern Bloc branches of organizations with western contacts, such as the boy scouts, the girl guides and the international federation of professional and business women, were closed. [69] Churches were subjected to attack, including the Uniate church in the Ukraine and Romania, Protestants in Bulgaria and the Roman Catholic Church in Hungary. [69]
They were also referred to as the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The circumstances of these two blocs were so different that they were essentially two worlds, however, they were not numbered first and second. [2] [3] [4] The onset of the Cold War is marked by Winston Churchill's famous "Iron Curtain" speech. [5]
Cold War – period of political and military tension that occurred after World War II between powers in the Western Bloc (the United States, its NATO allies and others) and powers in the Eastern Bloc (the Soviet Union and its allies in the Warsaw Pact). Historians have not fully agreed on the dates, but 1947–1991 is common.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Sino-Soviet debates about the interpretation of orthodox Marxism became specific disputes about the Soviet Union's policies of national de-Stalinization and international peaceful coexistence with the Western Bloc, which Chinese leader Mao Zedong decried as revisionism.
From the beginning of the post-war period, Western Europe and Japan rapidly recovered from the destruction of World War II and sustained strong economic growth through the 1950s and 1960s, with per capita GDPs approaching those of the United States, while Eastern Bloc economies stagnated. [93]
The Congo Crisis in 1960 drew Cold War battle lines in Africa, as the Democratic Republic of the Congo became a Soviet ally, causing concern in the West. [3] However, by the early 1960s, the Cold War reached its most dangerous point with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, as the world stood on the brink of nuclear war.