Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc (Combloc), the Socialist Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc, was the collective term for 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 ...
Russia was particularly upset with the addition of the three Baltic states, the first countries that were part of the Soviet Union to join NATO. [63] [61] Russian troops had been stationed in Baltic states as late as 1995, [64] but the goals of European integration and NATO membership were very attractive for the Baltic states. [65]
Soviet occupation zone of Germany was the area of eastern Germany occupied by the Soviet Union from 1945 on. In 1949 it became The German Democratic Republic known in English as East Germany. In 1955 the Republic was declared by the Soviet Union to be fully sovereign; however, Soviet troops remained, based on the four-power Potsdam agreement.
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 .
The post –Cold War era is a period of history that follows the end of the Cold War, which represents history after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. This period saw many former Soviet republics become sovereign nations, as well as the introduction of market economies in eastern Europe. This period also marked the United ...
U.S. leaders have known since the Soviet collapse that Russia’s loss of empire would be traumatic. They may not have foreseen that the trauma would persist for 30 years. “Empires die a slow ...
The "orthodox" school places the responsibility for the Cold War on the Soviet Union and its expansion into Eastern Europe. [9] For example, Thomas A. Bailey argued in his 1950 America Faces Russia that the breakdown of postwar peace was the result of Soviet expansionism in the immediate years following