Communism and its Collapse in the USSR and Eastern Europe

Abstract

In 1945 Russia emerged victorious from the greatest war in its history. Knowing what it wanted, and determined to obtain it, it was the Soviet Union that achieved most of its aims in the immediate postwar period. Having made the greatest sacrifices during the war, the Soviets felt that they were only taking their due. In creating buffer states of eastern Poland, Bessarabia, northern Bukovina, eastern Karelia, Ruthenia and northeast Prussia, they were ensuring their future safety (Map XV). The Soviet military occupation of eastern Europe settled all arguments. For the next 40 years an ‘iron curtain’ divided eastern from western Europe. Culturally isolated from the West, eastern Europe was compelled to look east.