East Bloc: Illusions of Unity

At the Yalta conference in 1945, preparing for the final onslaught against Hitler's Germany, Roosevelt and Churchill gave tacit approval to the notion that Eastern Europe would be a Soviet "sphere of influence" after the defeat of their common enemy. It became more than that. By 1948 Bulgaria, Rumania, Poland, Albania, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary and Yugoslavia had acquired Communist governments, either by the force of Soviet arms or by political subversion.

Yugoslavia's Josip Broz Tito hurled the first challenge to East bloc unity; his country was ceremoniously expelled in 1948 from the Cominform, the Moscow-dominated alliance of Communist states, for pursuing an independent foreign policy. Thirteen years later, Albania effectively withdrew from the Warsaw Pact.

Geographic isolation, in part, helped protect both these mavericks from the Kremlin's wrath. Other rebellious East bloc nations were less fortunate. In 1953 the Soviet army moved into East Germany to crush a widening worker-led insurrection in support of political freedom and economic improvements. Three years later, there were popular uprisings against pro-Moscow regimes in both Poland and Hungary. The Kremlin let the Polish army put down the rioting Poznan workers, who were demanding "bread and freedom." But the Soviets sent their own troops into Budapest in a brutal suppression that left at least 25,000 Hungarians dead and forced thousands more into exile.

Twelve years later, Moscow's muscle lashed out again. In 1968 Czechoslovakia's party leader, Alexander Ducdek, was promoting a series of reforms that promised "socialism with a human face": a more flexible planned economy with touches of political pluralism. The Soviets countered by sending 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops into Prague under the guise of "fraternal assistance."

Today, even if the "Polish disease" does not immediately infect the other satellites, the Kremlin has reason to worry about the cohesiveness of its colonies. Since the end of the Stalin era, the countries have developed in differing and, for the Soviets, sometimes troubling ways, guided by their own historic and cultural traditions. Rumania, although it has one of the East bloc's most repressive regimes, has maintained a boldly independent foreign policy. Hungary, while hewing to the Soviet line on international affairs, is experimenting with quasi-capitalist practices in its socialist economy.

Meanwhile, the revolutionary fervor that existed in Eastern Europe after World War II has long since evaporated; it has been replaced by cynicism, opportunism and a sullen resentment of authority. With the possible exception of Rumania, other Warsaw Pact nations would be likely to assist the Soviets in an invasion of Poland. But the last illusions of East bloc cohesion would surely be shattered if the Poles fought back. In that case, says British Kremlinologist Edward Crankshaw, "the bogus fabric of the Warsaw Pact would be in tatters. The U.S.S.R. would be left a moral leper with a ruined 'grand alliance' and a crippling economic liability."

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