ABSTRACT
So long as eastern Europe ostensibly subscribed to Lenin's vision of workers' republics, called at first ‘people's democracies', and so long as Soviet power held, the impetus to promote the integration of western Europe, exposed as it was to American ideas, economic methods, culture — and pressure — on an unprecedented scale, was fed by the Cold War. An important group of allied countries, and it was to grow in size, soon recognized their ultimate dependence on one another and on the fate of West Germany, a conviction that was enhanced further by the disintegration of overseas empires. Indonesia in 1945 was followed by India in 1947 and Indochina in 1954, each with its own history. There was also a sense of shared economic potential in Western Europe, particularly after 1958.
