ABSTRACT
The countries of Central Europe after the Second World War were more developed socially and economically than the Balkans and the areas that made up the Soviet Union, and were the most advanced societies to have the experience of communist rule imposed on them. Many areas, nevertheless, rem ained impoverished, backward and dom inated by unproductive peasant agriculture. There was, as we have just seen, considerable scope for the policy of socialist industrialization adopted soon after the war, and major conse quences were anticipated from the accelerated economic develop m ent and social change that formed part of the socialist vision. This was conceived of as one possessing an advanced industrial economy in which the urban working class played a dom inant part - numerically, socially and politically. The bourgeoisie and capitalist property-owning classes were expropriated and virtually eliminated from the social scene - in many cases, initially by the war and German occupation, later by Soviet occupation forces and the economic reparations they administered and, finally, by growing socialization and the strengthening of state control under communist auspices. The peasantry were also soon affected by the accelerating pace of industrialization and implementation of the collectivization policy in the countryside.
