ABSTRACT
Although the details of the region’s politics are only of contextual relevance it is important to emphasise the Soviet interest in the emerging communist states (Figure 6.1) which led Stalin to impose his authority in order to gain security as well as access to resources like oil, timber and uranium-even though this latter consideration was to rebound to the embarrassment of the Soviets who soon had to start delivering their own raw materials at concessionary prices to maintain cohesion within the bloc. Stalin had initially adapted the tenets of Marxism to the needs of ‘socialism in one country’ when the USSR was ideologically isolated during the inter-war years and she felt obliged to build a stronger industrial economy in secure ‘heartland’ locations which would not be immediately accessible to any future German invasion force. The Communist Party (CPSU) gave itself the right to invest all the nation’s wealth in this exercise and to demand the full compliance of the people using the most draconian methods, including collectivisation of agriculture and deployment of a huge army of forced labourers through the notorious ‘gulag’ system. The system was vindicated by the survival of the state during the Second World War, but such were the vested interests of Bolshevism-and in particular the prestige enjoyed by the CPSU-that the war economy was not only perpetuated but brutally imposed on the ECECs even though there was no compelling case for revolutionary upheaval in the ownership and location of production across the board. Indeed, Stalin’s initial actions were inconsistent for he initially sought very substantial reparations from ex-enemy states and even ordered the dismantling of railways in Poland which the Poles subsequently had to re-lay. Romania’s reparations to the Soviets were valued at $1.8 billion during 1944-8 (Smulta 1972 p. 525) and in addition the economy was dominated by Sovroms, liquidated, as has been said, only during 1954-6 after Stalin’s death. It was not surprising that industrial recovery was faster in Bulgaria than in Romania-given the lighter Soviet requisitioning and the authority of a large communist party (indeed, Bulgarian industry produced more in 1944 than in 1939). Yet neither Romania nor the other ECECs were incorporated into the USSR and it continues to be an open question how far Stalin was belatedly propelled into closer integration (involving monopoly
communist party government) as a response to the American offer of Marshall Aid in 1948. An alternative interpretation would highlight the essential importance of the region (as a buffer) for Soviet great power status and cite the consistent use of ‘salami tactics’ to isolate and neutralise opposition forces. Stalin destroyed social elites who took refuge in
1940 and demanded a significant zone of influence, yet he promised free elections at Yalta 1945 in exchange for recognition of Moscow-sponsored communist regimes in territories liberated by the Red Army. Gradual control was extended during 1945-9 through endorsement of land reform (1945-6), creation of the Cominform (1947), intervention in Czechoslovakia (1948), the blockade of Berlin (1948-9) and the formation of Comecon (1949); with Yugoslav dissent in 1948 as the only significant setback. Initial interest in the Marshall Plan and Western involvement in early post-war planning through Keynesian influence in Poland and Kaldor’s contribution in Hungary represent the last flickerings of Western intellectual input, blocked in favour of the Stalinist mode of monopoly power geared to overstrained industrialisation programmes. It remains unclear if there was pragmatism at work, as opposed to a ‘grand scheme’ with the concessions at Yalta a ‘calculated deception’.
