ABSTRACT
In Roumania there was for a time a genuine reaction against the National Peasant Party. Communist manoeuvres against the peasant parties in Eastern Europe recall V. I. Lenin's trick in producing an artificial split in the Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1917. The difference between the pro-communist minorities and anti-communist majorities in the East European peasant parties was not social but political. Soviet intervention in East European affairs has been of three types—direct political action based on the threat of military force, indirect political action, and economic action. Though Soviet intervention, and timely infiltration of communists into key positions, were the decisive factors in the Stalinisation of Eastern Europe, internal social factors played their part. The whole political life of the Soviet zone has been determined by Soviet policy. In Roumania and Hungary reparations were not only designed to compensate the Russian state for part of its war losses, but were also used to crush national opposition to Soviet and communist political aims.
