Abstract
In the spring of 1947 diversity rather than uniformity characterised Eastern Europe. The Balkan revolutions were an accomplished fact: Yugoslavia and Albania were further along the socialist road than Bulgaria, but that was largely because Bulgaria had been subject to Allied scrutiny. Romania and Poland had experienced revolutions at Soviet prompting, the Romanians responding with more enthusiasm to embarking on the road their Balkan fellows were already following, while the Poles had, literally, experienced revolution at Soviet bayonet point. As to Czechoslovakia and Hungary, the one an honorary ally with a large communist party, the other a defeated power with a tiny communist party, Stalin seemed to have satisfied himself with influence rather than control: communist influence in the security services meant the communists there had more say than the communists in the French and Italian post-war governments.
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Notes
A. Ulunyan, Kommunisticheskaya partiya gretsii (Moscow, 1994 ), vol. iii, p. 180.
S. M. Max, The United States, Great Britain, and the Sovietisation of Hungary, 1945–58 (New York, 1985), p. 119ff.
For the Djilas–Molotov meeting, see G. R. Swain, ‘The Cominform: Tito’s International?’, Historical Journal, vol. 35 (1992), p. 656.
J. Rupnik, Histoire du Parti Communiste Tchéchoslovaque (Paris, 1981), p. 193.
Events in Slovakia during October 1947 and the first half of November suggest Slanskÿ first tried to reorganise the Slovak National Front, only to have Gottwald intervene to reimpose the status quo; see M. Myant, Socialism and Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1945–8 (Cambridge, 1981), p. 173;
P. Zinner, Communist Strategy and Tactics in Czechoslovakia, 1918–48 (London, 1963), p. 193.
K. Kaplan, The Short March: The Communist Takeover in Czechoslovakia, 1945–8 (London, 1981), p. 106; Myant, Socialism and Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1945–8 p. 179.
Zinner, Communist Strategy p. 197ff. For the civil service pay deal, see J. Bloomfield, Passive Revolution: Politics and the Czechoslovak Working Class, 1945–8 (London, 1979), p. 211; for the popular support for the coup, see
V. E. Kusin, ‘Czechoslovakia’, in M. McCauley (ed.), Communist Power in Europe, 1944–9 (London, 1977 ), p. 92.
D. Childs, The GDR: Moscow’s Ally (London, 1983), pp. 15–20;
G. Schaffer, Russian Zone (London, 1947), pp. 10, 72.
Tito’s foreign visits at this time are covered extensively in the Yugoslav daily Borba. For Tito’s reception, see M. Djilas, Vlast (London, 1983), p. 109.
See the text of a resolution passed at the instigation of Râkosi by the Hungarian Communist Party Politburo on 8 April 1948, reproduced in V. Dedijer, Novi prilozi za biografijuJosipa Broza Tita, vol. III (Belgrade, 1984 ), p. 388.
C. Strbac, Jugoslavijaiodnosi izmedju socialistickih zemalja: subob KPJi Informbiroa (Belgrade, 1984), p. 83ff.
Z. Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict ( Cambridge, Mass., 1971 ), p. 57.
Swain, ‘Cominform; E. Barker, ‘Yugoslav Policy Towards Greece, 1947–9’ in L. Baerentzen et al (eds), Studies in the History of the Greek Civil War (Copenhagen, 1987 ).
For the text of the letters, see the Royal Institute of International Affairs, The Soviet—Yugoslav Dispute (London, 1948).
T. Toranska, ONI: Stalin’s Polish Puppets (London, 1987), p. 282.
J. Coutouvidis and J. Reynolds, Poland, 1939–47 (Leicester, 1986), p. 306ff.
G. Ionescu, Communism in Romania, 1944–62 (Oxford, 1964), p. 151.
G. H. Hodos, Show Trials: Stalinist Purges in Eastern Europe, 1948–54 (New York, 1987), p. 10ff.
Hodos, Show Trials p. 15ff.; J. D. Bell, The Bulgarian Communist Party from Blagoev to Zhivkov (Stanford, Cal., 1986), p. 104. Because of the problems caused by the opposition of Dimitrov to the trial of his former collaborator, opposition removed by the death of Dimitrov on 2 July 1949, the trial took place after that of Rajk.
Hodos, Show Trials p. 26ff. This reconstruction is based on scattered memoir references: for the existence of a USC hospital in Toulouse, see A. London, On Trial (London, 1970), p. 33; for the operations of the French Communist Party’s Migrant Workers’ Office in Toulouse
Hodos, Show Trials p. 76ff.; E. Loebl, Stalinism in Prague (New York, 1968), p. 46.
N. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers (London, 1971), p. 217;
G. D. Ra’anan, International Policy Formation in the USSR (New York, 1983 ), p. 81.
Y. A. Gilboa, The Black Years ofSovietJewry, 1939–53 (Boston, Mass., 1971), p. 226ff.
Hodos, Show Trials p. 79ff. For tension between Gottwald and Slânskÿ, see E. Taborsky, Communism in Czechoslovakia, 1948–60(Princeton, NJ, 1961), p. 102.
Childs, GDR p. 26J. Richter, ‘Re–examining Soviet Policy towards Germany in 1953’, Europe Asia Studies vol. 45, no. 4 (1993), p. 676; Hodos, Show Trials p. 114.
A. Ross Johnson, The Transformation of Communist Ideology (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), pp. 87–8.
S. Clissold, Djilas: The Progress of a Revolutionary (London, 1983), pp. 223–5; ibid., p. 203.
M. Djilas, Rise and Fall (London, 1985), p. 320. For the Soviet offer to resume diplomatic relations, see Keesings Contemporary Archives p. 13001, citing The Times.
A. Rothberg (ed.), Anatomy of a Moral: The Political Essays ofMilovan Djilas (London, 1959), pp. 39–40, 62–3, 106, 124–42.
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© 1998 Geoffrey Swain and Nigel Swain
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Swain, G., Swain, N. (1998). An End to Diversity. In: Eastern Europe Since 1945. The Making of the Modern World. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27069-9_4
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