circumstances: the rapid Western withdrawal of forces and demobilization, the fact that it became apparent that free elections in most eastern European countries would result in anti-Soviet governments, and the pressure of local Communists as well as, possibly, the urging of the more activist group within the Soviet leadership. In the opinion of Mosely and certain other observers, Stalin embarked on a policy of intransigence and expansion shortly after Yalta.
The Soviet Union and the Allies co-operated long enough to put into operation their arrangement for dividing and ruling Germany and to bring top Nazi leaders to trial before an international tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946. Also, in February 1947, the victorious powers signed peace treaties with Italy, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Finland. The Soviet Union confirmed its territorial gains from Rumania and Finland, including a lease of the Finnish base of Porkkala, and obtained extensive reparations. Rounding out its acquisitions, the U.S.S.R. obtained the so-called Carpatho-Ruthenian area from friendly Czechoslovakia in 1945. While most inhabitants of that region spoke Ukrainian, they had not been connected with any Russian state since the days of Kievan Russia.
But on the whole co-operation between the U.S.S.R. and the Western powers broke down quickly and decisively. No agreement on the international control of atomic energy could be reached, the Soviet Union refusing to participate in the Atomic Energy Commission created by the United Nations in 1946. In the same year a grave crisis developed over the efforts of the Soviet government to obtain significant concessions from Persia, or Iran, and its refusal to follow the example of Great Britain and the United States and withdraw its troops from that country after the end of the war. Although, as a result of Western pressure and the airing of the question in the United Nations, Soviet forces did finally leave Iran, the hostility between former allies became increasingly apparent.
The Communist seizure of power in eastern Europe contributed very heavily to the division of the world into two opposed blocs. While many details of the process varied from country to country, the end result in each case, that is, in Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, and Poland, was the firm entrenchment of a Communist regime co-operating with and dominated by the Soviet Union. The same happened in eastern Germany. Only Greece and Finland managed to escape the Communist grasp. Liberated Greece fell into the British rather than the Soviet sphere, and its government, supported by Great Britain and the United States, managed to win a bitter civil war from the Communist-led Left. The fact that Finland survived as a free nation remains puzzling. It could be that Moscow first overestimated the strength of Finnish Communists, who did play a prominent part in the government of the country immediately after the war, and then decided not to force the issue in a changing international
situation after the Finnish Communists failed to seize power. In particular, the Soviet Union probably wanted to avoid driving Sweden into the camp of Soviet enemies. Similarly - at a greater distance from the U.S.S.R. - the large and strong Communist and allied parties in France and Italy, very prominent in the first years following the war, were forced out of coalition governments and had to limit themselves to the role of an opposition bent largely on obstruction.
It has frequently been said that communism won in Europe only in countries occupied by the Red Army, and that point deserves to be kept in mind. Yet it does not tell the whole story. Whereas in Poland, for example, native Communists were extremely weak, in Yugoslavia and Albania they had led resistance movements against the Axis powers and had attained dominant positions at the end of the war. Perhaps more important, the Soviet Union preferred to rely in all cases on local Party members, while holding the Red Army in readiness as the ultimate argument. Usually, the "reactionary" elements, including monarchs where such were present and the upper classes in general as well as Fascists, would be forced out of political life and a "united front" of "progressive" elements formed to govern the country. Next the Communists destroyed or at least weakened and neutralized their partners in the front to establish in effect, if not always in form, their single-party dictatorship even though the party might be known as the "workers' " or "socialist unity" party rather than simply "Communist." It is worth noting that the eastern European Communists had the most trouble with agrarian parties, just as the Bolsheviks had met their most dangerous rivals in the Socialist Revolutionaries. In Roman Catholic countries, such as Poland and Hungary, they also experienced strong and persistent opposition from the Church. The Communist seizure of power in Czechoslovakia proved particularly disturbing to the non-Communist world, because it occurred as late as 1948 and disposed of a regime headed by President Benes which had enjoyed popular support and maintained friendly relations with the Soviet Union. The new totalitarian governments in eastern Europe proclaimed themselves to be "popular democracies." They followed the Soviet lead in introducing economic plans, industrializ-,. ing, collectivizing agriculture - sometimes gradually, however - and establishing minute regulation of all phases of life, including culture. As in the U.S.S.R., the political police played a key role in social transformation and control. An "iron curtain" came to separate the Communist world from the non-Communist.
Churchill, at the time out of office, in a speech in Fulton, Missouri, in March 1946, stressed the danger to the democratic world of the Communist expansion. He was one of the first Western statesmen to point out this danger. When another year of negotiations with the U.S.S.R. produced no results, President Truman appealed to Congress for funds to provide mili-
tary and economic aid to the neighbors of the U.S.S.R. - Greece and Turkey - the independence of which was threatened directly or indirectly by the Communist state; this policy came to be known as the Truman Doctrine. In June 1947 the Marshall Plan was introduced to help rebuild the economies of European countries devastated by war. Because the Soviet Union and its satellites would not participate, the plan became a powerful bond for the Western bloc. Next, in 1949, twelve Western countries, the United States, Great Britain, Canada, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, and Portugal signed the Atlantic Defense Pact of mutual aid against aggression. A permanent North Atlantic Treaty Organization and armed force were subsequently created, under General Eisenhower's command. Also in 1949, the U.S. Congress passed a broad Mutual Defense Assistance Program to aid American allies all over the world. With these agreements and with numerous bases girding the U.S.S.R., the United States and other countries were finally organized to meet the Soviet threat.
The Communist bloc also organized. In 1947 the Communist Information Bureau, known as Cominform, replaced the Communist International which had been disbanded in 1943. Bringing together the Communist parties of the U.S.S.R., eastern Europe, France, and Italy, the Cominform aimed at better co-ordination of Communist efforts in Europe. Zhdanov, who represented the Soviet party, set the unmistakably militant tone of the organization. But Communist co-operation was dealt a major blow by the break between Yugoslavia and the U.S.S.R., backed by its satellites, in the summer of 1948. Tito chose to defy Stalin because he wanted to retain full effective control of his own country and resented the role assigned to Yugoslavia in the economic plans and other plans of the Soviet bloc. He succeeded in his bold undertaking because he had a strong organization and support at home in contrast to other eastern European Communist leaders, many of whom were simply Soviet puppets, and because the Soviet Union did not dare invade Yugoslavia, apparently from fear of the probable international complications. Tito's unprecedented defection created the new phenomenon of "national" communism, independent of the Soviet bloc. It led to major purges of potential heretics in other eastern European Communist parties, which took the lives of some of the most important Communists of eastern Europe and resembled in many respects the great Soviet purge of the thirties.