The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

The Soviet's Power

• Soviet take-over started before the Second World War ended in 1945
• Campaign not complete until 1948

• Soviet Union had power over:

• These countries = buffer zone for Western Soviet Union

• main goal = stop people from leaving the communist area & to lessen the flow of information to the outside world
• "Iron Curtain" was made into the border which made a bigger split between major political parties in the world

• With Stalin's death in 1953, its durability began to decrease but with the assembly of the Berlin Wall, the stability of the "Iron Curtain" = fixed
• "Iron Curtain" = ended in 1989 and the breaking of the Berlin Wall symbolized it
• Main reason for its collapse = political and economic changes in the Soviet Union
• With Gorbachev in power, the Soviet Union = reconstructed

Warsaw Pact

• military treaty, which made the countries who signed it promise to help each other
• treaty was a response to the Western Allies' treaty NATO (1949) (seen as potential threat)
• Warsaw Pact was a sense of security
• all countries in the treaty = equal
• Soviet Union used this as a powerful tool to persuade allies and combine the powers of their armies
• Soviets built:
• tanks
• aircraft
• guns

which helped throughout the pact and made Soviet have control over the military

command

• 1956: Hungary tried to remove themselves from the treaty (Soviets stopped uprising)
• 1968: Soviet forces attacked Czechoslovakia because their government seemed like they were turning Imperialistic
• 1980s: USSR begins to split
• The Warsaw Pact ended in 1991 in Prague

Berlin Wall

• Berlin Wall = Division between West Berlin and East Berlin
• Erected on August 13, 1961 & knocked down on November 9, 1989
• At end of WW2, Germany = split up into 4 (the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union)
• started to argue and the United States, Great Britain & France joined together and became The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany)
• The Soviet Union formed The German Democratic Republic

• The split happened in Berlin too but since Berlin was in East Germany, West Berlin was an island representing the Federal Republic of Germany
• hard working people in West Germany = lived well
• East Germany became communist because of the Soviets
• With bad living conditions, ppl wanted to get out of East Germany and did so
• by 1961 2.5 million ppl left

• Seeing that their population was dropping, the Soviet Union decided to build a wall to stop people from crossing the border
• When the Berlin wall was put up in the middle of the night on August 11, 1961 , East Germans could no longer pass over to West Germany
• About 5000 ppl escaped East Germany successfully and between 100-200 died in their attempt
• With the falling of communism, German government official, Günter Schabowski reopened the borders on November 9, 1989
• people could finally reconnect with lost loved ones and friends on the other side
• Nearly a year after the Berlin Wall was destroyed, on October 3, 1990, West and East Germany were reunified into one Germany state

Works Cited

Reagan, Ronald. "Berlin Wall." United States American History. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2012. <http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1867.html>.

Rosenberg, Jennifer. "Berlin Wall - The Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall." 20th Century History. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2012. <http://history1900s.about.com/od/coldwa1/a/berlinwall.htm>.

"Soviet take-over of Eastern Europe." Magpie >> Laman Utama. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2012. <http://magpie118.tripod.com/History/Soviet_take41.htm>.

"THE IRON CURTAIN." The Iron Curtain and Its Role . N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2012. <http://home.aubg.bg/students/HHP030/>.

"The Warsaw Pact." Sam Houston State University - Texas - Carnegie Research Doctoral Univ. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2012. <http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/WarPact.html>.

"Warsaw Pact - a brief description." Warsaw Life | Warsaw Travel Guide | Restaurants Shops Pubs and Apartments Warsaw Hotels | Poland. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2012. <http://www.warsaw-life.com/poland/warsaw-pact>.

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an "iron curtain" has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow." - Winston Churchill

• Term "Iron Curtain" = first used by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in his speech at Westminster College in Fulton, USA in March of 1946
• used term to explain the division between Eastern and Western Europe

• "Iron Curtain" was created by the Soviet Union after the Second World War for a buffer zone
• symbolic, ideologic and military boundary between countries that depended on the Soviet Union (including Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria) and non-communist countries in West

Iron Curtain

• Poland
• Romania
• Bulgaria
• Hungary
• Czechoslovakia
• East Germany

• Poland
• Romania
• Bulgaria
• Hungary
• Czechoslovakia

The Soviet Union take-over of Eastern Europe

Conrad Schumann

Berlin Wall being torn down

Berlin Wall

• Also known as 'The Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance'
• Signed in May of 1955 in Poland

Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Soviet Union

• Treaty between: