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| Question | Answer |
| Creating Satellite States | Countries of Eastern Europe - economic and political influence from Moscow |
| Stalin's 'reasons' | To act as a 'defensive buffer zone' to protect the USSR from future aggression. (Had been invaded twice 1918 and 1941) USSR had suffered c. 20 million deaths in WWII - 'never again' |
| Methods utilised | Election rigging / secret police / Red Army / forming communist dominated coalition governments |
| US interpretation of events | Evidence of Stalin's desire to spread communism globally. Had to be resisted. George Kennan was right. |
| Cominform, 1947 | Communist Information Bureau - coordinating communist parties globally under Moscow's 'control'. (Including western Europe) |
| Comecon, 1949 | Soviet version of Marshall Aid - Soviets to co-ordinate production and trade of the Eastern Bloc |
| Bulgaria, 1946 | In 1946 the Bulgarian monarchy was abolished and later that year a communist government was elected and gradually eradicated its opponents. |
| East Germany | East Germany was occupied by the Red Army and was part of the Soviet zone of occupation agreed at the Yalta Conference - in 1945 the Soviets set up a communist regime. |
| Roumania, 1945 | In the 1945 elections, a communist-led coalition government was elected. The Communists gradually removed their coalition partners and abolished the Romanian monarchy. |
| Poland, 1947 | Fearing that a non-communist government would be elected in 1947, Stalin invited 16 non-communist politicians to Moscow, where they were arrested. With their political opponents removed, the Polish communists won the election. |
| Hungary, 1948 | Although non-communists won the 1945 election, a communist politician, Rakosi, took control of the secret police and used it to arrest and execute his political opponents. By 1948 the Communist Party was in complete control of the country. |
| Czechoslovakia, 1948 | Czechoslovakia was the last country in Eastern Europe to fully fall to communism in 1948. At elections that year only communists were allowed to stand and a communist government was duly elected. |
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