Stalins politics in eastern Europe (1945 - 1949)

The Soviet Unions Red Arm occupied most of Eastern Europe (forcing out the German army) the threat of the army allowed Russia/ stalin to control the events that happened there
Stalin wanted to make sure the countries around Russia were communist to
1. He did this by locking up or killing political opponents, fixing electrons and forcing other parties to merge with the communists, sos the communists could control them
These countries Stalin occupied and controlled (including the government) using force were called starlight states and where referred to buffer zones of friendly nations as they surrounded Russia meaning that other countries would have to go through the starlight states to get to Russia
1. This was because Russia had suffered greatly in WW11 using almost 30 million people
Eastern Europe states such as Poland had one-party dictatorships inspired of Stalins system in he USSR. This meant the government controlled everything including, media (therefore nothing bad about the governments were published and the newspapers, TV etc included high amounts of propaganda and were used to control peoples minds and people had little freedom, in early march 1946 Churchill said that an Iron Curtian was dividing Europe into two
Truman was convinced that Stalin wanted to spread communism across Europe and that the USA must try to stop and contain it therefore leading to his new doctrine - the truman doctrine.

Resource summary

	Created by Sophia Hinchliffe almost 7 years ago