Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956

by Anne Applebaum

  13. Mikołajczyk, Rape of Poland, p. 98; also Martin Gilbert, “Churchill and Poland,” unpublished lecture delivered at the University of Warsaw, February 16, 2010. With thanks to Martin Gilbert.

  14. Kersten, Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, p. 81.

  15. Ibid., p. 113.

  16. “Protocol of Proceedings of Crimea Conference,” available at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1945YALTA.html.

  17. Mikołajczyk, Rape of Poland, p. 127.

  18. Ibid., pp. 130–34.

  19. Kersten, Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, p. 242.

  20. IWM, “The Struggles for Poland, Program Six,” Roll E.156, interview with Włodzimierz Brus (with thanks to Wanda Kościa), pp. 1–5.

  21. HIA, Stanisław Mikołajczyk collection, Box 103, folder 3, and Box 104, folder 9.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Tomasz Goban-Klas, The Orchestration of the Media: The Politics of Mass Communications in Communist Poland and the Aftermath (Boulder, 1994), p. 52.

  24. HIA, Stanisław Mikołajczyk collection, Box 104, folders 4 and 5.

  25. Kersten, Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, pp. 252–53.

  26. Torańska, Oni, p. 273.

  27. Ibid., p. 274.

  28. Kersten, Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, pp. 271–77.

  29. IWM interview with Brus.

  30. Ibid.

  31. Andrzej Paczkowski, Referendum z 30 czerwca 1946: Proba wst˛epnego bilansu (Warsaw, 1992), p. 14.

  32. Andrzej Krawczyk, Pierwsza próba indoktrynacji. Działalność Ministerstwa Informacji i Propagandy w latach 1944–1947, Documenty do dziejow PRL, vol. 7 (Warsaw, 1994), p. 91.

  33. Paczkowski, Referendum z 30 czerwca 1946, pp. 221–22.

  34. Torańska, Oni, pp. 274–75.

  35. Krawyczyk, Pierwsza próba indoktrynacji, p. 91.

  36. Kersten, Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, p. 320.

  37. IWM interview with Brus, pp. 15–20.

  38. Mikołajczyk, Rape of Poland, p. 198.

  39. Anita Pra˙zmowska, Poland: A Modern History (London 2010), p. 167.

  40. Solidarity was initially an underground movement but between August 1980 and December 1981 was recognized as a legal trade union.

  41. Ignác Romsics, Hungary in the Twentieth Century (Budapest, 1999), pp. 230–31.

  42. Peter Kenez, Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets: The Establishment of the Communist Regime in Hungary, 1944–1948 (New York, 2006), p. 96.

  43. Volokitina et al., eds., Vostochnaya Evropa, vol. I, pp. 271–74.

  44. SNL, Historic Interview Collection: Jenő Széll, Történeti Interjúk Tára, and Országos Széchenyi Könyvtár, interview conducted by András Hegedüs, Gábor Hanák, Gyula Kozák, and Ilona Szabóné Dér, August 3, 1985.

  45. Ibid., interview with Széll.

  46. Ibid.

  47. György Gyarmati, “ ‘Itt csak az fog történni, amit a kommunista párt akar!’: Adalékok az 1947: évi országgyűlési választások történetéhez,” Társadalmi Szemle 8–9 (1997), pp. 144–61.

  48. Volokitina et al., eds., Vostochnaya Evropa, vol. I, pp. 271–74.

  49. Sovietskii Faktor, vol. I, pp. 243–44.

  50. Ferenc Nagy, The Struggle Behind the Iron Curtain (New York, 1948), p. 369.

  51. Ibid., pp. 405–26.

  52. Gyarmati, “ ‘Itt csak az fog történni, amit a kommunista párt akar!,’ ” pp. 144–61.

  53. Dezső Sulyok, Két éjszaka nappal nélkül (Budapest, 2004), pp. 387–91.

  54. Károly Szerencsés, A kék cédulás hadművelet (Budapest, 1992), pp. 59–73.

  55. Margit Balogh and Kataline S. Nagy, eds., Asszonysorsok a 20. Században, conference papers of BME Szociológia és Kommunikáció Tanszék, 2000, pp. 297–309.

  56. Dirk Spilker, The East German Leadership and the Division of Germany: Patriotism and Propaganda 1945–1953 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 53–54.

  57. Peter Greider, The East German Leadership 1946–1973 (Manchester, 1999), pp. 17–25.

  58. The full text is available at http://www.marxists.org/archive/​lenin/works/1918/prrk/index.htm.

  59. Gary Bruce, The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi (Oxford, 2010), pp. 34–36.

  60. Wilfried Loth, Stalin’s Unwanted Child: The Soviet Union, the German Question and the Founding of the GDR, trans. Robert F. Hogg (London, 1998), p. 31.

  61. Spilker, East German Leadership and the Division of Germany, pp. 47–50.

  62. Andreas-Friedrich, Battleground Berlin, p. 130.

  63. Ibid., p. 125.

  64. Ibid., pp. 114–15.

  65. Walter Ulbricht, On Questions of Socialist Construction in the GDR (Dresden, 1968), pp. 78–90.

  66. Stefan Creuzberger, “The Soviet Military Administration and East German Elections, Autumn, 1946,” The Australian Journal of Politics and History (1999).

  67. Karl-Heinz Hajna, Die Landtagswahlen 1946 in der SBZ (Frankfurt am Main, 2000), pp. 119–68.

  68. Spilker, East German Leadership and the Division of Germany, p. 101.

  69. Creuzberger, “Soviet Military Administration and East German Elections.”

  70. IWM interview with Benda.

  71. Peter Skyba, “Jugendpolitik, Jugendopposition und Jugendwiderstand in der SED-Diktatur,” in Jugend und Diktatur. Verfolgung und Widerstand in der SBZ/DDR. Dokumentation des XII. Bautzen-Forums am 4. und 5. Mai 2001 (Leipzig, 2001), p. 40.

  72. IWM interview with Benda.

  73. Sidney S. Alexander, The Marshall Plan, National Planning Association Planning Pamphlets nos. 60–61, February 1948, p. 14.

  74. Giuliano Procacci et al., eds., The Cominform: Minutes of the Three Conferences, 1947/1948/1949 (Milan, 1994), p. 26.

  75. Sovietskii Faktor, vol. I, p. 459.

  76. Geoffrey Roberts, “Moscow and the Marshall Plan: Politics, Ideology and the Onset of the Cold War, 1947,” Europe–Asia Studies 46, 8 (1994), p. 1,378; also Sovietskii Faktor, vol. I, pp. 462–65.

  77. Procacci et al., eds., Cominform, pp. 26, 225–51, 379.

  78. Ibid., p. 43.

  79. Ibid., p. 129.

  80. Kenez, Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets, pp. 277–78.

  81. Jenö Randé and János Sebestyén, Azok a rádiós évtizedek (Budapest, 1995), pp. 127–29.

  82. Ivor Lukes, “The Czech Road to Communism,” in Norman Naimark and Leonid Gibianskii, eds., The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944–1949 (Boulder, 1997), p. 259.

  83. Ekaterina Nikova, “Bulgarian Stalinism Revisited,” in Vladimir Tismaneau, ed., Stalinism Revisited (New York and Budapest, 2009), pp. 290–94.

  10. ECONOMICS

  1. Giuliano Procacci et al., eds., The Cominform: Minutes of the Three Conferences, 1947/1948/1949 (Milan, 1994), p. 17.

  2. Ingolf Vogeler, “State Hegemony in Transforming the Rural Landscapes of Eastern Germany: 1945–1994,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 86, 3 (September 1996), pp. 432–33.

  3. Jonathan Osmond, “From Junker estate to co-operative farm: East German Agrarian Society 1945–61,” in Patrick Major and Jonathan Osmond, eds., The Workers’ and Peasants’ State (Manchester, 2002), pp. 134–37.

  4. Gary Bruce, Resistance with the People (Oxford, 2003), p. 33.

  5. Peter Stachura, Poland 1918–1945 (London, 2004), pp. 47–49.

  6. Nicolas Spulber, “Eastern Europe: The Changes in Agriculture from Land Reforms to Collectivization,” American Slavic and East European Review 13, 3 (October 1954), pp. 393–94.

  7. Krystyna Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 1943–1948 (Berkeley, 1991), p. 166.

  8. Polska-ZSSR: Struktury Podlegośći (Warsaw, 1995), pp. 114–15.

  9. Iván Szelényi, ed., Privatizing the Land: Rural Political Economy in Post-Communist Societies (London, 1998), pp. 24–26.

  10. Spulber, “Eastern Europe,” pp. 394–98. Also Peter Kenez, Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets: The Establishment of the Communi
st Regime in Hungary, 1944–1948 (New York, 2006), pp. 107–18.

  11. Stephen Wegren, Land Reform in the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (London, 1998), p. 226.

  12. PIL, 867/1/H-168.

  13. Mark Pittaway, “The Politics of Legitimacy and Hungary’s Postwar Transition,” Contemporary European History 13, 4 (2004), p. 465.

  14. Harris L. Coulter, “The Hungarian Peasantry: 1948–1956,” American Slavic and East European Review 18, 4 (December 1959), pp. 539–54; also Corey Ross, “Before the Wall: East Germans, Communist Authority, and the Mass Exodus to the West,” The Historical Journal 45, 2 (June 2002), pp. 459–80.

  15. Interview with Ulrich Fest, Wittenberg, April 16, 2008.

  16. The relative wealth of European economies in the interwar period is difficult to measure because data was not collected in the same way across the continent. A very rough estimate, however, puts GDP per capita at $1,841 in Czechoslovakia, $1,638 in Hungary, and $1,241 in Poland in 1937, at a time when the U.K. was at $3,610, France at $2,586, and Germany at $2,736. For a further comparison, the GDP per capita of Ireland in 1937 was $1,836 and for Greece $1,373. See Mark Harrison, “GDPs of the USSR and Eastern Europe: Towards an Interwar Comparison,” Europe–Asia Studies 46, 2 (1994), pp. 243–59.

  17. V. I. Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder (Sydney, 1999), p. 30.

  18. SAPMO-BA, DY 30 IV 2/6.02 3, pp. 17–25.

  19. Primo Levi, If This Is a Man and The Truce (London, 1988), pp. 220–21.

  20. AAN, MPIH, 2831.

  21. Interview with Fest.

  22. Interview with Ulrich Schneider, Wittenberg, April 16, 2008.

  23. Anders Åslund, Private Enterprise in Eastern Europe (Macmillan, 1985), p. 26.

  24. Ibid., pp. 30–31.

  25. Ibid., pp. 27–29.

  26. Interview with Janina Stobniak, Warsaw, November 28, 2007.

  27. Conversation with Krystyna Paszkowska, Chobielin, December 31, 2010.

  28. Interview with Stefan Grzeszkiewicz, Warsaw, October 12, 2007.

  29. György Polák, “Csapás” a feketekereskedelemre—A gazdasági rendőrség ténykedése 1945 után,” Korrajz 2002: A XX. Század Intézet Évkönyve (Budapest, 2004), pp. 128–37.

  30. Ibid., p. 135.

  31. Ibid., pp. 128–37.

  32. MOL, XIX-G5 480/1946.2.

  33. Gergő Havadi, Dokumentumok a fővárosi vendéglátók államosításáról 1949–1953 (ArchívNet 2009/2), available at http://www.archivnet.hu/index.phtml?cikk=313.

  34. György Majtényi, “Őrök a vártán. Uralmi elit Magyarországon az 1950-es, 1960-as években,” in Sándor Horváth, ed., Mindennapok Rákosi és Kádár korában (Budapest, 2008), pp. 289–316.

  35. Margit Földesi, A megszállók szabadsága (Budapest, 2002), pp. 108–36.

  36. Norman Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), pp. 172–73.

  37. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, John Radziłowski, and Dariusz Tolczyk, eds., Poland’s Transformation: A Work in Progress (Charlottesville, 2003), pp. 157–93.

  38. David Crowley, Warsaw (London, 2003), p. 28.

  39. Padraic Kenney, Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists 1945–1950 (Ithaca, 1997), p. 30.

  40. Naimark, Russians in Germany, pp. 184–86.

  41. Ignác Romsics, Hungary in the Twentieth Century (Budapest, 1999), pp. 248–49.

  42. Kenney, Rebuilding Poland, p. 81.

  43. Kersten, Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, p. 251. Łódź, Silesia, and Gdańsk would all become important centers for the independent Solidarity trade union in 1980.

  44. Gyula Belényi, Az állam szorításában. Az ipari munkásság társadalmi átalakulása 1945–1965 (Budapest, 2009), pp. 49–51 and 158–59.

  45. Henryk Różański, Śladem Wspomnień i Dokumentów (1943–1948) (Warsaw, 1987), p. 142.

  46. Jochen Laufer, “From Dismantling to Currency Reform,” in Konrad H. Jarausch, ed., Dictatorship as Experience: Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR (New York, 1999), pp. 73–90.

  47. Tamás Lossonczy, The Vision Is Always Changing (Budapest, 2004), pp. 98–100.

  48. William A. Bomberger and Gail E. Makinen, “Hungarian Hyperinflation and Stabilization of 1945–1946,” The Journal of Political Economy 91, 5 (October 1983), pp. 801–24.

  49. Jeffrey Kopstein, The Politics of Economic Decline in East Germany, 1945–1989 (Chapel Hill, 1997), p. 21.

  50. Quoted in Kenney, Rebuilding Poland, p. 90.

  51. Quoted in Kopstein, Politics of Economic Decline in East Germany, p. 26.

  52. AAN, MPiH 2832, p. 1.

  53. Ibid., MO 568, pp. 2–12.

  54. Ibid., p. 22; see also http://www.drukarnia-anczyca.com.pl/historia/1945-1957.

  55. SAPMO-BA, DC 30/IV 2/6.02 116.

  56. SAPMO-BA, DY 30 IV 2/6.02 76.

  57. SAPMO-BA, DC 20/12046.

  58. BStU MfSZ, Sekretariat d. Ministers (Min.) 387, p. 622.

  59. Różański, Śladem Wspomnień i Dokumentów, p. 145.

  60. Jo Langer, Convictions: My Life with a Good Communist (London, 2011), pp. 17–19.

  61. DRA, F201-00-00/0004, pp. 309–10.

  62. DRA, B204-02-01/0364.

  63. Peter Grothe, To Win the Minds of Men: The Story of the Communist Propaganda War in East Germany (Palo Alto, 1958), pp. 141–42.

  64. DRA, F201-00-00/0004, pp. 318–31.

  65. Bolesław Bierut, Sześcoletni Plan Odbudowy Warszawy (Warsaw, 1950).

  11. REACTIONARY ENEMIES

  1. T. V. Volokitina et al., eds., Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentakh rossiskikh arkhivov 1944–1953, vol. II (Moscow and Novosibirsk, 1997), pp. 25–28.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Elena Zubkova, Russia After the War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945–1957, trans. Hugh Ragsdale (Armonk, 1998), p. 18; also see Joseph Brodsky, Less Than One: Selected Essays (New York, 1986), pp. 26–29.

  4. Robert Service, A History of Twentieth-Century Russia (London, 1997), p. 299.

  5. See Amir Weiner, “The Empires Pay a Visit: Gulag Returnees, East European Rebellions and Soviet Frontier Politics,” The Journal of Modern History 78, 2 (June 2006), pp. 333–76, for a general discussion of this idea.

  6. Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps (London, 2003), pp. 414–27.

  7. Ivan T. Berend, Central and Eastern Europe 1944–1993 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 34.

  8. See http://www.psywarrior.com/RadioFreeEurope.html for an account of the balloon project.

  9. See George Urban, Radio Free Europe and the Pursuit of Democracy: My War Within the Cold War (New Haven, 1997), for an elegant account of RFE’s origins, history, and impact.

  10. See, for example, recent general histories and textbooks such as John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York, 2005); Elizabeth Edwards Spalding, The First Cold Warrior: Harry Truman, Containment, and the Making of Liberal Internationalism (Louisville, 2006); Martin McCauley, Origins of the Cold War (New York, 2008); V. M. Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill, 2008); and Jonathan Haslam, Russia’s Cold War (New Haven and London, 2010).

  11. Interview with Czesław Kiszczak, Warsaw, May 25, 2007. Although his father was Polish, his mother was Russian. Rokossovskii’s birthplace is disputed: it may or may not have been Warsaw, and his biographers give different accounts. Many thanks to Ambassador Rodric Braithwaite for discussions of this.

  12. Andrzej ˙Zak, “Tradycje Armii Krakowej w Wojsku Polskim,” in Krzysztof Komorowski, ed., Armia Krajowa: szkice z dziejów Sił Zbrojnych Polskiego Państwa Podziemnego (Warsaw, 1999); also Halmy Kund, “János Mecséri: An Army Officer in the Revolution,” lecture given at the Terror Háza Museum, Budapest, October 2006.

  13. For the Marshall Foundation’s own account, see http://marshallfoundation.org/documents/​MarshallPlanArticleOPT.pdf.

  14. David E. Murphy, Sergei A. Kondrashev, and
George Bailey, Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War (New Haven and London, 1997), p. 57.

  15. Ibid., pp. 67–69.

  16. Ibid., p. 71.

  17. V. V. Zakharov, “Mezhdy vlastyiu i veroi,” introductory essay in SVAG i Religioznaya Konfessii Sovetskoi zoni okkupatsii Germanii 1945–49: Sbornik Dokumentov (Moscow, 2006), pp. 50–51.

  18. DRA, F201-00-00/0006, pp. 11–20.

  19. József Gyula Orbán, Katolikus papok békemozgalma Magyarországon 1950–1956 (Budapest, 2001), p. 94.

  20. Helmut David Baer, The Struggle of Hungarian Lutherans Under Communism (College Station, Tex., 2006), p. 16.

  21. Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, 1919–1924 (London, 1994), pp. 346–52.

  22. SVAG i Religioznaya Konfessii, pp. 228–31.

  23. Ellen Ueberschär, Junge Gemeinde im Konflikt: Evangelische Jugendarbeit in SBZ und DDR 1945–1961 (Stuttgart, 2003), pp. 63–64.

  24. Jan ˙Zaryn, Dzieje Kościoła Katolickiego w Polsce: 1944–1989 (Warsaw, 2003), pp. 64–69.

  25. PIL, f.83, KV.

  26. József Mindszenty, Memoirs (New York, 1974), p. 31.

  27. Gábor Kiszely, ÁVH: Egy terrorszervezet története (Budapest, 2000), p. 102.

  28. Ibid., p. 104.

  29. Ofensywa kleru a nasze zadania, document reprinted in Jan ˙Zaryn, Kościól w PRL (Warsaw, 2004), p. 20.

  30. SAPMO-BA, DO 1 11/873 and DY 24 3823.

  31. Hermann Wentker, “Kirchenkampf in der DDR: Der Konflikt um die Junge Gemeinde 1950–1953,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (January 1994), p. 116.

  32. SAPMO-BA, DY 24 3665.

  33. Interview with Ulrich Fest, Wittenberg, April 16, 2008.

  34. Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR, 1949–1989 (Oxford, 1995), pp. 91–99.

  35. Ueberschär, Junge Gemeinde im Konflikt, pp. 192–200.

  36. Interview with Fest.

  37. Kiszely, ÁVH, p. 104.

  38. Ibid., pp. 104–7.

  39. Orbán, Katolikus papok békemozgalma Magyarországon, pp. 56–59.

  40. Interview with Sándor Keresztes, Budafok, February 12, 2009.

  41.˙Zaryn, Dzieje Koscioła Katolickiego w Polsce, p. 94.

  42. In Marian S. Mazgaj, Church and State in Communist Poland: A History, 1944–1989 (New York, 2010), pp. 60–61.