The Last Years of Stalinism – the Cold War

The last years of the Stalinist period brought a new increase in terror. It again encompassed the political and army elite, but did not caused a new Purge. Anti-Semitic and nationalist tendencies increased.

In 1947 in Bulgaria a conference of 9 communist party leaders took place (USSR, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland, Romania, Hungary, France, Italy). An informational office (Cominform), with the office in Belgrad, was called up. 

In 1948 the communist Yugoslavia separated from the Soviet bloc. In all remaining countries of the block the control was very strong. The economy was adjusted to the Russian model, which entailed the development of iron and steel industry and militarisation of production. Collective farms appeared gradually. Art and science were not dependent anymore. As regards science, it had to adopt the Marxist-Leninist way of thinking. The only accepted tendency in art was socialist realism.   

The repression concerned hundreds of thousands of people: members of non-communist associations, the intellectuals who were reluctant to adopt Marxism-Leninism or USSR’s hegemony, priests, private property owners. A growing competition within the Party led to expelling some of its members, who were charged with treachery, treason, or their factual support for the formerly expelled colleagues. Some of the accusations were totally absurd and pleading guilty was achieved by force. Show trials were organised. In addition, the winter of 1946/47 brought the third wave of famine on Ukraine. The reason was war damages, loss of people end the end of sources coming from German reparations.

Between 1945 –1947 the conflict between USSR and the Western countries became more and more evident. The reason was the expansion of USSR. Stalin supported the communist partisans in Greece and Kurds in Turkey, continually refused to retreat from Iran, and supported the communist parties in the countries of Western Europe. He also made efforts to steal the secret of the atom bomb from USA. He announced the superiority of communism over capitalism. The years 1947-1950 were a period of an increasing conflict between USA and USSR, which concerned Germany’s future – divided into spheres of influence, or united and governed by a “democratic” government. In this period the communist bloc was strengthened by its centralisation (Cominform). If communism did not succeed in Italy, France and Greece, it established itself in the Far East (China, Korea).

The Western countries and USA formulated a plan to oppose themselves against the communist expansion: Truman’s doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the forming of NATO. Under Stalin's influence, the countries of the communist block rejected the plan on the grounds of its being an “imperial plot”. In 1948 The General Assembly of ONZ accepted The Common Declaration of Human Rights. Six countries from the communist block withheld from voting. In 1949 the People’s Republic of China was created under the leadership of Mao Zedong.

In the years 1950 – 1953 The Cold War – a conflict between the communist and the Western countries led to the Korean war, with American armed forces on the one side and the Chinese on the other. USSR put a great emphasis on the potential of its army, which in turn led to a further weakening of the remaining sectors of its economy. USA developed economically. There was an increasing disproportion between the wealth of the Western countries and USA, as opposed to the poverty of the communist countries.

In March 1953 Stalin died. The fight for the succession on Kreml started. In July 1953 the Vietnam War ended with an armistice and the setting of a demarcation line dividing the communist People’s Republic of Korea from the South Korea.

The period of terror in USSR ended. The last bloody action that took place within the Party was the execution of Beria and his collaborators in 1953. Later Nikita Krushchev, who organised Beria's murder, became the Party’s First Secretary. The Party’s internal policy changed: it started to criticise Stalin. He was still referred to as a great strategist and the creator of the Russian state, but he was also charged with misusing his power. A number of reforms were announced, as well as amnesty for the people in camps. Economic changes were planned as well: the development of individual farming, the development of iron and steel industry. In 1955, as a result of a peace treaty between Austria and USSR, the Red Army retreated from Austria. In July of the same year USSR representatives took part in Geneva Conference with the leaders of Western powers.

In 1955 Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, NRD, Poland, Romania, Hungary and USSR signed the Warsaw Treaty, which allowed for the control of the armed forces and the foreign policy of the dependent countries. The next significant event was an anticommunist upheaval in Hungary in 1956. 

In 1956, on 20^th Congress of the Party, Krushchew condemned Stalin’s crimes. The critique did not encompass all crimes but only the Purge of 1930s, yet it was a sign that Stalin’s cult was vanishing – the cult of an individual dictatorship over the party’s nomenclature.

The end of Stalinism

Made by Ania Zaremba, Vincent Yau and Kevin Jones