and honourable purposes for which we entered the war are not brushed aside or overlooked in the months following our success and that the words freedom, democracy and liberation are not distorted from their true meaning as we have understood them. There would be little use in punishing the Hitlerites for their crimes if law and justice did not rule, and if totalitarian or police governments were to take the place of the German invaders. 39
At this time, however, almost nobody understood him. Thus, Stalin was effectively given free rein to do as he pleased in the conquered territories.
For Stalin, post-war Europe was split into four zones. The territories annexed as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact – the Baltic states, Eastern Poland and Bessarabia – were to be integrated immediately and completely into the empire. In the zone lying to the west of this, which included Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, he wished to install vassal Communist regimes with a minimum transition period, whilst in the zone lying to the west of this, which included Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, he reckoned on achieving the same goal after an interval of some years. Finally, in the countries of Western Europe proper, he was planning to exert his influence, initially at least, through national Communist parties.40 The Soviet zone in Germany had to stay under direct Soviet control until the fate of the country had been decided. Stalin actually met with the leaders of the German Communist Party as early as 4 June 1945 to lay out plans for incorporating a reunified Germany into Moscow’s sphere of influence. To achieve this, the Red Army would continue to control the Soviet occupation zone, while the German Communists would seek popular support beyond the reach of Soviet military authority. Using Soviet support, the Communists in the East would have to merge with the Social Democrats and from this base, develop contacts with the West German Social Democrats, then bring them over to their camp with the promise of a unified Germany.41 The future of Austria and Finland was unresolved – Stalin did not have anything against the Sovietisation of these countries but understood that it would not be easy. Rather, he seemed to be more interested in gaining control of Iran and Turkey, both of which came under intense Soviet pressure during this period.
Consequently, in the immediate post-war years (1945–1947), Stalin insisted on direct control above all in the Soviet zone of Germany, the Baltics and the other territories he had conquered as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The main means of control was direct and open terror against the population as a whole, which sought from the beginning to wipe out even the most minor attempts to resist Soviet power. Within its occupation zone, the Soviet police and state security services detained approximately 154,000 Germans and 35,000 foreigners in ten so-called ‘special internment camps’ between 1945–1950.42 A third of these internees – a total of 63,000 people – died in captivity, most of hunger or disease. The Soviets declared that the people interned in these camps were mainly NSDAP (Nazi Party) functionaries but in actual fact, in the infamous Buchenwald camp, for example, only 40–50 % of the detainees were former Nazis. In addition to this, Soviet military tribunals condemned around 35,000 German civilians to long camp sentences in most cases. The majority of verdicts were meted out for ‘crimes’ against the Soviet occupying power according to Paragraph 58 of the criminal code of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic (RSFSR). Soviet military courts also pronounced at least 1,963 death sentences and no less than 1,201 of these were carried out.43
Polish freedom fighters killed by the NKVD forces
The terror was even more intense in the countries formally integrated into the Soviet Union in 1940; as a result of the Soviet occupation, Estonia lost 25-30 % of its original population in the period between 1940 and 1955. Hundreds of thousands of Estonians were killed, arrested or deported to Siberia. The same happened to the citizens of the other Baltic countries. During the night of 26 March 1949, 20,722 Estonians, 43,230 Latvians and 33,500 Lithuanians were deported to the eastern territories of the Soviet Union. Taimi Kreitsberg, who managed to escape from the deportation officials, recalled as follows:
I lived at my friends’ place until my brothers were arrested, then they did not dare to put me up any more. What could I do, where could I go? I came to Varstu village soviet to notify about myself. There I was arrested immediately. They took me to Antsla security department, where I saw the informer Hillar Roomus. In Antsla they questioned me – the record of the interrogation was written on the table, I had to sit on the floor, under the table. Then they took me to Võru, I was not beaten there, but for three days and nights I was given neither food nor drink. They told me they were not going to kill me, but torture me [until] I betrayed all the bandits. For about a month they dragged me through woods and took me to farms that were owned by the relatives of Forest Brothers, and they sent me in as an instigator to ask for food and shelter while the Chekists themselves waited outside. I told people to drive me away, as I had been sent by the security organs. Finally, they realised that I was of no use to them and handed me over to the Russian soldiers to be raped. I was not even sixteen at that time.
Deportations and massive arrests continued into the 1950s. Altogether, Latvia lost 340,000 and Lithuania, 780,000 people as a result of the deportations or other persecution.44 A large Soviet military garrison and the continued influx of Russian-speaking colonists, who acted like a ‘civilian garrison’, replaced the lost populations. The goal of this migration was to transform the indigenous people of the conquered nation into a minority within their own homeland. In 1989, native Latvians represented only 52 % of the population of their own country. In Estonia, the figure was 62 %. In Lithuania, the situation was better because the colonists sent to that country actually moved to the former area of Eastern Prussia (now Kaliningrad) which, contrary to the original plans, never became part of Lithuania.45
In the other Central and East European countries, so-called ‘people’s democracies’ were established with Soviet-dominated governments which, with assistance from the KGB and its local counterparts, destroyed democratic opposition in the conquered countries. As usual, the first step was open terror against ‘enemies of the state’ whose ranks could include anyone, not only collaborators of former regimes. The goal of such terror was to introduce an atmosphere of absolute fear that sought from the very beginning to destroy any desire to resist Soviet power. This was mostly done in close cooperation with the Soviet security apparatus. In Poland, for example, the Peoples’ Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) had its own jails and camps. Between 1944–1946, various Soviet units held around 47,000 people, a quarter of them Polish underground fighters. In the spring of 1945, about 15,000 Silesian miners were sent to the mines in the Donetsk area of the USSR. To combat resistance movements, tens of thousands of people were arrested. In the first 10 months of 1947 alone, nearly 33,000 people accused of ‘banditry’ were arrested and 10,500 were sentenced. In order to liquidate the Ukrainian underground units, all Ukrainians from the combat area – 140,000 people – were resettled in the former German territories of Northern and Western Poland.46 During 1944–1945, the courts passed around 8,000 death sentences, 3,100 of which were carried out. This figure probably does not represent the actual number of people executed as in 1944–1946 hundreds of summary executions were carried out on the spot by firing squads.47 Between 1945 and 1950, almost 60,000 individuals were hauled before ‘people’s tribunals’ in Hungary, 27,000 of whom were found guilty, 10,000 given prison sentences and 477 condemned to death, although only 189 were executed.48 In Bulgaria, after the occupation of the country by the Red Army, between 2,000 and 5,000 people were killed intentionally and without any legal basis. In 1944–1945, so-called ‘People’s Courts’ pronounced 9,115 verdicts, with 2,730 people sentenced to death. The first concentration camp began functioning as early as the end of September 1944
Churchill 1953, pp. 549–550.
Lundestad 1998, pp. 435–450.
Gaddis 1997, p. 116.
A Handbook of the Communist Security Apparatus in East Central Europe 1944-1989. Institute of National Remembrance. Warsaw 2005, p. 203.
Handbook 2005, p. 208.
Kukk 2007.
Misiunas and Taagepera 1983.
Handbook 2005, p. 263.
Handbook 2005, p. 273.
Romsics 1999, p. 227.
