1132 Ch. 27 • Rebuilding Divided EuropeThe Soviet-occupied eastern zone of Germany became in 1949 the Ger
man Democratic Republic (GDR, or the DDR, also commonly known as
East Germany). Walter Ulbricht (1893-1973), who had spent the war years
in the Soviet Union, returned to Berlin with the Red Army and became
secretary of the Communist Party. He remained, for all practical purposes,
head of state until his forced retirement in 1971.
The GDR took over the administration of the eastern zone in 1955 from
the Soviets, although its government continued to follow Soviet instructions.
The Communist Party controlled most facets of cultural life. Many writers
and artists left for West Germany, although the talented playwright Bertolt
Brecht (1898-1956) remained.
Eastern Europe under the Soviet Shadow
As the Red Army stood near, the states of Eastern Europe fell under the
domination of Soviet-backed Communist parties. The Bulgarian Communist
Party had about 14,000 members in late 1944 and 422,000 in 1946; that of
Poland 20,000 in mid-1944 and 300,000 a year later. Moreover, the Soviet
Union at first went along with the tide of Eastern European nationalism,
supporting, for example, the annexation of Transylvania by Romania, at the
expense of Hungary. During 1945—1946, coalition governments (in which
Communists participated) took over large estates and distributed land to
peasants, transferring about half of the land of Poland and a third of that of
Hungary.
From the beginning, parties that had collaborated with the Nazis and
other right-wing groups were excluded from power. The Communists elimi
nated coalition partners, as in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, including
socialist and peasant agrarian parties, or absorbed them. Thus, coalition
governments elected or otherwise constituted at the end of the war disap
peared one by one until the Communists controlled each state. In Hungary
in 1947, two years after the Communist Party had been roundly defeated in
elections, the Communists ousted the Smallholders, or Peasant Party, which
had won 57 percent of the vote. In neighboring Romania, King Michael was
forced out in similar circumstances. Bulgarian Communists won a contested
victory in a plebiscite that established a “People’s Republic,” which quickly
became a single-party state. After the first election in post-war Poland,
where no party had collaborated with the Germans, Communists gradually
pushed aside the Socialists, who constituted the other major party. The Sovi
ets completely destroyed the Polish People’s Party in Poland, as they did the
Smallholders Party in Hungary. Thereafter, Communist governments con
trolled the bureaucracies that increased in size with state management of
the economy—above all, the police—and implemented strict censorship. In
what were rapidly becoming Soviet “satellite” states, the Communists bene
fited from the fact that the Nazis had decimated the political elites of East
ern Europe and the Balkans during the war.