SOVIET OCCUPATION

'Soviet occupation' generally refers to the process of Soviet Union occupying territories neighbouring it. A large majority of territories thusly occupied were subjected to Soviet power, either overtly or covertly, during the World War II.
Most of these territories are in Eastern Europe.
In some territories, puppet governments were set in; in others, regime change was achieved through externally subversive means. In some cases, the Soviet military presence began immediately upon subjugating the territory to Soviet will; in others, the will was supported by a threat of invasion. See, for example, Prague Spring.

Contents

By region

Baltic states

Czechoslovakia

Sources

East Germany

Hungary

Poland

Romania

Denial

References

Further reading

By region

The occupation had historically interesting regional variations.

Baltic states

Main articles: Soviet occupation of Baltic states

Main articles: Occupations of Latvia

In Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania —, the occupations were initiated by Soviet Union pressuring all three to accept Soviet military bases, threating to attack immediately in case of refusal. Soviet Union also attempted this tactic on Finland; however, Finland refused, leading to the Winter War, and later, the Continuation War.
Soon after creation of these bases, Soviet military forces left them and overtook political systems of these countries. However, all three Baltic states undertook specific steps to retain the republics' legal standing, leading to USA and other Western democracies to explicitly not recognise the legality of the occcupations under Stimson's doctrine and related principles. This allowed eventual restoration of Republic of Estonia, Republic of Latvia, and Republic of Lithuania under the doctrine of ''continuation'' of these republics, as they had existed before World War II.
Another interesting aspect of these occupations was that they were cut in half by Germany's successful military actions in the Eastern front. All three Baltic states, having been occupied by Soviet Union, were in 1941–1944 occupied by Germany and administered through the Reichskommissariat Ostland. Significant differences between the styles of administration of Soviet Union and Nazi Germany — one-time allies — eventually led significant numbers of natives of all three countries to align themselves with Germany for the sole objective of stalling, and possibly preventing, another Soviet occupation.
During the occupation, Soviet Union killed, drafted (unlawfully under international law) into Red Army and deported hundreds of thousands of people. Furthermore, trying to enforce the ideals of Communism, Soviet Union deliberately dismantled the existing social and economic structures, and imposed new, "ideologically pure" hierarchies. This severely retarded economies of all three Baltic states. For example, scientists have estimated Estonia's economic damages directly attributable to the second Soviet occupation to hundreds of billions of US dollars. Soviet neglect for environment protection led to extensive ecologic damage as well; for Estonia, the damage is estimated to about 4 billions of US dollars. In addition to direct damages, retardation of the economic systems led to severe ''wealth gap'' between the Baltic states and their neighbouring European states that went free of Soviet yoke, such as Finland and Sweden.
These damages have been speculated as one of the reasons for Russian Federation's stubborn refusal to recognise the Soviet Union having occupied the Baltic states. Russian politicians may fear that if such recognition would occur, the topic of giantic reparations would arise.

Czechoslovakia

Main articles: Prague Spring

In 1948, the Czech Communist Party won a large portion of the vote in Czechoslovak politics, leading to a communist period without immediate Soviet military presence. The 1950s were characterized as a repressive period in the country’s history, but by 1960s, the local socialist leadership had taken a course toward toward economic, social and political reforms. However, a number of significant Czech communists, together with the Czech security agency, conspired against limited introduction of market systems, personal freedoms, and renewal of civic associations (see ''Socialism with a human face'') by leveraging Russian support towards strengthening Communist Party's positions.
Brezhnev, a communist hardliner, reacted to these reforms by announcing the ''Brezhnev Doctrine'', and in 21 August 1968, about 750,000 Warsaw Pact troops, mostly from Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria, East Germany and Hungary, with tanks and machine guns occupied Czechoslovakia, deported thousands of people and rapidly derailed all reforms. Most large cities were individually invaded and overtaken; however, the invasion's primary attention focused on Prague, particularly the state organs, Czech television and radio.
The Czechoslovak government held an emergency session, and loudly expressed its disagreement with the occupation. Many citizens joined in protests, and by September 1968 at least 72 people had died and hundreds more injured in the conflicts. In the brief time after the occupation, which had put an end to any hope that Prague Spring had created, about 100,000 people fled Czechoslovakia. Over the whole time of the occupation, more than 700,000 people, including significant part of Czechoslovak ''intelligentsia''. Communists responded by revoking Czechoslovakian citizenship of many of these refugees and banned them from returning to their homeland.
At a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, Jakov Malik, Soviet ambassador to the United Nations issued a proclamation, claiming that the military intervention was a response to a request by the government of Czechoslovakia. Soviet Union being a permanent member of the Security Council — with veto right —, it was able to circumvent any United Nations' resolutions to end the occupation.
Prague Spring's end became clear by December 1968, when a new presidium of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia accepted the so-called ''Instructions from The Critical Development in the Country and Society'' after the XIII Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Under a guise of "normalisation", all aspects of neo-Stalinism were returned to everyday political and economic life.
Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia ended only in 1990, near the collapse of Soviet Union. The last occupation troops left the country on 21 June 1991.
In 1987, the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged that his liberalizing policies of glasnost and perestroika owed a great deal to Dubček's ''socialism with a human face''. When asked what the difference was between the Prague Spring and his own reforms, Gorbachev replied, "Nineteen years".

Sources

★ The Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia at the official website of Czech Republic

East Germany

Main articles: Allied occupation of Germany

Germany, as the loser of World War II and as one of its primary agressors, was divided into four occupation zones after the war. However, zones occupied by USA, United Kingdom and France were united into the Trizone within a few years, and later reformed as West Germany.
East Germany was the sole Soviet occupation sanctioned by the whole coalition of the Allied Powers. However, this alliance broke down within only a few years, leading to the Berlin crisis, and the following Cold War. As a result of this breakdown, Germany remained split into two zones, separated by the Iron Curtain, for several decades, until Soviet Union's severely stagnated economy and consequently weakened military led to the Autumn of Nations, making reunification of Germany possible.

Hungary

Main articles: Soviet occupation of Hungary

Hungary was occupied by Soviet forces in 1944–1990.^[1][2][3][4]

Poland

Main articles: Soviet invasion of Poland (1939), Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union, Occupation of Poland (1939-1945), Northern Group of Forces

Poland was the first country to be occupied by Soviet Union during the World War II era.
Under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the alliance of Soviet Union and Nazi Germany designated Poland to be split in two in their joint invasion of Poland.^[5] In 1939, the total area of Polish territories occupied by the Soviet Union (including the area given to Lithuania and annexed in 1940 during the formation of Lithuanian SSR), was 201,015 square kilometres, with a population of 13.299 million, of which 5.274 million were ethnic Poles and 1.109 million were Jews. Concise statistical year-book of Poland , Polish Ministry of Information. London June 1941 P.9 & 10
After the end of World War II, the Soviet Union kept most of the territories it occupied in 1939, while territories with an area of 21,275 square kilometers with 1.5 million inhabitants were returned to communist-controlled Poland, notably the areas near Białystok and Przemyśl." U.S. Bureau of the Census ''The Population of Poland'' Ed. W. Parker Mauldin, Washington- 1954 P.140 In the years 1944-1947, over a million Poles were resettled from the annexed territories into Poland (mostly into the Regained Territories).^[6]
Soviet troops (the Northern Group of Forces) were stationed in Poland from 1945 till 1993. It was only in 1956 that official agreements betweem Polish and Soviet governments recognized the presence of those troops; hence many Polish scholars accept the usage of term 'occupation' for period 1945-1956.^[7]

Romania

Main articles: Soviet occupation of Romania

During their Eastern Front offensive of 1944, the Soviet troops occupied Romania. The northwestern part of Moldavia was occupied through fighting from May to August, while Romania was still an ally of Nazi Germany. The rest was occupied after Romania had changed sides as a result of the royal coup launched by Michael I of Romania on 23 August 1944. On that date, the King announced that Romania had unilaterally ceased all military actions against Allied powers' forces, accepted the Allied armistice offer, and entered the war against the Axis Powers. However, Soviet Union refused to recognise this announcement, claiming that no formal peace treaty existed, and ended occupying most of Romanian territory prior to the signature of the Moscow Armistice of 12 September 1944.
This armistice was then used by Soviet Union as a legal basis for continued military presence, peaking at 615,000 troops in 1946, that lasted until August 1958.

Denial

Although Soviet Union has condemned the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 — the immediate forerunner to the occupation —, as of 2007 it is generally the policy of Russian Federation to deny that the events involved constituted occupation or were illegal under applicable (international) laws.

References

1. Hungary under Soviet occupation at hunmagyar.org
2. Peter Hargitai 29 October 2006: Budapest is a riot! at U. S. embassy of Hungary
3. Hungarian Uprising at Spartacus Educational
4. United States State Department Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs 2007:
5. Sanford, George (2005). Katyn and the Soviet Massacre Of 1940: Truth, Justice And Memory. London; New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415338735. p. 21. Weinberg, Gerhard (1994). A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521443172., p. 963.
6. "Przesiedlenie ludności polskiej z Kresów Wschodnich do Polski 1944-1947. Wybór dokumentów", Wybór, opracowanie i redakcja dokumentów: Stanisław Ciesielski; Wstęp: Włodzimierz Borodziej, Stanisław Ciesielski, Jerzy Kochanowski Dokumenty zebrali: Włodzimierz Borodziej, Ingo Eser, Stanisław Jankowiak, Jerzy Kochanowski, Claudia Kraft, Witold Stankowski, Katrin Steffen; Wydawnictwo NERITON, Warszawa 2000
7. Mirosław Golon, Północna Grupa Wojsk Armii Radzieckiej w Polsce w latach 1945-1956. Okupant w roli sojusznika (Northern Group of Soviet Army Forces in Poland in the years 1945-1956. Occupant as an ally), 2004, Historicus - Portal Historyczny (Historical Portal). An online initative of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and Polskie Towarzystwo Historyczne. Last accessed on 30 May 2007.

Further reading

★ Czech government: The Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia

★ Mart Laar April 29 2007: Why Russia likes Soviet occupation monuments?

★ Stanislav Kulchytsky July 17 2007: Was Ukraine under Soviet occupation?

★ Encyclopædia Britannica: Latvia. The Soviet occupation and incorporation

★ Armistice Negotiations and Soviet Occupation, a part of ''Romania: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress'', 1989, edited by Ronald D. Bachman