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The Sovietization of East Central Europe 1945–1989
... Whereas comparative outlooks, as well as theoretical and institutional studies of one-party regimes have been common in political science (Hess 2013;Magaloni and Kricheli 2010;Meng 2021;Rothman 1967;Swain 2011), historians have rarely paid attention to the mechanics of the one-party regimes and the fusion of parties with governments. There have nevertheless been studies, both involving diachronous comparisons within the same national contexts (Ayan 2010), and taking transnational and global perspectives, but mainly on communist parties (Bergien and Gieseke 2018; Feliu and Brichs 2019; McAdams 2017; Pons and Smith 2017;Naimark et al. 2017). Broader comparisons, involving nationalist (and fascist) and state socialist regimes and their institutions have been especially rare (Jessen and Richter 2011;Paxton 1998). ...
... The Cominform, like the Comintern in its later stages, was used to ensure Soviet control of the Eastern European parties, which was one of the reasons for the Soviet-Yugoslav split in 1948. Following the split, the most direct Sovietization took place between (Naimark 2017. ...
Over the course of the twentieth century, a broad array of parties as organizations of a new type took over state functions and replaced state institutions on the territories of the former Ottoman, Qing, Russian, and Habsburg Empires. In the context of roughly simultaneous imperial and postimperial transformations, organizations such as the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP) in the Ottoman Empire (one-party regime since 1913), the Anfu Club in China (parliamentary majority since 1918), and the Bolshevik Party in Russia (in control of parts of the former empire since 1918), not only took over government power but merged with government itself. Disillusioned with the outcomes of previous constitutional and parliamentary reforms, these parties justified their takeovers with slogans and programs of controlled or supervised economic and social development. Inheriting the previous imperial diversities, they furthermore took over the role of mediators between the various social and ethnic groups inhabiting the respective territories. In this respect, the parties appropriated some of the functions which dynastic and then constitutional and parliamentary regimes had ostensibly failed to perform. In a significant counter-example, in spite of prominent aspirations, no one-party regime emerged in Japan, for there the constitutional monarchy had survived the empire's transformation to a major industrialized imperialist power. One-party regimes thrived on both sides of the Cold War and in some of the non-aligned states. Whereas several state socialist one-party regimes collapsed in 1989–1991, some of the communist parties have continued to rule, and new parties managed to monopolize political power in different Eurasian contexts.
... The Cominform, like the Comintern in its later stages, was used to ensure Soviet control of the Eastern European parties, which was one of the reasons for the Soviet-Yugoslav split in 1948. Following the split, the most direct Sovietization took place between (Naimark 2017. ...
This chapter provides an overview of dependent constitution-making under one-party regimes in Albania, Bulgaria, China, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, North Korea, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia during the first decade after the Second World War. Employing and further developing the concept of the informal Soviet empire, it discusses the structural adjustments in law and governance in the Soviet dependencies. The chapter outlines the development of the concepts of “people's republic” and “people's democracy” and discusses the process of adoption and the authorship of the constitutions. It then compares their texts with attention to sovereignty and political subjectivity, supreme state institutions, and the mentions of the Soviet Union, socialism, and ruling parties. Finally, it surveys the role of nonconstitutional institutions in political practices and their reflection in propaganda. The process of constitution-making followed the imperial logic of hierarchical yet heterogeneous governance, with multiple vernacular and Soviet actors partaking in drafting and adopting the constitutions. The texts ascribed sovereignty and political subjectivity to the people, the toilers, classes, nationalities, and regions, often in different combinations. Most of the constitutions established a parliamentary body as the supreme institution, disregarding separation of powers, and introduced a standing body to perform the supreme functions, including legislation, between parliamentary sessions, which became a key element in the legal adjustment. Some constitutions mentioned socialism, the Soviet Union, and the ruling parties. The standardization of governance in the informal Soviet empire manifested itself in the constitutional documents only partially. Propaganda and archival documents revealed the prominence of nonconstitutional institutions, parties and leaders, as well the involvement of Soviet representatives in state-building. Domestic parties and leaders in the Soviet dependencies were also presented as subordinate to their Soviet counterparts in propaganda.
... Following the split, the most direct Sovietization took place between 1949-1950(Naimark 2017. ...
This chapter provides an overview of dependent constitution-making under one-party regimes in Albania, Bulgaria, China, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, North Korea, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia during the first decade after the Second World War. Employing and further developing the concept of the informal Soviet empire, it discusses the structural adjustments in law and governance in the Soviet dependencies. The chapter outlines the development of the concepts of “people’s republic” and “people’s democracy” and discusses the process of adoption and the authorship of the constitutions. It then compares their texts with attention to sovereignty and political subjectivity, supreme state institutions, and the mentions of the Soviet Union, socialism, and ruling parties. Finally, it surveys the role of nonconstitutional institutions in political practices and their reflection in propaganda. The process of constitution-making followed the imperial logic of hierarchical yet heterogeneous governance, with multiple vernacular and Soviet actors partaking in drafting and adopting the constitutions. The texts ascribed sovereignty and political subjectivity to the people, the toilers, classes, nationalities, and regions, often in different combinations. Most of the constitutions established a parliamentary body as the supreme institution, disregarding separation of powers, and introduced a standing body to perform the supreme functions, including legislation, between parliamentary sessions, which became a key element in the legal adjustment. Some constitutions mentioned socialism, the Soviet Union, and the ruling parties. The standardization of governance in the informal Soviet empire manifested itself in the constitutional documents only partially. Propaganda and archival documents revealed the prominence of nonconstitutional institutions, parties and leaders, as well the involvement of Soviet representatives in state-building. Domestic parties and leaders in the Soviet dependencies were also presented as subordinate to their Soviet counterparts in propaganda.
... It is not my intention to devalue the factual influence the Soviet Union imposed on the societies of East Central Europe but rather to question the one-sided idea of Sovietisation. After Stalin's ruthless use of unreserved terror, there was no supreme plan or even consensus among the commissariat for the means and subsistent goals for Sovietisation (Naimark, 2017;Kramer, 2017). ...
This introductory chapter focuses on the way in which legal historians and legal scientists used the past to legitimise, challenge, and explain socialist legal orders that were backed by dictatorial governments. Instead of concentrating on the differences and distinct features of each national legal culture, we focus on the interaction and intertwinement of the then hegemonic socialist ideology and the ideas of law and justice as they appeared in the writings of legal historians and historically oriented legal scientists of socialist legal orders. Such an angle enables us to concentrate on the dynamics between politics and law as well as on identities and legal history. Our aim is to study critically the presentations of legal history written under political guidance and to illuminate the ideological, academic, and biographical context of those presentations. Rather than reducing academic presentations on the history of law to mechanical extensions of the political order, the book perceives legal historiography as a form of the ever-ongoing dialogue between the political constitution of a society and the ideas of the rule of law and justice.
... It is not my intention to devalue the factual influence the Soviet Union imposed on the societies of East Central Europe but rather to question the one-sided idea of Sovietisation. After Stalin's ruthless use of unreserved terror, there was no supreme plan or even consensus among the commissariat for the means and subsistent goals for Sovietisation (Naimark, 2017;Kramer, 2017). ...
One of the most influential models in healthcare organisation and finance is the so-called Semashko model. This chapter scrutinises its origins in the Soviet Union and its expansion to Central and Eastern Europe. Its creation and later its spatial expansion were both by-products of war. While the Russian Revolution of October 1917 (brought about by the First World War) was the starting point for the development and introduction of the Semashko model, its spatial expansion was precipitated by the end of the Second World War when the Soviet healthcare model was (forcibly) exported to large parts of Central and Eastern Europe. Even though the initial success of the healthcare model ended in crisis, its legacies still influence healthcare policies in this region today.
This chapter discusses the major results of this volume, thus highlighting the fact that in all former belligerent countries the ethnic-social reshaping of the map of Europe during the transition from war to peace provided a decisive basis for the building of new and lasting national political cultures. It also deals with the extent to which the re-coding of the concepts of nation and nation-state led to the violent exclusion of “others”. Finally, it demonstrates the extent to which the experiences of the transitory years between 1945 and 1947 formed the breeding ground for a series of national master histories, which were then to be instrumentalised politically in order to legitimate the great upheaval after World War II. These interpretations of the post-war period were to hold sway until the end of the Cold War. Therefore, it was no coincidence that it is only since the 1990s that the frozen historiographical master narratives have broken up again to open the way for new historical interpretations.
By the summer of 1948, socialist Yugoslavia seemed determined to follow in the footsteps of its closest ally, the Soviet Union, and strike a decisive blow to “reactionary genetics.” But barely a month before the infamous VASKhNIL session, the Soviet–Yugoslav split began to unravel, influencing the reception of Lysenko’s doctrine in Yugoslavia. Instead of simply dismissing it as yet another example of Stalinist deviationism, Yugoslav mičurinci carefully weighed its political and ideological implications, trying to negotiate the Stalinist origins of Michurinist biology with political and ideological reconfigurations in post-Stalinist Yugoslavia. The essay examines the strategies employed by supporters and opponents of Lysenko’s doctrine, as well as those sympathetic to it but yet unconvinced of its scientific validity and political appropriateness. It emphasizes globally unique attempts to de-Stalinize Michurinist biology and use it in the political-ideological struggle against the Stalinist Soviet Union, pointing to local agency and the bottom-up nature of attempts both in support of and against the doctrine.
Conventional wisdom suggests that great power patrons ‘prop up’ authoritarian regimes. However, this is generally assumed to be the case and is rarely systematically investigated. Using evidence from an original dataset of all authoritarian client regimes from 1945-2010, I provide the first cross-national analysis of the relationship between foreign sponsorship and autocratic survival. The results challenge the conventional wisdom that superpower support helps autocratic regimes remain in power longer and finds that only Soviet patronage is associated with increased client survival. In contrast, U.S. sponsorship is not associated with a reduced risk of client regime collapse. I account for these findings by considering the divergent effects of U.S. and Soviet sponsorship on coups d’état. American ambivalence toward the rule of its particular autocratic allies actually increased the risk of coups and state-weakening coup-proofing behavior. In contrast, Soviet support for entrenching the rule of its authoritarian allies through the creation or expansion of vanguard parties, political commissars, and secret police forces rendered coups much less threatening to Soviet clients. Finally, both U.S. and Soviet client regimes are rendered vulnerable to threats from outside the regime as a result of unintended consequences of superpower sponsorship.
This is a major new study of the successor states that emerged in the wake of the collapse of the great Russian, Habsburg, Iranian, Ottoman and Qing Empires and of the expansionist powers who renewed their struggle over the Eurasian borderlands through to the end of the Second World War. Surveying the great power rivalry between the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan for control over the Western and Far Eastern boundaries of Eurasia, Alfred J. Rieber provides a new framework for understanding the evolution of Soviet policy from the Revolution through to the beginning of the Cold War. Paying particular attention to the Soviet Union, the book charts how these powers adopted similar methods to the old ruling elites to expand and consolidate their conquests, ranging from colonisation and deportation to forced assimilation, but applied them with a force that far surpassed the practices of their imperial predecessors.
New Evidence on Romania and the Warsaw Pact 1955–1989
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