Challenges to Soviet Power in Eastern Europe

In the 1950s and 1960s, reformers in Eastern European satellites of the Soviet Union sought to become less dominated by the Soviets. In most cases, the Soviets clamped down hard against dissent.

Poland In 1956, Polish workers demonstrated against Soviet domination and demanded better living conditions. As a result, a new secretary of the Polish Communist Party, Wladyslaw Gomulka, came to power. He decided to pursue an independent domestic policy in Poland but continued to be loyal to the Soviet Union, allowing the continued presence of Soviet troops in Poland. The Soviet-established forced collectivization of farms ended at this time.

Hungary In that same year, Hungarian protesters convinced the country’s political leader Imre Nagy to declare Hungary’s freedom from Soviet control and demand the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the country. Nagy vowed to support free elections in which non-Communist parties would participate. He announced Hungary’s neutrality in the Cold War and the withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. Soviet leaders responded by invading Hungary, gaining control of Budapest in 1956. The Soviets captured Nagy and executed him. Many Hungarians fled to the West as refugees.

Czechoslovakia The reform movement in Czechoslovakia reached a peak in the Prague Spring of 1968. Alexander Dubcek, first secretary of the Communist Party, acceded to the demands of the Czech people by increasing freedom of speech and the press and allowing greater freedom to travel. He also agreed to make the political system more democratic.

As with Hungary, Soviet leaders feared the Prague Spring’s independence. Soon the armies of four Warsaw Pact nations crushed it. In 1968, the Soviet Union used the Brezhnev Doctrine, named for then-Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, to justify its actions. This doctrine stated that the Soviet Union and its allies would intervene if an action by one member threatened other socialist countries. (Connect: Explain the continuity or change between the Eastern European resistance movements in the 19th and 20th centuries. See Topic 6.3.)