Habersack, Sabine - Puşcaş, Vasile - Ciubotă, Viorel (szerk.): Democraţia in Europa centrală şi de Sud-Est - Aspiraţie şi realitate (Secolele XIX-XX) (Satu Mare, 2001)
Ivan Vovkanych: Democracy and Totalitarianism in East European Countries: Transition Periods int he History of the 20th century
Ivan Vovkanych of 1944-1945 and subsequent progressive changes in some East European countries can be categorized as people’s democratic movements. The period of 1946-1947, in most of East European countries was marked by the attempts of establishing or restoring bourgeois democracies. However, since at least early 1947, following Moscow’s direction, national communist parties of Eastern Europe started making practical steps towards seizing power. In 1948-1949, the “communization” of East European countries was definitively finished, and radical Marxist political forces became ruling parties. The idea of “people’s”, “proletarian”, “socialist” revolutions in these countries in late 40s is a myth. Actually, communists seized power in East European countries by exclusively political terrorist methods, anti-constitutional putsches and government coups. The thesis of communism being imposed on Eastern Europe after World War II “by Red Army’s bayonets” is traditional with the Western historiography of Cold War period. The same idea is developed in the works by the mainstream post-war representatives of the first wave of East European political emigration to the West. After democratic revolutions of 80s-90s, the idea of communism being brought from the outside in late 40s, has been borrowed by many modem East European researchers without profound critical analysis. The fatal role that the Stalinist export of communist revolution played in the history of East European nations can hardly be underestimated; however, it should be mentioned that the influence and importance of external Soviet factor in the process of “Sovietization” and “communization” in each of East European countries was far from equal. After the end of World War II, such countries as Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria were actually occupied by the Soviet troops and mied by the Allied Control Boards dominated by the representatives of the USSR. In Yugoslavia and Albania antifascist political blocks headed by local communists were at power. In Poland, under the pressure of Western allies of Anti-Hitler Coalition in 1945 the USSR had to modify the pattern of the puppet pro-Soviet interim government and involve Polish opposition in public management. In Czechoslovakia Moscow even had to allow partial revival of pre-war political system and the return of the President E. Benesh form his London emigration. In 1945 most of the Soviet troops were withdrawn from the country. In other countries their number dropped considerably. Therefore the thesis about the decisive and exclusive role of 134
