Theme 12-1. Europe and Americas
The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
The Sovietization of Eastern Europe followed quickly after World War II, consisting of the industrialization and nationalization of the economy, the collectivization of agriculture, and the installation of secret police forces and prison camps.
The USSR sent grain to the Eastern Europe in form of a brotherhood help to promote Communism there. This grain was forcibly confiscated in Ukraine. It became one of the causes of large famine in 1946–47, killing nearly 1 million Ukrainians. Other causes included a drought and requisitions for the industrial recovery and strategic reserves for the expected war with the West.
Both Eastern Europe and the USSR recovered from the war surprisingly quickly, and the region enjoyed substantial economic growth between the early 1950s and early 1970s. Social welfare systems provided education, medical care, pensions, and other basic services to all citizens. However, East European production was characterized by poor quality, and consumer goods were constantly in short supply because of the priority given to the Cold War arms race. Moreover, the environmental damage caused in Eastern Europe by half a century of careless industrialization has proven nothing short of catastrophic, with the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 merely the most famous of countless examples.
Marxist ideology called for gender equality, and while the Soviets observed this ideal imperfectly (especially under Stalin), women made up a large part of the workforce.
Politically, Soviet-style communism was maintained by repression. Even though Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev began de-Stalinization with his “secret speech” of 1956 (which criticized Stalin’s purges), reforms were sporadic and limited, and they were scaled back by Khrushchev’s more dictatorial replacement, Leonid Brezhnev. The price of going beyond what the USSR was willing to allow was demonstrated by Soviet invasions during the Hungarian uprising of 1956 and the “Prague Spring” in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
In the 1970s, the Soviet bloc entered a steady economic and administrative decline known as the Brezhnev stagnation. At the same time, dissident movements arose throughout the region, but were kept firmly under control. Only in the 1980s would real change make itself felt.
Meanwhile, in Eastern Europe, the 1980s led to communism’s general collapse. Brezhnev-era stagnation, the rising cost of the arms race (and the USSR’s ill-fated invasion of Afghanistan, 1979-1989), the general inefficiency of the system —which led to terrible disasters like the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl in 1986— and the increasingly active dissident movement all undermined stability in the Soviet bloc. Unrest was especially apparent in Poland, where the trade union Solidarity, led by Lech Walesa, spearheaded a protest movement that united workers, intellectuals, and Catholic clergy. (Pope John Paul II, originally from Poland, did much to support anti-Soviet agitation in Eastern Europe.)
Real change here was impossible until 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev, a reform-minded politician, rose to power. Keenly aware that the USSR could no longer pay for the Cold War arms race or its East European sphere of influence, Gorbachev launched a twin reform effort: perestroika (“restructuring” the economic system and allowing limited capitalism, similar to what Deng Xiaoping was attempting in Communist China) and glasnost (“openness,” meaning greater freedom of opinion and the media). He ended the war in Afghanistan, entered into arms talks with the United States, and allowed freedom movements, especially Poland’s Solidarity, to reemerge in Eastern Europe. He permitted the fall of the Berlin Wall in late 1989, thus helping to end the Cold War. Unfortunately for Gorbachev, his reforms failed in the USSR—primarily because he did not pursue economic change aggressively enough and because glasnost allowed public discontent to undermine him when things went wrong. Also, anti-Soviet nationalism spiked among the USSR’s non-Russian ethnicities, who wanted the same freedoms East Europeans had just gained. By 1990 and 1991, Gorbachev found himself isolated between democratizers (who thought he was not changing enough) and communist hard-liners (angry about the limited changes he had already made). He was almost overthrown by a failed coup attempt in the summer of 1991, and then agreed to the disbandment of the USSR that December.
Western Europe
Recovery was dramatic in Western Europe, thanks initially to the U.S.’s European Recovery Plan, better known as the Marshall Plan (1948). This infusion of more than $13 billion helped to rebuild the war-torn nations of Europe and, by reducing economic desperation, made the spread of communism less likely. Industrial growth and high-tech innovation proved phenomenal during the 1950s and 1960s. With this newfound prosperity, most West European nations put into place social welfare systems or improved on the ones created during the interwar era blending capitalism and elements of socialism in what was frequently referred to as the “middle” or “third way.” At times, this involved nationalizing certain sectors of the economy, typically transport, communications, or utilities.
During the late 1940s and 1950s, it was still generally considered that a woman’s main roles were those of homemakers and child bearer.
One way for West Europeans to make up for their loss of global clout was economic union, a long process that began with the 1952 birth of the European Coal and Steel Community (Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, France, and West Germany) and took firm shape in 1957-1958, when the same nations formed the European Economic Community (EEC) to eliminate tariffs and allow the freer movement of goods and services. Many members of the EEC also participated in the NATO alliance.
Not all developments were positive. Europe was caught in the crosshairs of the superpowers’ nuclear arms race, and decolonization was demoralizing, especially when countries fought unsuccessful wars in an attempt to keep their possessions, as France did in Indochina (1945-1954) and Algeria (1954-1962). Generational change, combined with discontent over the Cold War and wars of decolonization, rendered many parts of Europe vulnerable to the global wave of 1968 protests, which included Paris riots by students.
Social activism advanced the cause of women’s liberation and gay rights. Feminists pressed for women’s legal equality, right to vote, elimination of the cultural stereotype of women as the “weaker sex”.
Authoritarian rule persisted until after the mid-1970s in countries such as Portugal, Greece, and Spain (where Francisco Franco, dictatorial victor of the Spanish Civil War, continued to rule). Terrorism also arose in the 1960s and 1970s, sometimes as a manifestation of left-wing extremism (as in Italy’s Red Brigades, who killed the prime minister in 1976), sometimes as a strategy pursued by separatist movements (including the Basque ETA, fighting to be rid of Spanish rule, and the Irish Republican Army, or IRA, a Catholic paramilitary trying to wrest mostly Protestant Northern Ireland from British rule and unite it with the Republic of Ireland).
Thanks to the shock of the U.S. abandonment of the gold standard in 1971 and the OPEC oil embargo of 1973, Europe suffered the same global economic crisis of the 1970s that most of the developed world did, complete with stagflation (slow growth combined with inflation). The soaring costs of Europe’s social welfare systems became harder to sustain.
To escape the malaise of the 1970s, many West European nations moved economically and politically to the right in the 1980s, with the election of conservatives like Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Helmut Kohl in West, Germany. Leaders like these pursued free-market policies, retreating in part from the social welfare systems of the past, defying labor unions, and privatizing many state-run sectors of the economy. This approach—paralleled by Ronald Reagan’s in the United States—led to a recovery of overall wealth, but also caused social stress in the form of strikes and layoffs, and its main legacy appears to have been the long-term redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the very rich.
The United States
The United Sates saw Communism as a major threat to democracy, because in the communist societies freedom was limited and the goal was set to put everyone on the same level. President Henry Truman invented the doctrine of containment of the Soviet Union. From 1950 to 1954, Congressman Joseph McCarthy conducted mass persecutions of suspected communists. Some were sent to prison for espionage, thousands lost jobs and faced social expulsion. After war the arms production shrined and unemployment became widespread. In 1946, inflation rate was nearly 20 percent since people began to spend more money. Attempts to nationalize mines and retain by this more jobs were ineffective.
In 1948, the U.S. organized the Organization of American States (OAS) aimed at international cooperation.
There was a problem of racial segregation for African Americans (racism, discrimination, lynching). In December of 1955, Rosa Parks, refused to give up her seat to a white male on a public transportation system bus. As a result, she was arrested. Now, the Montgomery bus boycott began. A major player in the Civil rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., joined the boycotts, and preached on the importance of nonviolent protests and demonstrations in order to bring about social change.
From 1952 to 1961 were the years of Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency. Although government provided low-cost loans for people to buy homes or farms or to start small business, the economy was in recessions.
In 1960, the presidential election was won by John Kennedy (the Democrats). In 1961 to 1962, Kennedy had to handle the Cuban Missile Crisis and saw the Berlin Wall built by the Soviets. In November of 1963, Kennedy was assassinated, just soon after he had asked Congress to outlaw segregation of blacks.
New president Lyndon Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Act through Congress in 1964. The Act outlawed discrimination based on a person’s race, color, religion, or gender. Johnson also expanded his antipoverty program. However his politics of the Vietnam War (U.S. entered in 1964) greatly contributed to his fall.
All over the South, the Ku Klux Klan bombed black churches and the homes of civil rights activists. In 1968, King was assassinated by a white. By this time the blacks’ movement had fragmented (supporters of nonviolent protest vs supporters of aggressive approach (the Black Panthers)). Students (the New Left movement) protested against poverty, racism and Cold War. Feminists fought against discrimination in hiring, pay, college admissions and financial aid. Hippies manifested the counterculture against “the establishment”. They had long hair, tie-dyed shirts, ripped jeans and advocated drug use, communal living, and “free love”.
In 1968, Richard Nixon became the President. He promised to end American involvement in the Vietnam War. In 1973, the American troops were withdrawn from that country. Nixon increased the trade with the USSR and China, and started the politics of Détente with the Soviet Union. In the 1970s, the economy worsened, going through stagflation (recession-inflation). American society remained divided among the haves and have-nots, the conservatives and progressives. In 1974, Nixon resigned due to the Watergate scandal (his attempts to steal the Democrats’ information in 1972).
In 1974, Gerald Ford became the President. An oil embargo organized by Arab nations (under the leadership of OPEC) increased fuel prices, and the price of almost everything else rose. Stagflation and unemployment sealed Ford’s fate.
In 1976, Ford was defeated by Democrat Jimmy Carter. Eventually Carter also failed to deal with the economic crisis. In 1979, the USSR invaded Afghanistan and supported the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. The period of Détente ended. In Iran terrorists took American hostages.
In 1980, presidential campaign was won by Ronald Reagan. He reduced corporate taxes, and the corporation created more jobs. He deregulated banking, industry and the environment. Inflation subsided, but social inequality continued. Reagan increased military spending (Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars) and escalated the arms race with the USSR. The arms race helped bankrupt the USSR and bring about an end to the Cold War. The latter ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when the president was George Bush, elected in 1988.
Latin America
Despite some temporary progress toward economic modernization and democratization in the late 1940s and early 1950s, many Latin American nations reverted to exploitative economies and dictatorial government from the late 1950s through the early 1980s. By the mid-1970s, only a tiny handful of countries in the region could be considered democratic. The Organization of American States (OAS), founded in 1948 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., fostered economic and diplomatic cooperation throughout the region—although cynics saw it as a tool for enforcing the U.S. sphere of influence in the western hemisphere.
ARGENTINA: Military rule was established here during World War II. In 1946, the charismatic officer Juan Perón came to dominate the government by appealing to the poor. In this, he was aided by his wife, Eva Perón, who enjoyed popularity among the lower- class descamisados ("shirtless ones"). His modernization program of the 1950s borrowed heavily from Mussolini^ brand of fascism and state capitalism. Overthrown by his army in 1955, Peron fled to Spain but returned in 1973, serving as president until his death in 1974. A brutal military regime, calling itself the National Reorganization Process, ruled from 1976 to 1983, ruthlessly purging leftists and dissidents in the "dirty war” and causing the deaths of perhaps 30,000, including numerous desaparecidos, or "disappeared ones," who were secretly arrested and never seen again.
CHILE: Here, in 1973, General Augusto Pinochet—backed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)—led a coup against President Salvador Allende, a Marxist who had been democratically elected in 1970. Like Argentina’s military rulers, Pinochet arrested thousands of leftists and suspected opponents, torturing 30,000 and killing or "disappearing" over 3,000. Economically, he instituted a free-market reform program (similar to Ronald Reagan's in the United States and Margaret Thatcher’s in Britain), on the advice of economists known as the “Chicago boys,” because of the influence exercised over them by Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago. Pinochet stepped down in favor of a democratically elected government in 1990. He left the country but was later arrested; he was on trial in Chile for human- rights abuses and corruption when he died in 2006.
GUATEMALA: In 1954, nearly a decade of democratically elected reformist rule came to an end with a CIA-supported coup that brought the general Carlos Castillo Armas to power. A succession of military dictators followed until the mid- 1990s, each of them suppressing leftist rebels and ethnic minorities with brute force. In particular, the regime perpetrated an anti- Mayan genocide in the 1980s.
MEXICO: An example of mild authoritarian oligarchy, as opposed to extreme dictatorship, Mexico maintained a nominally democratic system that ensured an unbroken string of electoral victories for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Oil-based wealth during the 1950s and most of the 1960s kept the economy healthy and the population reasonably satisfied. However, by the late 1960s and 1970s, economic downturn, growing awareness of government corruption, and anger among Indians and Mayans because of popular and official prejudice all increased general discontent with the regime. Mexico City was hit hard by the global wave of 1968 protests, and emigration to the United States, both legal and illegal, accelerated in the 1970s and 1980s. The PRI regime gradually reformed during the 1980s and 1990s.
Military governments and right-wing dictatorships predominated. Because of their anti-communism, many of these were Cold War allies of the United States, despite their human-rights abuses and their tendency to gear their economies for the benefit of the elite instead of the population at large. Indigenous natives—Indians, Mayans, Amazon tribes, and so on – were often very badly treated.
Dictatorship also arose as a result of the Cuban Revolution, this time from the left. In 1959, a guerrilla force led by Fidel Castro ousted the dictator Fulgencio Batista. Even the United States was happy to see Batista gone, and Castro initially governed as a non-aligned modernizer, nationalizing industry, carrying out land reforms, and combating illiteracy and socioeconomic inequality. But he also regarded U.S. influence in Latin America as "yankee imperialism/’ and prompted by his Marxist second-in-command, the Argentine intellectual Ernesto "Che” Guevara, Castro declared himself a communist and turned to the USSR for assistance. Because of its proximity to the United States, Cuba's pro-soviet alignment made it a Cold War hot spot from 1961 onward, as demonstrated by moments like the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Domestically, the Castro regime’s record is mixed. Cuba modernized and narrowed the gap between rich and poor. However, Castro's government became rigidly dictatorial, restricting civil liberties and committing human-rights abuses of its own.
Stirring up further Cold War anxieties was the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979, when the Marxist Sandinista movement overthrew the Somoza clan that had ruled since the mid-1930s. Professing commitment to social democracy instead of dictatorship, the Sandinistas began with a program of land reform and wealth redistribution but was quickly distracted by Cold War geopolitics. Nicaragua's new friendliness with the USSR unnerved Ronald Reagan in the United States, whose detente with the Soviets had just ended over the latter’s invasion of Afghanistan. Against the wishes of the U.S. Congress, Reagan’s administration attempted to destabilize the Sandinistas by illegally funding right-wing guerrillas known as the Contras. This bloody civil conflict persisted until the end of the Cold War.
A wave of Latin American democratization occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Much of this was tied to economic improvements, but just as much was due to the cooling down of the Cold War, which reduced superpower concerns about influence in the region. Pinochet gave up power in 1989-1990, Argentina moved from dictatorship to democracy between 1983 and 1989, and Mexico's PRI loosened its monopoly on power, beginning with the national elections of 1988. Peace and democracy returned to Nicaragua in 1990; an anti-Sandinista candidate, Violeta Chamorro, was elected as the country’s first female president, but the Sandinistas have since returned to power via the ballot box. This transition was not complete. The Castro dictatorship retained power in Cuba. Corruption, resurgent authoritarianism, and dependence on illegal drug trafficking have continued elsewhere.