History 100: Part 13

Post 1945 Europe

Dr. Ron Jensen

Europe in 1945

The war in Europe ended formally May 7, 1945 after two separate surrender ceremonies, one in the city of Rheims in western Germany before an American general and the other in Berlin to a Russian commander. The two ceremonies not only reflected the geography of the war but also competition between the two new superpowers, Russia and the United States. Their rivalry would intensify in the coming months, but already the two allies jousted, each army racing for position in Germany. Russian soldiers paid a heavy price in lives to reach Berlin first. Here they raise the hammer and sickle above what remained of the Reichstag building. For most of Europe and the world May 7 was a time to celebrate, not quibble over who came first, and also a time to mourn, assess the damage and pick up the pieces from the longest, most destructive war in history. Forty million lives were lost in Europe alone, five times the death toll in World War I. Western Europe suffered less than in the first war, central and eastern Europe far more: 20-25 million military and civilian dead in USSR, 6 million in Poland (20% of the population), Germany 4 million, Yugoslavia 1.5-2 million. Survivors were also worse off than in WWI. In 1945 40 million refugees either sought to return home or find a refuge from a "home" that no longer welcomed them. This included 6 million POWs or forced laborers dragged to Germany during the war, 12 million ethnic Germans fleeing eastern Europe in advance of the Red Army, thousands of Jews - survivors like those depicted in the film "Schindler's List"- migrating to Israel or attempting to return to homes in Europe. Massive material losses all across Europe faced those survivors who returned : bombed cities, bridges, railways, factories, homes, schools. These staggering losses, both human and material, demonstrated that this was a war no one truly won. Although the level of catastrophe varied, nearly every country suffered severe damage. Europeans were united in misery as never before, and that fact had a curious benefit for the future. The devastation of the war tended to undermine the national antagonisms that had caused it. Chauvinism, and notions of ethnic or class superiority seemed either irrelevant or petty or simply ludicrous in the face of this new reality. Everyone had suffered and Europe's recovery required cooperation regardless of national or social boundaries, or so it seemed to many of the leaders who emerged immediately after the war. This perception eventually led post-war Europe toward greater political cooperation and economic integration in contrast to the divisive and isolationist tendencies that followed World War I.

Elections in the immediate post-war period demonstrated a preference for political compromise and a popular desire for greater social and economic cooperation, and also for reform, not just a restoration of pre-war politics and policies. The French in 1946 established a coalition equally divided between Communist, Socialist, and Christian democrats (MRP). Italy also experimented with Tripartism, as it was called, with a similar coalition of traditional rival parties. Britain elected a Labor Government in 1945 on a platform of egalitarian reform.

Cold War

However, Europe's future did not depend just on Europeans, but on the two great powers to whom the Germans surrendered on May 7, the United States and Soviet Russia. Their alliance, in partnership with Great Britain and the cooperation of the "Free French," had successfully mobilized men and material and coordinated military strategy for nearly four years. But the end of the war in Europe revealed seeds of a conflict between these allies.

The conflict was partly natural. Military alliances often disintegrate once victory has been achieved. The alliance against Napoleon in 1815 fragmented after a few years, while the victors in 1918 fell into dispute almost as soon as the armistice was agreed. But these allies did not simply drift apart; they became bitter enemies and political and military rivals almost immediately, and for the next generation. Ideology, personality and contrasting national priorities complicated relations between Russia and America from the beginning. It was a marriage of convenience between a communist regime and a liberal democratic one committed to fundamentally different goals. The Soviet Union was the vanguard of revolutionary socialism, while the United States represented international capitalism. Advocates on both sides had long predicted that a confrontation was inevitable. The war only disguised and in some ways deepened their mutual suspicions. For example, Stalin had urged his allies to open a "second front" against Hitler early in the war and President Roosevelt promised to do so as early as 1942 even though such an undertaking (an amphibious invasion of Europe) was impossible militarily. In the two year delay before the Normandy invasion Russia bore the brunt of the war in Europe. Stalin suspected that his allies were purposely leaving Russia to carry the burden to weaken the communist state. During the course of the war Stalin also sought an agreement on territorial boundaries in eastern Europe once the war ended, one favorable to Soviet expansion, but Roosevelt argued that such an understanding was premature as long as the war continued. The absence of conclusive political discussions during the war allowed military circumstances in 1945 to dictate authority in eastern Europe.

Yalta and Potsdam

The Yalta Conference held in the Crimea was designed to address these political questions and set the agenda for a post-war treaty. On paper the conference was a success. The allies agreed on the organization of the United Nations as a forum for resolving international disputes in the future. It also established general principles for determining the fate of eastern Europe and post-war Germany. The Declaration on Liberated Europe pledged free elections for all those who had suffered under German occupation. Germany was to be divided into zones controlled by each of the allies and expected to pay reparations ($22 billion) to the victors, half of which would go to compensate the Soviet Union. Within six months this agreement began to unravel. The Soviet Union denied free elections in Poland and helped to install a puppet regime in Romania.

The next conference, in Potsdam in July 1945, exposed the widening gap between the two great powers. Stalin openly rejected free elections in eastern Europe as anti-Soviet and Truman, the new American president, countered by effectively denying Russia the reparations they had expected. The Cold War was underway.

Contrasting National Priorities

Why had allies become enemies?

1) Ideology

2) Contradictory National Priorities

3) Mutual Misunderstanding

Aside from long standing ideological differences and disputes over eastern Europe, Soviet Russia and the United States in 1945 had fundamentally different national priorities.

Stalin and the Russians found themselves victorious and vulnerable at the same time. They had borne the brunt of the war, lost 20-25 million lives, and yet were being denied the fruits of that sacrifice: a secure sphere of influence in eastern Europe (especially Poland) and compensation in the form of reparations to rebuild the nation's shattered economy. Stalin's immediate reaction was to exploit the fact that the Red Army occupied eastern Europe to guarantee security and impose "friendly" governments along his western border. Over the longer term Stalin sought to insulate Russia from the economic threat posed by capitalist America.

The United States government after the war had fears of its own, not military fears, because geography and possession the atomic bomb seemed to guarantee physical security, but economic fears. During the war the American economy grew enormously. Manufacturing increased 90 %. What's to fear? If history was any guide, the American economy faced the threat of a world depression. Once military spending stopped and factories converted to consumer goods (cars instead of tanks) the country would need to find new markets or slide into recession. Post war Europe was too devastated and impoverished to buy American surpluses. Factories would close, profits would fall, unemployment would rise (returning soldiers would add to the demand for jobs), and depression set in. If, however, Europe was able to recover economically in a short time and become a market this dark scenario might be reversed. American could help achieve that by providing loans and assistance to aid in that recovery. The World Bank and Marshall Plan were partly conceived with that strategy in mind. The key to maintaining American prosperity in the future lay in expanding trade abroad, promoting free trade. If that happened America's massive new economy had the potential of dominating the world. So while Stalin was retreating behind a protective "Iron Curtain" the United States was seeking economic expansion. The actions of each nation seemed to confirm the hostile preconceptions of the other. Stalin's insistence on pro-communist governments in eastern Europe occupied by the Red Army was interpreted by western observers as part of the "master plan" of world conquest they had always expected. American economic initiatives and later military alliances with Soviet neighbors like Turkey were interpreted in Moscow as capitalist imperialism.

Two early examples of these Cold War interpretations are available on the CNN website devoted to the Cold War. The first is George F. Kennan's "Long Telegram" written by the State Department's leading Russian specialist in March 1946, an analysis that formed the basis of the Containment strategy employed by Presidents Truman and Eisenhower. The second , "The Novikov Telegram" of September 1946, presents an explanation of American "imperialism" written by the Soviet ambassador in Washington to Stalin.

Post-war Germany and the Cold War

Although the Cold War eventually became a global phenomenon, it was played out immediately in Europe with enormous consequences for the future of Europe in general and Germany in particular. The recovery of Germany is in many ways the most remarkable story of post-war Europe

The nation was defeated, physically devastated, partitioned and occupied. "Berlin can now be regarded as only a geographical location heaped with mounds of debris," wrote a reporter from the New York Tribune in 1945.

At Yalta the allies even anticipated the complete dismemberment of Germany. Yet within a few short years western Germany was on the way to becoming one of the most prosperous and stable nations of Europe and a leader in the creation of the present European Union.

What happened?

One reason is the Cold War itself. Although the occupation zones shown on the map divided Germany for a generation, consigning the eastern half to the Soviet bloc, western Germany benefitted from the Cold War. While Russians confiscated almost anything of value from their zone, carrying off machinery, livestock, even whole factories to rebuild Russia, Americans and British worked to preserve the remaining economic resources of "their" Germany and promote its recovery. To Americans, Germany was the primary battleground in the political competition with Russia and a prosperous western Germany, a bulwark against communism. In the short run they imported food and raw materials for Germans and helped to create a German Economic Council in 1947 to prevent inflation and bolster economic confidence. That same year the American Secretary of State, George Marshall, announced plans for a European Recovery Act to give long term assistance to needy countries. On the political front the western allies sanctioned a merger of the British, French and American zones, a constitutional convention and the creation in 1948 of a new German government. The Soviet Union responded by blockading Berlin and creating the first major crisis of the Cold War. Although it was within the Russian zone of occupation, the city of Berlin was itself divided into eastern and western sectors and dependant on the West for food and fuel. By starving Berlin of such necessities Soviet authorities hoped to gain control of all Berlin and prevent the creation of a new, American oriented government in western Germany. The plan backfired thanks to an unprecedented airlift carried out by American and British pilots. For 324 days 200,000 flights (day and night) supplied coal and food (13,000 tons a day) to Berliners.

The Soviets lifted the blockade in May 1949. It was a victory for the West and a defining moment for the Cold War and Germany. The occupation zones established in 1945 became permanent boundaries of separate states. Within a few months two separate governments were created in Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany led by Konrad Adenauer in the West and the German Democratic Republic of Walter Ulbricht in the East.

The Bipolar World

The division of Germany anticipated the division of Europe and the world into two armed camps. The Cold War became an arms race as well in 1949 when Russia detonated its first atomic bomb. Soon the two sides formed rival military alliances, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact.

By 1949 the Soviet Union had established a political and economic monopoly in Eastern Europe, from Poland to Bulgaria, with the cooperation of local communist parties. The only exception was Yugoslavia whose Marshall Tito maintained an independent communist government. The Soviet bloc, as it was called, was never quite as monolithic as American leaders pretended, however. Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia all witnessed episodes of resistance to Russian authority especially after the death of Stalin, but remained firmly in the Soviet orbit for the next forty years. In the wider world, the Cold War dominated the history of the next generation. In Asia the Korean War marked the first extended military conflict of the two sides, although Russia did not formally participate. In Vietnam, Cold War fears of a communist takeover led to an American presence in what had begun as an anti-colonial war of independence from the French. The Cold War even intruded in America's back yard - The Carribean - most dramatically in 1962.

In that year the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev sought to establish nuclear missiles in Cuba to bolster the defenses of its communist leader, Fidel Castro. The resultant confrontation nearly provoked a nuclear war before Khrushchev and the American president, John Kennedy, found a compromise. At the last minute, both leaders realized that war would be suicidal. The prospect of "mutually assured destruction" may have prevented the Cold War from erupting into a holocaust then and in the future, but it also guaranteed a generation of insecurity for people round the world.

The New Europe

While a succession of international crises from Korea to Cuba to Vietnam captured the headlines in the 1950's and 1960's, western Europe was quietly but steadily reinventing itself. New governments and booming new economies marked the era. West Germany performed an "economic miracle" under the leadership of its new president Konrad Adenauer and his economic minister, Ludwig Erhard.

Economic Miracles

There an average citizen's disposable income rose 400% between 1950 and 1970. And Germany was not the only economic miracle. The French economy doubled n the 1950s and almost tripled in the sixties. Italy's growth rate reached 5.5% per year in the fifties and accelerated faster in the next decade. Britain's economy grew more modestly owing to the survival of inefficient industrial plants, but living standards for wage earners rose handsomely nonetheless. In all western Europe's per capita rate of growth exceeded that of the United States between 1952 and 1980. Europe was entering a golden age of prosperity in the generation following World War II, a stark contrast with the depression that followed the First World War.

Welfare State

Europe not only prospered, it introduced a new definition of prosperity: the welfare state. Based in part on the economic philosophy of John Maynard Keynes, it operated from the premise that the government had the obligation to undertake those tasks neglected by private enterprise and if necessary to intervene at key points in the economy to stimulate growth or provide essential services. Those essential services usually included social programs such as welfare for the unemployed, state funded education and medical care. The most prominent example of a welfare state was Great Britain whose new Labor government introduced a National Assistance Act for all unemployed and a National Health Service in 1948 to provide free medical care to anyone who wished to use the system, paid for by taxation. The range of social services introduced by other European nations in the post-war world varied considerably. Scandinavian countries, Sweden especially, pioneered the welfare state and extended services most broadly. France introduced nearly free health care and substantial assistance for education within a mixed economy of public and private ownership. West Germany operated what it called a "social market economy." Private enterprise with limited state intervention to protect citizens from severe hardship. Whatever the name, the post-war decade dramatically altered the role of government in European society and the nature of that society. Why such different results?

Causes of European Recovery

1) New Leadership

2) Psychology of Crisis

3) External Assistance

New Leadership

The war destroyed or discredited Europe's old leadership. Adenauer in Germany, DeGaulle in France, De Gaspari in Italy and even Britain's Clement Atlee began with a clean slate. This new leadership brought new attitudes and priorities into office, for example a commitment to social reform and compromise rather than an emphasis on ideology. And a willingness to cooperate with other European nations.

Psychology of Crisis

Leaders of the new Europe realized in 1945 that the continent was in such a deep crisis that no one nation could recover alone. In that context cooperation became essential, a willingness to share essential resources such as coal and steel would, for example, help both France and Germany rebuild. Traditional enemies became partners.

External Assistance

The United States provided financial aid to Europe in the form of the European Recovery Act. This program was better known as the Marshall Plan, for Secretary of State George C. Marshall who announced the plan in his commencement address at Harvard 1947. He proposed $13 billion dollars for 16 nations for the next 6 years, a huge sum at that time.

The Marshall Plan was not simply charity but a capital fund for reconstruction, to rebuild factories and infrastructure. It also contained a large measure of self interest. American dollars gave the United States leverage over policies , tariffs, and currency and helped to guarantee that as Europe recovered it would buy American, that is provide a market for American goods. Finally it was an investment in the Cold War. The sooner Europe recovered economically the less susceptible it would be to communism. The Marshall Plan helped, but make no mistake, Europe's recovery depended more on Europeans than on the Marshall Plan. They had the labor and technical skills to put that money to work. The dollars simply demonstrated a commitment to aid in Europe's recovery and provided an incentive to cooperate. The money was distributed by the Organization of European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) composed of representatives from a dozen European nations.

European Unity

The biggest change Europe has experienced since the war is the movement toward a European Union, proclaimed by a dozen nations of the European Community in 1993. In doing so they were realizing a dream that had roots as far back as the middle ages. The map shows Charlemagne's empire in 800 when it was called the "kingdom of Europe," a short lived Christian empire.

That, of course was a Europe united by conquest, the sort of union that Napoleon and Hitler attempted. But the European Community was a voluntary union, one never before realized, though frequently imagined, especially after periods of intense conflict. Alexander I of Russia, for example, proposed a Holy Alliance after the Napoleonic wars and Aristide Briand , French foreign minister in the twenties, spoke of a United States of Europe after the First World War. The Second World War prompted more calls for some kind of federation to end the suicidal national wars that had devastated the continent twice in a generation. Resistance leaders led the way even during the war. An Italian, Altiero Spinelli, wrote a manifesto for a free and united Europe while in Mussolini's prison in 1941. Spinelli assembled a group of resistance leaders in Switzerland late in the war to issue a call for a federal union among all Europeans. This declaration reflect the resistance movement's general commitment to replace traditional class and ideological barriers with a spirit of humane cooperation. By 1945 the principle of some kind of formal cooperation between states was endorsed by many post-war leaders. Jean Monnet stated the obvious: "If states reestablish themselves on the basis of national sovereignty with all that this implies by way of prestige politics and economic protectionism, there can be no peace in Europe." Monnet was a French economist and an advocate of international cooperation ever since he served as deputy secretary general of the League of Nations in 1923.

New Incentives

Of course, recognizing the danger of nationalism in principle and building a structure to overcome it were two very different things as Monnet also recognized. "People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when a crisis is upon them." (Like a test or the deadline for a term paper) Post war economic and political conditions posed just such a crisis. No country could rebuild without the help of others, nor could they defend themselves. They lacked the money and resources. And the political danger of delay was visible inside and outside western Europe. Defeated, hungry, jobless citizens might fall prey to revolution or to the Red Army stationed nearby in eastern Europe. As Paul-Henri Spaak, a Belgian socialist and anti-communist put it later. "Europeans, let us be modest. It is the fear of Stalin and the daring views of Marshall which led us into the right path."

Alphabet Soup: OEEC, ECSC, EEC, EU

The Marshall Plan required European cooperation. Representatives of a dozen European nations in a specially created Organization of European Cooperation (OEEC) evaluated applications for aid, administered the money and built a framework for future cooperation. By the time the limited funds of the Marshall Plan were spent Europeans had already demonstrated the virtues of multinational planning and economic integration.

Schuman Plan 1950

A mind numbing array of committees, organizations and institutions stood between the idea of European integration and its implementation in the present European Union, but one project more than any other provided the essential momentum: the European Coal and Steel Community. It was designed to do two things.

European Coal and Steel Community

1. Speed industrial recovery in western Europe by

a. Collectively managing industrial resources everyone needed (coal and steel)

b. Eliminate tariffs on coal and steel for member states

2. Combine iron and coal resources of the Ruhr Valley of Germany with mines and mills in nearby France and Belgium.

The idea came from two Frenchmen, Jean Monnet, France's leading economist and longtime advocate of integration, and Robert Schuman the French prime minister. As a native of Lorraine, Schuman was a living example of Franco-German rivalry that integration was supposed to cure. His province, rich in iron ore, had changed sides twice in his lifetime. During the First World War he served as a German officer. In 1919 when Lorraine was returned to France he was elected as a member of the French Chamber of Deputies. Thus Schuman was ideally suited to promoted a plan that linked France and Germany.

The Schuman Plan that created the ECSC simply argued that the mines and mills of Lorraine and the Rhine and Ruhr valleys had much in common. Why compete when cooperation could benefit everyone? By pooling resources you could close inefficient pits, expand others (regardless of which nation they happened to be in) and set prices by mutual consent. The Schuman Plan initiated in 1950 became a pilot project in mutual economic management and the test of post war tolerance. He invited arch-enemies to pool coal and steel production and jointly manage the operation. Adenauer's government agreed (Adenauer was also from the Rhineland and personally familiar with the tragic history of the border.) as did that of Belgium (Spaak was foreign minister of Belgium at the time). Soon (1951) Italy, the Netherlands and Luxemburg joined. and trains rolled freely between the nations carrying resources vital to them all.

Six years after the war enemies were working together and making tough decisions. The High Authority , technical representatives of the ECSC, closed inefficient plants, regulated prices, and recommended investments according to economic criteria rather than political ones. In five years steel production rose 42%; trade between the six member nations (Little Europe) surged.

Common Market (EEC)

The European Coal and Steel Community became the foundation of the European Economic Community in 1957. It had the same members initially and a similar structure but much broader goals. The Common Market (as it was best known) established a single free-trade area with free movement of goods, capital and labor (not just coal and steel). Membership expanded as well in the sixties and seventies. By 1981 the Community contained twelve nations with 300 million people accounting for one quarter of world trade and a GNP equal to the United States.

Critics in all the member states complained of lost national identity and increasing bureaucratization by administrators in Brussels, but their resistance was broken by proven economic success and the promise of restored political status for Europe. After all, the alternative was continued subordination to the two superpowers during the Cold War. While joint military planning for a European defense force lagged far behind economic unity, the EEC could potentially mount a formidable third force.

European Union

As an economic force western Europe arrived in the decade of the eighties and political and military integration increased in the last decade. Mechanisms for political integration have been in place since 1991.

That year at the Dutch town of Maastrict EEC members mandated a leap forward, promising:

1. common foreign and defense policy

2. European police force

3. Common currency, the Euro (which became a medium of exchange in financial markets in 2000)

All of these remain to be fully implemented, but Europe is nearer to unity as the new millennium begins to unfold.

End of the Cold War

The last issue I want to discuss is the end of the Cold War and the liberation of Eastern Europe, two events closely related to and dependent upon the surprising collapse of the Soviet Union.

The story of western Europe's recovery and integration was driven off the front pages by the dramatic transformation of Eastern Europe beginning in 1989: the fall of the Soviet Union and the disintegration of its empire.

The revolutions in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union seem less like history than current events to those of us who were adults then. We watched much of it live on tv. And like T.V. everything happened very fast. The Soviet Union collapsed in four days in August 1991. East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Rumania all transformed themselves between October and Christmas in 1989. The second remarkable feature of these events was how peaceful they were. Despite threats of violence and tanks roaming the streets of Moscow only three people were killed in the August "coup." Unarmed crowds opened the Berlin Wall. Czech communists voted themselves out of office. Only in Rumania where President Nicholas Ceausescu's police fired on demonstrators was there much bloodshed. Rebels retaliated by shooting Ceausescu and his wife on Christmas Day. That was also on television.

After nearly half a century Eastern Europe, including Russia, was free and the Cold War over.

The history of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were bound together by Soviet hegemony after the war. While this was viewed simplistically as an empire of conquest by most western observers, Soviet authority in Eastern Europe initially depended on a significant degree of cooperation and sympathy for communist goals. Policies like land redistribution and nationalization of industries were welcomed by many. Promises of social justice, higher living standards, the elimination of an aristocratic elite and economic growth by means of a planned economy offered a compelling vision, given the history of most of Eastern Europe in the 20^th century. After all, communism had transformed backward Russia into a world power militarily and economically since 1917, or so it seemed. Perhaps the Soviet Union could serve as a model for progress in Eastern Europe. Such feelings undoubtedly contributed to the ease with which Soviet and pro-soviet parties took power between 1946 and 48. Soviet authority could be rationalized as a trade off. Concede political democracy (which few had experienced) for higher living standards and economic equality.

The trouble was communist government came at a very high price.

1. The Soviet Union expected Czechs, Poles, Hungarians and the rest to subsidize its own economy through one sided trade agreements.

2. Soviet hegemony was also costly in terms of national pride, especially in Poland, where resentment against Russia ran high. Following the Soviet model most of the states of Eastern Europe nationalized industries, established a central bureaucracy to allocate resources and set prices, and reorganized agriculture. They also built hospitals and schools accessible to all. And they copied Soviet politics giving the communist party a monopoly over the machinery of state. The result was some economic growth, a more egalitarian society, but on the whole disappointment with the unequal bargain. National resentment and economic exploitation were central motives in the failed rebellions of 1956 in Hungary, 1968 in Czechoslovakia, and strikes in Poland in 1956 and 1980.

By 1980 the communist model, the experienced patron of Eastern Europe, was failing itself. Compared to the United States or the Common Market countries, Brezhnev's Russia was a distant and fading third. GNP growing only 1-2%/year, productivity falling, consumer goods in short supply, and mired in an embarrassing war in Afghanistan all combined to destroy what little good will that remained for Soviet leadership or communist governments. And the weaker the Soviet Union appeared, the greater the opportunity for Eastern Europeans to rebel successfully.

Why did the Soviet Union fail?

1) Leadership Failures

2) Economic Contradictions

3) Public Morale

Russia's massive size, its military strength, and the menacing image it projected during the Cold War tended to obscure systemic flaws in the Soviet Union. The combination of central economic planning, political dictatorship, and the promise of a better life for future generations had turned Stalin's Russia into an industrial giant and a military power equal to anyone. The victory over Hitler seemed to confirm Stalin's methods and justify perpetuating that system long after Stalin was gone. Communist Party dictatorship also maintained veterans of the war and Stalin's leadership in office for the next generation, men conditioned by their experience in the 1930s and 40s. Most of the ruling Politburo in office in the 1980s had risen to power shortly before or during the Second World War. The average age of the Politburo in 1980, the Brezhnev era, was 70. It was commonly called the "Gerontocracy."

The trouble was, times had changed and the Russian people had changed. What worked to transform Russia from an agrarian society to an industrial one back in the thirties, massive programs to dig coal mines and build steel mills, no longer were sufficed in the more complex world of the 1980s. Central planners might set targets for gross production, but they could not easily guarantee the quality of what was produced, not could they control labor productivity or efficiency. Unrealistic quotas established in Moscow tended to encourage falsification of production figures and other corrupt practices. Heavy emphasis on industrial and military spending, inherent in the Stalinist tradition and reinforced by the Cold War, meant that consumer goods always lagged behind demand. Clothes, tv sets, private automobiles were notoriously poorly made and expensive. Housing in major urban areas hard to find and cramped. Whole families lived in small apartments and shared bathrooms and kitchen facilities with other families in the building.

All of this took a toll on public morale and labor productivity. Workers were poorly paid by Western standards, but compensated with guaranteed employment, cheap rents and utilities, and free low quality health care. No one starved but there was little incentive to work hard and a great deal of public cynicism. "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us," was a common expression of the seventies and eighties. That cynicism was reinforced by the knowledge that the "worker's state" in fact harbored a substantial privileged elite. Party officials and their families lived much better, drove cars, shopped in separate shops, traveled abroad, and had access to comfortable vacation "dachas" in the countryside. This spawned other dark jokes:

"What is the difference between communism and capitalism? Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it is the other way round." In short, the vision of a truly egalitarian society where all worked for the common good and for which many Russians had sacrificed no longer seemed valid for the generation of the seventies and eighties. By the early seventies Russians were entering their 9^th Five Year Plan and the worker's state no nearer to realization. And there was no obvious excuse like WW II.

The Soviet system had mellowed some from the Stalin years - fewer political prisoners and no sweeping purges -- but the society was dramatically different. It was urbanized (over 50% in cities 1979) and educated. Literacy universal and universities and technical schools graduated nearly a million students a year. It was also better informed about the outside world. The Iron Curtain did not prevent Leningraders from watching Finnish television or listening to BBC radio. Stalin's system depended on the will of the leadership to terrorize citizens and a gullible population insulated from the truth. Neither condition was present in the seventies and eighties.

By 1982, the year of Brezhnev's death, senior politburo members worried about the future.

1. Economy was stagnant, with GNP about half that of the US

2. Burdened by defense spending to keep up the arms race. About 20% of the total economy tied up in defense and rising annually.

3. Bad harvests forced Moscow to buy grain abroad on a regular basis.

4. Living standards declining. (Life expectancy in Russia fell steadily from its peak in 1969)

5. Worker morale declining, as evidenced by rising alcoholism, absenteeism, black market trading, and a rising crime rate.

There was no fear of a citizen revolt, just a passive rejection of a failed domestic economy and a deteriorating world situation.

Gorbachev's Russia

As the old leadership passed from the scene, Mikhail Gorbachev, a sincere reformer, was brought in to save the system. It was too late, and ironically his attempted cure only hastened the decline.

1. His economic reforms (perestroika or restructuring) attempted to blend aspects of free market economics with central planning. He cut subsidies for food but that only increased prices without affecting scarcity.

2. He promoted free elections to a new legislature and relaxed censorship to win public support, but left the Communist Party in control of the national administration. This brought vocal new public critics into office and at the same time threatened conservative party officials.

3. His policy of glasnost (openness) stimulated public debate and brought out new protests from the various subject nationalities that composed the Soviet Union. First they demanded autonomy and then independence from the union. Lithuania, in the Baltic region, declared independence in March 1990.

4. Internationally Gorbachev won great acclaim for cutting military spending drastically, withdrawing Soviet troops from Afghanistan, and, at a summit meeting in Iceland with President Reagan, proposing a 50% cut in strategic missiles. He brought the arms race nearly to a halt.

At home, however, Gorbachev found himself denounced on all sides. To conservatives in the Communist Party Gorbachev's concessions seemed be dismantling the Soviet Union, while democrats - like Boris Yeltsin - criticized him for going too slow and preserving the corrupt Party. In August 1991 members of Gorbachev's own cabinet attempted a coup to preserve the Union and the Communist Party. The coup failed and the public backlash against the conspirators destroyed the Communist Party.

In September the Party was outlawed in the Russia, the largest Republic, and in December 1991 the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Instead, the constituent republics (the largest being Russia and Ukraine) became independent. Only a loose powerless confederation, the Commonwealth of Independent States survived. Gorbachev also resigned and quickly became a scapegoat in his own country, blamed by conservatives for the decline of Soviet political power and by democrats and most citizens for the economic malaise that quickly befell Russia and the former Soviet Union. But the end of the Soviet Union also meant the end of the Cold War and the liberation of Eastern Europe, and Mikhail Gorbachev, more than any single individual, deserves the credit. His initiatives ended the arms race and his decisions guaranteed the peaceful liberation of Eastern Europe.

The Revolution of 1989

The visible decline of the Soviet Union coupled with serious economic problems of their own prompted political unrest in much of Eastern Europe in the decade of the eighties. In Poland a non-violent trade union called Solidarity headed by a shipyard electrician, Lech Walesa, mounted a series of successful strikes that led to free national elections in 1988. Elsewhere moderate, reform oriented Communist leaders took office in an effort to silence protestors. Tensions were building for a confrontation not only between citizens and their Communist governments but between Eastern Europeans and the Red Army, Russian troops stationed in each of the satellite nations to keep order.

The decisive moment came in October 1989 in East Berlin. The German Democratic Republic's President, Erich Honecker, ruled the most rigidly repressive regime in Eastern Europe. For 18 years he and the Stasi (political police) resisted all manner of reform, economic and political. With the help of nearly half a million Soviet troops stationed in East Germany, his regime also maintained the Berlin Wall, the great symbol of the Cold War. In October 1989 the regime faced ever increasing crowd of protesters demanding freedom and democracy and the right to cross that Wall that separated the two Germanies. If Soviet troops intervened to stop the protest, there would be a bloodbath. If they did not, Honecker's government might fall and with it Soviet authority in Eastern Europe generally.

Soviet president Gorbachev visited East Berlin on the 7^th of October, ostensibly to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of the GDR, but more importantly to deliver a decisive message to Honecker. "Issues concerning the GDR should not be decided in Moscow but in Berlin. We have to learn from life," he told Honecker and the press, "and make the corrections that life requires." He ordered Soviet troops in East Germany to remain on their bases and not intervene to quell the protest. A few days later 70-100,000 East Germans demonstrated for freedom and no police intervened. On Nov. 9 East Germans were free to leave. Citizens of Berlin dismantled the Wall that separated East and West.

The events in Germany triggered freedom elsewhere. The Czech Communist Government resigned in the face of public protest and on December 9 a new cabinet formed under the leadership of playwright-dissident Vaclav Havel. Bulgaria's government resigned peacefully as well. Only in Rumania did the government resort to violence. In December a popular insurrection seized and executed the dictator Ceasescu and his wife. By the end of 1989 the Iron Curtain had fallen, and fallen peacefully.

End of the Cold War and European Unity

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the revolution of 1989 in Eastern Europe opened a new chapter in the history of western civilization. It expanded prospects for unity enormously.

a. Germany was reunified almost immediately after forty-five years of division. This was accomplished at enormous cost to West Germany (in the form of subsidies to the poorer East) but far more smoothly than many expected. The cartoon indicates some of the mutual suspicions that accompanied reunification. East Germans feared the need to conform to laws and customs of West Germans, while the latter complained that unification would reduce living standards and increase unemployment.

b. The expansion of the European Union into Eastern Europe seems inevitable. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic have already lobbied successfully for admission into NATO and the recent EU summit in Nice made plans for the admission of at least several new states. Eventually as many as 13 may be added to the present membership of 15.

Membership in the Union was one of the motives expressed by Serbs in the rebellion against Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000. 2. Opposition to integration.

At the same time, the end of the Cold War and the Soviet menace diminishes the urgency to complete the European Union as planned. The Soviet threat was a powerful argument for creating the union in the first place and for eventually establishing a unified military command. Without that threat "euroskeptics" have been much freer to challenge or delay commitment to a single currency and to renew complaints about the loss of national identity and sovereignty that full integration might bring. Nevertheless, while the extent and nature of the union and the composition of its governing institutions are hotly debated, the European Union is too valuable to be reversed. Europeans debate how closely they should integrate, not whether to do so. Given the tortured history of Europe in the twentieth century and in the centuries before, that is remarkable. Perhaps people do learn from history after all.

Of course Europe in the year 2001 is not all sweetness and light. Prosperity, economic expansion and political security of recent years has also been accompanied by a host of social and cultural problems such as increased drug usage and neo-nazi violence. These, however, must be balanced against the substantial material progress in raising life expectancy, reducing hunger, greater social equity and environmental protection. Western Civilization is alive and well and healthier than it has ever been.