The Power of Freedom. Mart Laar
when the Red Army was advancing to the West, tens of thousands of men in the Baltics were mobilised by the German Army, including Waffen-SS units, to stop the Red Army’s advance into their territories. Under the decisions of the Nuremberg Tribunal, these soldiers were not treated as war criminals and after the end of the war they had the opportunity of staying in the West. So although the Soviets liberated people from the hated Nazis, they also brought subjugation to Stalinism. Looting, rape, violence and terror took place on a horrific scale in the wake of Communist domination. Such acts seriously undermined the authority of the Soviet Union and Communism, giving even local Communists cause for complaint. A report written by Hungarian Communists in Köbanya and presented to the Soviets in 1945 states that when the Red Army arrived, the soldiers committed a series of sexual crimes in an outbreak of ‘mindless, savage hatred run riot. Mothers were raped by drunken soldiers in front of their children and husbands. Girls as young as 12 were dragged from their fathers and raped by 10-15 soldiers in succession and often infected with venereal disease.’33 The Soviet leadership, however, did not react to these reports. Stalin is reported to have said to the complaining Yugoslav Communist, Milovan Djilas ‘Can’t he understand if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometres through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle?’34
Various Central and Eastern European states attempted to free themselves from the Nazis and restore their own independent governments. Since the beginning of 1944, Estonian soldiers had fought alongside the German army to halt the Red Army at the borders of Estonia. When the Germans decided to withdraw their troops from Estonia in September 1944, an independent Government of Estonia was established by the Estonian national resistance movement in Tallinn. The new government declared its neutrality in the German-Russian conflict and turned to the Western powers for help. Estonia never received a reply. They pushed the Germans out, but within three days, Soviet tanks arrived and after hopeless fighting, defeated all efforts to win the country’s freedom. Very few members of the government were fortunate enough to escape the country. Once more, the Soviet occupation swallowed up Estonia and the other Baltic countries.35
A similar attempt to win freedom was made in Poland where the prospects for success were even better. A legal Polish government-in-exile and an underground Home Army hoped to crush the Nazis and restore an independent Polish government and administration in Warsaw before the Soviet takeover. As Soviet military units re-entered the suburbs of the capital on 1 August 1944, the Home Army started an uprising against the Nazis. Assailed from all sides, the Germans began to withdraw. Victory seemed within the grasp of the Home Army, but Stalin refused any assistance. Instead, the Red Army halted and watched passively from across the river Wisla while the uprising was crushed. Moscow radio, which had urged the Varsovians to revolt, now denounced them as a ‘gang of criminals’. Churchill tried to persuade Stalin to help the uprising, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. Moreover, the Soviets were not even ready to support the Western allies who were willing to help the uprising. On 18 August, for example, the Soviets declared that they ‘object[ed] to British or American aircraft, after dropping arms in the region of Warsaw, landing on Soviet territory, since the Soviet Government [did] not wish to associate itself either directly or indirectly with the adventure in Warsaw.’ Warsaw resisted for 63 days, appealing for help that never came. Then it was over. The surviving inhabitants were evacuated by the Germans and Warsaw was ‘razed without a trace.’ The Home Army was destroyed with the result that no one was left to challenge the Communists; the Nazis had done the Soviets’ work for them. Poland’s pre-war Republic was not restored; the surviving leaders of the uprising were hunted down by the KGB, arrested and then killed.36
In 1945, the Red Army moved west, seizing new territories. Stalin soon acquired his Western allies’ acquiescence to his retention of the territories and countries awarded to him under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: the Baltic States; the Eastern part of Poland; Karelia; the region won from Finland and Bessarabia. But his goal was to rule as much of Europe as possible so Stalin pressed the Red Army onwards to the West as quickly as possible, paying no attention to the enormous losses incurred. In April 1945, Churchill advised Eisenhower to take Berlin, Prague and Vienna ahead of the advancing Soviet armies. The Americans refused, still entertaining unrealistic hopes about the possibility of post-war cooperation with Stalin. Concomitantly, Stalin was effectively implementing what he had privately told the Yugoslavian Communist leader, Milovan Djilas, ‘this war is not as in the past, whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach.’ 37 The Soviet age was arriving in Central and Eastern Europe.
Back to the shadow: the Communist takeover and the Red Terror
The sacrifices made during the Second World War did not bring freedom to Central and Eastern Europe. As Stalin predicted, the social and political systems of the East and West were destined to follow the positions of the occupying army. Military force has in fact been the key to success in almost every Communist takeover in history. Of a total 22 Communist takeovers after 1917, the Red Army played a decisive role in 15 of them, while in the other cases, native Communist military forces were used. In this, the Soviets followed the statements of Lenin, Stalin and Mao according to which ‘political power grows out of the barrel of the gun. Anything can grow out of the barrel of the gun.’38 In fact, looking at the fate of Central and Eastern Europe, it may safely be argued that the transformation of the Central and East European countries into totalitarian Communist states within the span of a few short years could not have been engineered if it had not been for the decisive role played by the Soviet Red Army.
Cemetery of Lithuanian deportees in the Far North of the USSR
Yet the division of Europe was not decided at once. The Soviet Union was weakened and devastated. Stalin had annexed 272,500 square miles of foreign territory and needed time to purge and prepare them for the Soviet way of life. Most importantly, the Soviets did not yet possess the atomic bomb. Lacking this military might, Stalin had to manage the takeover of Central and Eastern Europe with some caution. Unfortunately, the Western democracies did not understand the situation and therefore failed to use the opportunity to force the Soviet Union back to its pre-war borders. Winston Churchill had seen it coming and had warned the West – but to no avail. When he addressed his people after receiving Germany’s surrender, Churchill gave voice to his fears:
On the continent of Europe, we have yet to make sure that the simple and honourable purposes for which we entered the war are not brushed aside or overlooked in the months following our success and that the words freedom, democracy and liberation are not distorted from their true meaning as we have understood them. There would be little use in punishing the Hitlerites for their crimes if law and justice did not rule, and if totalitarian or police governments were to take the place of the German invaders. 39
At this time, however, almost nobody understood him. Thus, Stalin was effectively given free rein to do as he pleased in the conquered territories.
For Stalin, post-war Europe was split into four zones. The territories annexed as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact – the Baltic states, Eastern Poland and Bessarabia – were to be integrated immediately and completely into the empire. In the zone lying to the west of this, which included Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, he wished to install vassal Communist regimes with a minimum transition period, whilst in the zone lying to the west of this, which included Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, he reckoned on achieving the same goal after an interval of some years. Finally, in the countries of Western Europe proper, he was planning to exert his influence, initially at least, through national Communist parties.40 The Soviet zone in Germany had to stay under direct Soviet control until the fate of the country had been decided. Stalin actually met with the leaders of the German Communist Party as early as 4 June 1945 to lay out plans for incorporating a reunified Germany into Moscow’s sphere of influence.
Reed and Fisher 1988, 327.
Djilas 1962, p. 76.
Estonia since 1944. Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigations of Crimes against Humanity. Tallinn 2009.
Davies 2003a.
Djilas 1962, pp. 76–80.
Legters 1992, p. 3.
Churchill 1953, pp. 549–550.
Lundestad 1998, pp. 435–450.