p2--Pre communist conflicts just covered up by Communism--continue to exist--Central Eastern Europe was more modern than Eastern Europe

p3--"universal boredom and the enclosing of the political and socaial universe within an asphyxiating beureaucratic dictatoship made people unhappy and frustrated"

p3--Most important issue after the split from Communism: nationalism vs. democracy

p5--Underlying desier to go back to the "good old days" of the Austira-Hungary Empire when Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, Warsaaw, etc, were truly European Capital of Thought and Intellect

A Fragmented World, 1918-45

p6--Before WWI Austria-Hungary kept religious/ethnic tensions in check, afterwards the idealistic Wilson plan set up states which encouraged opression of the minorities

p7--Czech was the only country to appear to do well after WWI--but it was split by the national sentiments of the Slovaks; Romania was okay for a little while; Poland was run by autocrats; Albania essentially went to Italy

p8--Bolshevism was seen (1920) as a threat to nationalism and hence to the indidvidual states themselves in its claim to represent all workers regardless of nationality

p8--Execpt in Czech, everywhere sufered from severe unemployment--particularly dangerous were the intellectual uneployed--Iron Gaurd in Romania and others--p9--very xenophobic, antisemetic, and pro-Hitler (1930s)

p10--Central European intellectuals were scared by the "looming proximity" of Russia and Germany--communism proved false, they were desperate

p11--High social tensions and new weak democratic institutions gave mass totalitarian parties a real advantage

p12--After the Third Internaltional (Comitern, march 1919) all communist parties had to be subsurvient to Moscow--made them more radical in the West, but the proximity and realism of a Soviet invasion in the East got them outlawed in every state but Czech--first generation leaders purged by stalin in favor of a more subservient second generatoin

p14--Romania, right wing activists assasinate the PM which leads to retaliation and dictatorship--March 1938 Germany takes over Czech (Sudentenland)--August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact--Poland split between Russia and Germany

p15--"Decades of pain and humiliation: that is what distinguishes Central European countries from their Western counterparts"

p16--Communist parties did not fight against Hitler’s expansin because or the Nazi-Soviet pact--1934 dissolution of Comitern to pacify Allied objections to Bolshevism justified as the other communists not needing guideance any more--but when they retook the East they imposed their control again

p17--Tito managed to avoid Soviet control by turning his movement into a nationalistic one--he wanted to be the Stalin of the Balkans

Messianic Delusions

p18--the Comitern (7th) encouraged people to belive that Communism would spread throught the "Popular Front" but they realized that once they had military control of a country they would just take it over--but to appease the Allies, their pro-revolutionary venom was reduced durring the war

p19--Stalin’s apparent "change of mind" about world revolution led to the Allies granting him influenc in Eastern Europe at Yalta (1945)--used the idea that anti-communism=fascism in the eastern states to illiminate any democratic parties

p20--the communists"sincerely abhorred parliamntarianism and regarded democratic structures as profoundly and incurably inept" they had no problem going for a single party state

p20--the communists were unified behind stalinsim--no splinter groups to compete with.

p21--"East European communist parties undertook a systemattic destructive opertion whose chief consequence was the suppression of the civil society. THat was, indeed the main purpose of totalitarin practicei ni this centruty: to annihilate the sources of human creativity, to separate individuals from one antoher while making them mutually innimical, and to replace collective bondds of solidarity and support with the supremacy of the party-state, acclaimed as omnipotent and omiscent."

p21--the communists duped the intellectuals by pretneding to give them a place to work and the workers by using them in strikes--only for their owne interests

The Cominform adn the Two Camps heory

p22--1946 became apparent that the US and Britain were actively anti-communists--two factions developed under Stalin: Georgy Malenkov and Lavrenty Beria vs. Andrei Zhdanov

p22--Zhdanov saw the Allied movements as anti-communists and said that a new moment in the class struggle had been reached--established the Cominform as to collaborate against he West--not as strong as the Comintern and lacked several key members (china, greece, east germany)

p24--Zhdanov said the Soviet Union had gone to war to make Europe better and freer while the ALlies had gone to war to ensure their economic dominance--he established violently Soviet states in Eastern Europe--Romania threatened to give into Communism--simmilar elsewhere

p25--Catholic church helped resist communism in Poland--not sucessfull, though

p26--Marshall plan aid meant that the communist states had to be firmly under control--dangerous juncture

p27--Tito’s excommmunication form the Cominform in June 1948 for reufsing Moscow’s "condescending tutelage" mad him Stalin’s "worst enemy"--led to Purges in all the Eastern European states

*** STALIN HAD TO GET POWER CENTRALIZED AFTER HE INSTITUTED COMMUNIST STATES IN EASTERN EUROPE--through the ongoing purges

p28--the communist parties worshiped and followed stalin without hesitation--they had to or they would be purged--they had to or stalin could not rule--"slavishly obedient form of political activism was the general norm"

p29--"Ideology was simulatneously vague and rigid, a mixture of perscriptions and interdictions, hich the individual had to follow blindly." only Stalin could change things

p30--"Moscow’s absolute preeminence had to be reognized as sacrosanct and Stalin’s views as infallible/" the maind job of the Cominform was to supress domesticism of communism such as in yugoslavia

p30--Forced establishment of heavy industry without regard to the appropriateness of it in the economy--p31--Eastern European states became the colonies of Russia--unfair trading practices imposed on them

p31--Collective farms, easly controlled, dependent on state tractors and repairs

p31--Universal sense of fear--

p32--propoganda and control permiated all aspects of society: artistic, intellectual, political

p33-- "‘As soon as you are a Marxists,’ the party says to the patient. ‘you must be a Stalinist, fo there is no Marxism ouside of Stalinsm’"

Overview

p34--how did they suceed?--direct Soviet intervention and intimidation--persuiant to Stlin--systematic distrcution of the nonocommunist instituions and disintegration of civil society--p35--"Terror was sanctified and glorified as the antidote needed to conserve the socialist gains."--lack of legitimacy was a problem--got it thorugh "institutional solidification, staility, and a guarantee of vonservation of certian valus, or at least a minimal degree of ntational consensus."

p36--initially the communist were outsiders with their only legitimacy comming from a foreign government--seen as a "they" by the local poulations