eastern bloc

After the fall of the Eastern Bloc their socialist economies privatised. In Russia, Ukraine and Belarus the industries were given to the former nomenklatura who previously administered them. This severely hampered their productivity and led to economy decline. The POD is that the fall of the...

(If this is in the wrong thread, I apologize, the butterflies that I'm asking about here might be less than 20 years ago, till at least the GFC, so if this more suited for Political Chat or something, is it okay if the mods can move it please? Thanks. Sorry.) If you just want to get to my...

While looking at maps of Romania before and after WW2 I've been wondering about the incorporation of Moldova in the USSR and the territories it was assigned. While the bulk of what was acquired from Romania was made into the Moldovan SSR, Budjak and the northern parts of Bukovina and...

Leonid Brezhnev and the Soviet delegation in attendance of the bilateral talks with the Czechoslovakian representatives from the 29th of July to 1st of August comes to an agreement with the Czechs that he will not interfere with nor try to stop the reforms of Alexander Dubček and the reformist...

The Marshall Plan aid was divided among the participant states roughly on a per capita basis. A larger amount was given to the major industrial powers, as the prevailing opinion was that their resuscitation was essential for the general European revival. Somewhat more aid per capita was also...

How could communist Romania from the 1950s to the 1980s have improved its economy and gdp? Perhaps becoming one of the largest economies in Eastern europe? (After USSR)

Romania (as the Romanian People's Republic) started a nuclear research program in 1949, focusing on radioactive isotopes in medicine and industry. Some have interpreted Romania's actions to have a dual purpose, as the military program began in 1978, jointly operated with the program for the...

It seems irrational to me that the Eastern Bloc leadership maintained such large conventional forces after around 1970 or so. Was the Eastern Bloc committed to such high military spending due to inertia, fears of an invasion (however irrational or rational), fear of a military coup, or some...

can US and UK prevent Soviets from taking Eastern Europe before soviets by decreasing lend lease and liberate Eastern Europe ?

Very short question. While the majority of the USSR's client states fell peacefully, Romania was the only one to have a violent revolution against the regime. So how can we get most of the Soviet client states (with the possible exception of Hungary which actually seemed like a pretty nice...

As I'm sure many posters might know, the 1990s in America saw the burst of the comic speculator market and the near-collapse of the US comic book industry. Collectors who bought up comics because they thought their value would increase with time suddenly found out that their "investment" was...

So in the late 40s and early 50s, West Germany experienced the Wirtschaftswunder, or the Miracle on the Rhine, which saw the rapid economic recovery and subsequent growth. This, alongside a slew of Soviet quotas and military enforcement that essentially forced East Germany's hand in economic and...

This is my new Alternate history scenario set during the cold war, the point of divergence is in 1902 when George Marshall is killed during his service in the Philippines, this leads to no Marshall plan being put into effect and Communism Pushing Farther into Europe. The second point of...

I know, it seem unrealistic to assume, but what if the street protests that were enveloping the Warsaw Pact in 1989 weren't shot at?

So as we all know, after World War 1 the Ottoman Sultanate came close to being abolished by Turkish nationalists who wanted to end the Empire, end the Caliphate and replace them with a secular republic. But with the death of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the quashing of the Turkish National Movement...

I'll elaborate a bit. What events that happened in the Brezhnev era that would eventually effect the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev Era could be avoided? (i.e "What if Yeltsin was never appointed to the Politburo")

Someone has done this before, but the thread was quite old, so I decided to do a new one. So basicly, as the title says, what effects would a soviet victory have on the environment? On one hand, the eastern bloc industry did quite a lot of damage to the environment (look at lake Aral or the...

Your challenge here is, with a POD in 1989 or later, to have at least one state of the Eastern Bloc be non-democratic by 2017. And it can't stay communist either. "Non-democratic" means generally all forms of dictatorship - the state must be at least a hybrid regime and be in the lower half of...

With a POD after June 6, 1944, what other countries could have become part of the Eastern/Soviet Bloc and why? Bonus points if they join the Eastern Bloc via domestic communists winning elections or civil wars as opposed to the Soviets marching there first.

Can the Cold War end with the Eastern bloc reforming their economies and avoiding the "Era of Stagnation" and without the Soviet Union collapsing afterwards? How would the Soviet and Eastern European political parties fare after 1989 in this scenario? As far as I remember, South Korea became...