Stalin's answer: Cominform and Comecon
Remember, in 1947 the USA promised to contain Communism and offered Marshall Aid to rebuild Europe. Stalin saw both as an attack on his hold over Eastern Europe. He hit back with two organisations of his own. One was political and one was economic.
📢 Cominform, 1947
Cominform was set up in September 1947 at a meeting in Poland. It linked nine Communist parties: those of the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, plus the large Communist parties of France and Italy. Its job was to make sure they all followed the line set in Moscow.
At the first meeting the Soviet spokesman, Andrei Zhdanov, said the world was now split into two camps: an 'imperialist' camp led by the USA and a 'democratic' camp led by the Soviet Union. This was Stalin's reply to Truman's 'two ways of life'.
💰 Comecon, 1949
Stalin had stopped the satellite states from taking Marshall Aid, so he had to offer them something instead. At first the Soviet Union signed trade deals with each country, sometimes called the Molotov Plan. Then, in January 1949, it set up Comecon with Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Romania. Albania joined soon after and East Germany in 1950.
Comecon was meant to link the members' economic plans and build up trade inside the Communist bloc, so that they would not need to trade with the West.
Key terms:
- Cominform: the Communist Information Bureau, set up in 1947 so that Moscow could direct Communist parties across Europe.
- Comecon: the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, set up in 1949 to tie together the economies of the Soviet Union and its satellite states.
- Bizonia: the joint economic area made by joining the British and American zones of Germany in January 1947.
- Allied Control Council: the body through which the four occupying powers were meant to run Germany together.
- Deutschmark: the new currency brought into the western zones of Germany in June 1948.
What Cominform and Comecon changed
Cominform tightened Stalin's political grip. Communist parties were told to oppose the Marshall Plan. In France and Italy they led waves of strikes against it in late 1947. Inside Eastern Europe, leaders had to be loyal to Stalin first. When Yugoslavia's leader, Tito, insisted on running his country his own way, Cominform expelled Yugoslavia in June 1948. The message to the other satellites was clear.
Comecon tightened his economic grip. In Stalin's time it gave the satellites nothing like the help that Marshall Aid gave the West. Its main effect was to point Eastern Europe's trade towards the Soviet Union and away from Western Europe.
Together they hardened the division of Europe. There were now two rival groups, each with its own leader, its own beliefs and its own economic system. The West had the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Aid. The East had Cominform and Comecon. To the USA, the new organisations proved that Stalin meant to rule Eastern Europe from Moscow.
Why the two sides quarrelled over Germany
Remember, Germany and Berlin had been split into four zones of occupation, and the powers had agreed to treat Germany as one economic unit, run through the Allied Control Council. That soon broke down, because the two sides wanted opposite things.
🔒 What the Soviet Union wanted
Stalin wanted Germany kept weak, so that it could never invade again, and he wanted it to pay. The Soviets stripped their zone of factories, machinery and even railway track and sent them east as reparations. They also expected goods from the western zones.
🏭 What the West wanted
Britain and the USA came to believe that Germany had to recover. A hungry, ruined Germany cost them a fortune to feed. Britain, close to bankrupt, even rationed bread at home in 1946 while sending grain to its zone. They also feared that poverty would turn Germans towards Communism, and that Europe could not recover without German coal and steel.
The quarrel grew step by step:
- May 1946: General Lucius Clay, the deputy military governor of the American zone, stopped reparations deliveries from the US zone to the Soviet Union.
- September 1946: in a speech at Stuttgart, the US Secretary of State, James Byrnes, said American troops would stay in Germany and that Germans should begin to run their own affairs again.
- January 1947: Britain and the USA joined their zones into one economic area, called Bizonia. They said it would cut costs and help industry recover. The Soviets saw it as breaking the Potsdam agreement and as the start of a separate western Germany.
- 1947: meetings of the foreign ministers in Moscow and London ended without agreement on Germany's future.
- Early 1948: the western powers met in London, without the Soviet Union, and planned a West German state that would receive Marshall Aid. In protest, the Soviet representative walked out of the Allied Control Council in March 1948. France agreed that its zone would later be linked with Bizonia. The three western zones together became known as Trizonia.
The new currency, June 1948
The old German money, the Reichsmark, had lost almost all its value. Shops were empty, and people swapped goods or used cigarettes as money on the black market. No recovery was possible without money people could trust.
On 20 June 1948 the western powers brought in a new currency, the Deutschmark, in their three zones. They did it without Soviet agreement. Each person received 40 Deutschmarks to start with. Almost overnight goods came back into the shops and the black market shrank.
Why did this matter so much? Germany now had two separate economies. To Stalin, it was the clearest sign yet that the West was building a strong West German state, rebuilt with American money, on the edge of the Soviet zone. The Soviets answered with a new currency of their own in the east. When the West then brought the Deutschmark into West Berlin, deep inside the Soviet zone, Stalin decided to act. You will study what he did in The Berlin Blockade and Airlift, 1948-49.
Common mistakes
Don't mix up the two organisations. Cominform was political: it controlled Communist parties. Comecon was economic: it was about trade and planning. Check the dates too: Cominform came in 1947, soon after the Marshall Plan was offered, but Comecon was not set up until 1949. Bizonia joined only the British and American zones. And the new currency was for the western zones, not the whole of Germany. That was exactly why Stalin objected.
Exam-style question
Extract A (a practice extract written for this lesson, in the style of a modern history textbook)
Cominform and Comecon were chains, not partnerships. Through Cominform, set up in 1947, Moscow dictated orders to Europe's Communist parties and punished any leader who dared to think for himself: Yugoslavia was thrown out in 1948 for refusing to obey. Comecon, founded in 1949, was no better. It offered the satellite states none of the generous aid flowing into Western Europe. Instead it shackled their trade to the Soviet Union, so that they served Stalin's needs rather than their own people.
What impression does the author give about Cominform and Comecon? You must use Extract A to explain your answer. [6 marks]
Model answer
The author gives the impression that Cominform and Comecon were tools for Soviet control and did nothing to help their members. This is shown by the author's language. Calling them 'chains, not partnerships' and saying trade was 'shackled' to the Soviet Union makes the satellite states sound like prisoners. Moscow 'dictated orders' and 'punished' leaders, which suggests bullying, not cooperation. The author has also chosen what to stress. The extract picks out the expulsion of Yugoslavia and sets Comecon against the 'generous' aid going to the West, so it looks mean by comparison. It leaves out anything positive, such as the trade Comecon offered to countries shut out of Marshall Aid, and it does not mention that both were a response to American policies. This selection makes them seem wholly selfish.
What lifts this to the top level: it names one clear impression, proves it with short quotations, and explains how the author's choice of words and of what to include and leave out create that impression.
Exam tip
Look for comparisons as well as loaded words. Here the author sets Comecon beside the 'generous' aid given to the West to make it look worse. Quote two or three words such as 'chains' and 'shackled', say what each suggests, then add one sentence on what the author has left out. Don't describe what Cominform and Comecon were: that earns nothing in this question.