Eastern Bloc | Wikipedia audio article
Channel: wikipedia tts
Date: 2018-12-15

This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
Eastern Bloc


00:06:40 1 Terminology
00:07:58 2 The Soviet Union and World War II in Central and Eastern Europe
00:08:41 2.1 Expansion of the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1940
00:11:26 2.2 Eastern Front and Allied conferences
00:14:57 3 Concealed transformation dynamics
00:16:49 4 Early events prompting stricter control
00:17:00 4.1 Marshall Plan rejection
00:19:04 4.2 Berlin blockade and airlift
00:20:16 4.3 Tito–Stalin split
00:22:30 5 Politics
00:24:48 5.1 Political and civil restrictions
00:27:25 5.2 Media and information restrictions
00:29:45 6 Religion
00:30:07 7 Organizations
00:32:36 8 Emigration restrictions and defectors
00:35:53 9 Population
00:37:54 10 Housing
00:38:42 10.1 Housing quality
00:41:58 11 Economies
00:43:06 11.1 Social conditions
00:45:50 11.2 Initial changes
00:45:58 11.2.1 Transformations billed as reforms
00:48:29 11.2.2 Asset relocation
00:49:48 11.2.3 Trade and Comecon
00:51:43 11.3 Five Year Plans
00:54:16 11.4 Heavy industry emphasis
00:59:10 11.5 Black markets
01:00:16 11.6 Urbanization
01:01:27 11.7 Agricultural collectivization
01:05:34 11.8 Economic growth
01:14:16 11.8.1 Growth rates
01:20:46 11.9 Development policies
01:25:42 11.10 Shortages
01:28:03 12 Revolts
01:28:12 12.1 1953 East Germany uprising
01:30:17 12.2 Hungarian Revolution of 1956
01:33:31 12.3 Prague Spring and the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia
01:36:04 13 Dissolution
01:39:07 13.1 Aftermath
01:39:59 13.2 List of surviving Eastern Bloc states
01:40:27 14 See also



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SUMMARY
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The Eastern Bloc (also the Socialist Bloc, the Communist Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc) was the group of Communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, and Southeast Asia under the hegemony of the USSR during the Cold War (1945–91), in opposition to the non-communist Western Bloc. Generally, in Western Europe, the term Eastern bloc comprised the USSR and its East European satellite-states, in the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon); in Asia, the Socialist bloc comprised the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, and the People's Republic of Kampuchea; the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the People's Republic of China (before the Sino-Soviet split in 1961); and in the Americas, the Communist bloc included the Caribbean Republic of Cuba, since 1961.Joseph Stalin's control of the Eastern Bloc was tested by the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état and the Tito–Stalin Split for control of Socialist Yugoslavia, the Chinese Communist Revolution (1949), and the PRC's participation in the Korean War. In 1953, after Stalin's death, the Korean War ceased with the 1954 Geneva Conference, and, in Europe, anti-Soviet sentiment provoked the Uprising of 1953 in East Germany. The break-up of the Eastern Bloc began in 1956, with Nikita Khrushchev's anti-Stalinist speech On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences denouncing Stalin, which facilitated the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which the Soviet Union suppressed, and the Sino–Soviet Split with the PRC, which gave North Korea and North Vietnam more independence from both, and facilitated the Soviet–Albanian split. The Cuban Missile Crisis preserved the Cuban Revolution from rollback by the U.S., but Fidel Castro became increasingly independent of Soviet rule afterwards, most notably in its 1975 intervention in Angola. That year, the fall of former French Indochina to communism following the end of the Vietnam War gave the Eastern Bloc renewed confidence which had been frayed by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev's 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia to suppress the Prague Spring, which had led to Albania withdrawing from the Pact, briefly aligning with Mao Zedong's China until the Sino-Albanian split.
Under the Brezhnev Doctrine, the Soviet Union reserved the right to intervene in other Communist countries. In response, China moved towards the United States following a 1969 border war which almost went nuclear, and late ...