In Western Europe, the term Eastern Bloc generally referred to the USSR and its satellite states in the Comecon (East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania); in Asia, the Soviet Bloc comprised the Mongolian People’s Republic, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the Lao People’s …

In the decades after it was established, the Russian-dominated Soviet Union grew into one of the world’s most powerful and influential states and eventually encompassed 15 republics–Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Belorussia, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Latvia.

For the geography and history of the former Soviet Socialist republics, see the articles Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Ukraine.

The Eastern Bloc was a term coined by NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization). It is used to refer to former communist states in Eastern and Central Europe which included of the Soviet Union, countries in the Warsaw Pact, and Albania and Yugoslavia.

Acronym. Definition. COMBLOC. Communist Bloc. Copyright 1988-2018 AcronymFinder.com, All rights reserved.

Germany was divided into two countries, one democratic and one communist, after World War II.

Yugoslavia long remained a commumist state but non aligned for not having made part of the Warsaw pact. Yugo instead signed the Balkan pact with Greece and Turkey in order to counteract any potential threat and invasion by the USSR.

In 1944 and 1945 the Red Army drove across Eastern Europe in its fight against the Nazis. After the war, Stalin was determined that the USSR would control Eastern Europe. Each Eastern European state had a Communist government loyal to the USSR. Each state’s economy was tied to the economy of the USSR.

Of the 5.7 million Soviet POWs of the Germans, 57 percent died or were killed during the war, a total of 3.6 million. Soviet ex-POWs and repatriated civilians were treated with great suspicion as potential Nazi collaborators, and some were sent to the Gulag upon being checked by the NKVD.

So what would have happened if Hitler had not invaded Russia? A more likely possibility is that Hitler could have chosen to move south instead of east. With most of Western Europe under his control after the summer of 1940, and Eastern Europe either subdued or allied with Germany, Hitler had a choice by mid-1941.