WWHILE WESTERN EUROPE SURGED AHEAD ECONOMICALLY and increased its independent political power and while American influence gradually waned, East Bloc countries followed a different path. The Soviet Union first tightened its grip on peoples it had “liberated” during the Second World War and then refused to let go. Though limited reforms after Stalin’s death in 1953 led to some economic improvement and limited gains in freedoms, postwar recovery in Communist central and eastern Europe proceeded along Soviet lines, and political and social developments there were strongly influenced by developments in the U.S.S.R.