Though the “Great Patriotic War of the Fatherland” had fostered Russian nationalism and a relaxation of totalitarian terror, Stalin’s new rivalry with the United States provided him with an excuse to re-establish a harsh dictatorship. He purged thousands of returning soldiers and ordinary civilians in 1945 and 1946, and he revived the terrible forced-labor camps of the 1930s. Culture and art were purged of Western influences, Orthodox Christianity again came under attack, and Soviet Jews were accused of being pro-Western and anti-socialist.

Stalin reasserted control of the government and society through the reintroduction of five-year plans to cope with the enormous task of economic reconstruction. Once again, Soviet central planners favored heavy and military industry over consumer goods, housing, and collectivized agriculture. Stalin exported this system to eastern Europe. Rigid ideological indoctrination, attacks on religion, and a lack of civil liberties were soon facts of life in the region’s one-party states. Only Yugoslavia’s Josip Tito (1892–1980), the popular resistance leader and Communist Party chief, could resist Soviet domination successfully because there was no Russian army in Yugoslavia.

In 1953 the aging Stalin died. Even as his heirs struggled for power, they realized that reforms were necessary because of the widespread fear and hatred of Stalin’s political terrorism. They curbed secret police powers and gradually closed many forced-labor camps. Change was also necessary for economic reasons. Agriculture was in bad shape, and shortages of consumer goods discouraged hard work. Moreover, Stalin’s foreign policy had led directly to a strong Western alliance, isolating the Soviet Union.

The Communist Party leadership was badly split on just how much change to permit. Reformers, led by Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971), argued for major innovations and won. Khrushchev spoke out in a “secret speech” against Stalin and his crimes at a closed session of the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956:

It is clear that . . . Stalin showed in a whole series of cases his intolerance, his brutality, and his abuse of power. Instead of proving his political correctness and mobilizing the masses, he often chose the path of repression and physical annihilation, not only against actual enemies, but also against individuals who had not committed any crimes against the party and the Soviet Government.12

The liberalization of the Soviet Union — labeled de-Stalinization in the West — was genuine. Khrushchev eased foreign policy, declaring that “peaceful coexistence” with capitalism was possible. The government relaxed controls over heavy industry and the military and shifted some resources from these areas to consumer goods, improving standards of living substantially throughout the booming 1960s. De-Stalinization created ferment among writers and intellectuals who hungered for cultural freedom. The writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) created a sensation when his One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published in the Soviet Union in 1962. Solzhenitsyn’s novel portrayed life in a Stalinist concentration camp in grim detail and was a damning indictment of the Stalinist past.

De-Stalinization stimulated rebelliousness in the eastern European satellites. Poland won greater autonomy in 1956 after extensive protests forced the Soviets to allow a new Communist government. Led by students and workers, the people of Budapest, Hungary, installed a liberal Communist reformer as their new chief in October 1956. The rebellion was short-lived. After the new government promised free elections and renounced Hungary’s military alliance with Moscow, the Soviet army invaded and crushed the revolution, killing around 2,700 protesters. When the United States did not come to their aid, Hungarians and most eastern European reformers concluded that their only hope was to strive for small domestic gains while obediently following Russia in foreign affairs.

In August 1961 the East German government began construction of a twenty-seven-mile wall between East and West Berlin. It also built a ninety-mile-long barrier between the three allied sectors of West Berlin and East Germany, thereby completely cutting off West Berlin. Officially the wall was called the “Anti-Fascist Protection Wall.” In reality the Berlin Wall prevented East Germans from “voting with their feet” by defecting to the West.

By late 1962 party opposition to Khrushchev’s policies had gained momentum. De-Stalinization was seen as a dangerous threat to party authority. Moreover, Khrushchev’s policy toward the West was erratic and ultimately unsuccessful. In 1962 Khrushchev ordered missiles with nuclear warheads installed in Fidel Castro’s Communist Cuba, triggering the military standoff known as the Cuban missile crisis. After a tense diplomatic crisis Khrushchev backed down and removed the missiles. Two years later, Communist Party leaders removed Khrushchev in a bloodless coup. After Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) and his supporters took over in 1964, they talked quietly of Stalin’s “good points,” stopped further liberalization, and launched a massive arms build up, determined never to suffer Khrushchev’s humiliation in the face of American nuclear superiority.