Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 41 No. 21. August 28 1978

The battle for Eastern Europe

The battle for Eastern Europe

The key factor leading to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia was the fear of the Soviet ruling class that the policies of the Dubcek grouping would lead to Czechoslovakia being drawn out of its sphere of influence and into closer harmony with US imperialism and West Germany. All the fine words about "defence of socialism" by the Soviets were mere cover for the actions of a great power asserting its hegemony over an important dependency trying to break out of its bondage.

The actions of the Soviet Union in insisting the invasion of Czechoslovakia and continuing to maintain troops of occupation ten years later form part of a pattern of ruthless subjugation of Eastern Europe. It began in the aftermath of World War Two in response to the threat of US-led imperialism.

This pattern has been well described in the booklet The Superpowers, the Threat of War and the British Working Claw ( 1).

'Ever since 1945, there has been a fundemental assymetry between the role of the USA in the West of Europe and that of the Soviet Union in the East. The USA emerged from the Second World War overwhelmingly predominant in the world economy, possessing slightly over half of the world's liberated industrial capacity in its own home territory.

"In the part of Europe it liberated, as also in Britain, it found a social system fundementally like its own (private monopoly capitalism/bourgeois democracy), which was gravely weakened by war, but could be put back on its feet by injection of US dollars rather than bayonets. (Even in Italy and France, the CPs did not give the Anglo-American liberators too much trouble).

"The economic dependence of West European capitalims on the United States allowed massive export of US capital, leading to a consequent flow of surplus-value westwards across the Atlantic, but the United States never had to contemplate using military force against the peoples of Western Europe to maintain the status quo. Its position vis-a-vis the European bourgoisies was that of 'first among equals', and the NATO alliance, in particular, never gave the US any direct peacetime command over European forces. The greater wealth of the West European economies, once they were rebuilt with US support (the Marshall plan), also exerted a constant subverting effect on the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.