The Communists Take Power

Abstract

Primed by the experience of two world wars in less than three decades and the economic depression of the 1930s, the post-Second World War consciousness of Europe was ready for change. The left was particularly well placed to take advantage. The Soviet Union had endured huge sacrifices in defeating the Nazis and this, combined with the leading role played by communists in the resistance movements, appeared to give radical groups the moral right to a certain respect. The fact that the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression treaty¹ in August 1939 had led directly to Hitler’s invasion of Poland — the event which triggered the war itself — had been lost amid the mass of upheavals which followed. In any case, the mainstream European left had done such a comprehensive job of white-washing Stalin’s monstrous crimes that the masses were largely ignorant of what communism in practice meant.