The Second World War and the East European Revolution

Thirteen years ago, in the pages of this journal, Jan Gross contributed an article that looked broadly at the social changes that the Second World War brought to Eastern Europe, drawing out the key themes he saw as necessary for understanding the imposition of Communist party dictatorships thereafter. His thesis, connecting the experience of the war to the rise of communist dictatorships that ensued, was certainly provocative in the spring of 1989, but has unfortunately never been more fully explored, despite the article's appearance on many a syllabus (including my own), pointing to its novelty and significance. I hope in the following pages to rectify this state of affairs by presenting a framework in which we can look at the changes the war wreaked in Eastern Europe and, in our post-cold war world, shift the focus away from the Red Army and the Soviet Union and toward domestic conditions. [...]