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This extract is from Mark Mazower, Dark Continent (1998).

Mazower argues that 'Salami tactics' were a rationalisation imposed by commentators after the events, in hindsight, and that the reality was much more muddled, ad hoc and opportunistic.

 

 

Did Salami Tactics Really Happen?

Although the rhythms differed across eastern Europe, the sub­sequent pattern looked similar in retrospect: government by coalition, in which the Communist Party played an influential and dominant part; then, marginalization and outright repression of those parties and splinter groups which remained outside the coalition. Finally elections, which gave the Government Front 89 per cent in Poland , 98 per cent in Romania (up in 1948 from 91 per cent in 1946!) and 79 per cent in Bulgaria . By 1947-8, this process had succeeded in crushing the agrarian and socialist parties which were the most serious threat in a democratic setting to communist hegemony; some of their leaders had been executed or forced to flee, while others had led splinter groups into government.

Was this a Machiavellian strategy carefully planned in advance? Some contemporary observers had no doubts. [The historian] Hugh Seton-Watson discerned a pattern of three stages: genuine coalition; bogus coalition; the `monolithic' regime. Yet in a curious way, this series of stages mirrored the emerging Soviet view which also saw the region moving by stages to communism. Both perhaps were trying to see a logic and a tidiness to events which did not exist. The actual course of events suggested - at least before 1947 - a far more hesitant and uncertain Soviet Union than Seton-Watson implied. The 1945 elections in Hun­gary , for example, resulted in a humiliating defeat for the communists and a 57 per cent triumph for the Smallholders. Some coalitions (Poland, Yugoslavia in early 1945) were mere showpieces from the start, disguising communist control; others were genuine coalitions for several years ( Hungary , Czechoslovakia ); Romania and Bulgaria fell somewhere between the two.

 

 


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