The Soviet Unions Red Arm occupied most of Eastern Europe (forcing out the German
army) the threat of the army allowed Russia/ stalin to control the events that
happened there
Stalin wanted to make sure the countries around
Russia were communist to
He did this by locking up or killing political opponents, fixing electrons and forcing
other parties to merge with the communists, sos the communists could control them
These countries Stalin occupied and controlled (including the
government) using force were called starlight states and where referred
to buffer zones of friendly nations as they surrounded Russia meaning that other countries
would have to go through the starlight states to get to Russia
This was because Russia had suffered greatly in WW11 using
almost 30 million people
Eastern Europe states such as Poland had one-party dictatorships inspired
of Stalins system in he USSR. This meant the government controlled
everything including, media (therefore nothing bad about the governments
were published and the newspapers, TV etc included high amounts of
propaganda and were used to control peoples minds and people had little
freedom, in early march 1946 Churchill said that an Iron Curtian was
dividing Europe into two
Truman was convinced that Stalin wanted to
spread communism across Europe and that the
USA must try to stop and contain it therefore
leading to his new doctrine - the truman doctrine.