Thread:Vorknkx/@comment-3547390-20150204202730/@comment-1496755-20150317060028

Actually, they didn't really have a choice. The communist regimes in Eastern/Southeastern Europe were installed by the Red Army, so they all had to be strictly loyal to the Soviet Union... or else. This was Stalin's idea of "spreading the revolution" throughout the world.

Deviants were punished severely, the best example of this is the Prague Spring. They tried to do reforms and the response was a military invasion.

Something similar happened in Hungary as well.

It's amazing when you think that all this was "normal" back in those times. This was the world my parents grew up in.