The collapse of the Soviet regime left the Czechoslovaks unable to rely, as the Poles could, upon a self-confident leadership to pick up the reins of government, though the country was still far from the total confusion prevailing at the same time in the GDR. Their leaders believed — rightly or wrongly time alone will show — that a split into two more homogeneous parts would help to solve the many problems that freedom brought with it. So Czechia and Slovakia set themselves up as two separate states. In the eighteen months which have elapsed they have not been able to do much more than hold constituent assemblies and draft terms for new elections in each. Industrial production, down to near zero in the autumn of 1985, has picked up somewhat, but the disastrous central European harvest of that same year has left the Czechs and Slovaks no less dependent on food supplies from the Americas and Australasia than the people of other former European clients of Soviet Russia.
The year 1986 was one of unprecedented flourishing for the Hungarian economy. This country, whilst still under Soviet hegemony, had managed to move away from socialism, to reduce the intervention of its bureaucrats in the economy, and to renounce state subsidies in industry and in agriculture. The Hungarian economy developed swiftly, following the laws of competition rather than state planning and regulations. As soon as the war ended, Hungary made rapid progress in improving the wellbeing of its population. The Government introduced the lowest taxes in Europe and abolished all state intervention in economic problems. This caused an economic boom and an unprecedented influx of capital. The temptation to exploit success was too great and in the summer Hungarian forces attempted a rapid movement into Romania, with the classic objective of protecting the Hungarian minority in Transylvania who had been transferred to Romanian sovereignty in 1919. Only partial success was achieved, in spite of Romania's simultaneous trouble on another front.
In the remains of the dismembered Soviet Union itself, the approaching winter of 1985 looked like being a savage one. In many parts order had completely broken down. Marauding bands dominated huge tracts of country searching for food. Ethnic groups, driven by necessity, were banding together for their own survival. Soldiers returning to their homes, often with weapons and sometimes in organized units and formations, if they did not turn to banditry were forming local defence forces. Centres of order slowly began to emerge.
For the Western allies the occupation and administration of all that huge hinterland was quite out of the question. It was essential, however, to establish secure areas both as refuges and as nuclei of civil government. These were set up initially in Petrograd (no time was lost in shedding the hated patronym of the source of so much evil), Moscow, Archangel, Odessa, Smolensk, and in the vicinity of Gorki and Kuybyshev on the Volga. Each secure area was the responsibility of one Allied division, operating with an organization strong in infantry and specialist troops (particularly in engineers, communications, logistics and transportation) but not in heavy weapons. A Control Headquarters at the level of an army group was established in Petrograd, which swiftly became the capital of the North Russian Republic, soon also incorporating Novgorod and adopting in its entirety Novgorod's ancient code of laws. The Control HQ, set up in the first instance by NATO in late September 1985, passed under the control of the United Nations, where it still rests.
The most pressing problem was the provision and distribution of food, which was immediately taken in hand under the United Nations in an operation of unprecedented magnitude. The full co-operation of all nations was most urgently sought, and in nearly all cases very generously given. Due to the short duration of the war and the relatively restricted areas of high damage, most of the economies of the world were still functioning almost normally. Surpluses which had been an embarrassment to the EEC were now of the highest value. The worst aspects of famine were avoided in the former territory of the Soviet Union, but not by a wide margin and shortages in the more important foodstuffs still continue even now to cause concern.
It is not the business of this book to explore every detail of the slow and often painful evolution of the successor states to the Soviet Union. But as pieces in a vast and complex jigsaw puzzle the fate of Moscow and the early evolution of the Ukraine, Belorussia and the Moslem Central Asians may be mentioned.
Moscow raised special problems. It was a natural rallying point for the criminal, the violent, the rejected — the undesirable in any form. A quadripartite system was established, not greatly dissimilar, except in one important respect, to that set up in Berlin in 1945 with United States, Soviet Russian, British and French participation. The difference between Berlin in 1945 and Moscow forty years later was in the origin of the security forces involved. Instead of contingents from the four powers, as in Berlin, troops of the former Red Army were used, drawn from 3 Shock Army, which, under General Ryzanov, had earlier defected to the West.
By comparison the Ukraine was almost a success story. This newly independent republic now ranked with Great Britain, France and West Germany in terms of area, size of population and economic development. The Ukrainian National Assembly lost no time in proclaiming a constitution for the new state, in which it was declared that the economic freedom of the people was the basic principle of political freedom. A man cannot be politically free if his livelihood depends on the state, the trade union or a monopoly association. At its first congress the National Assembly passed laws forbidding state intervention in the private lives of the country's citizens and in the economy. In addition, laws were passed against the emergence of monopolies and trade unions with more than 10,000 members. The first benefit of free enterprise was felt in agriculture, and the Ukraine set out on the way to resume its position as one of the world's chief suppliers of agricultural produce.
All was not sweetness and light however. The western provinces, whose population was Roman Catholic, were demanding autonomy. Groups of Crimean Tartars, deported from the Crimea at the end of the Second World War by Stalin's security forces, had begun to return to their homeland. They too declared that they did not want to remain part of the Ukraine. A new knot of contradictions was beginning. Moreover, Poland claimed its rights to the part of Ukrainian territory at the centre of which lies the town of Lvov, and a border conflict threatened to break out.
The neighbouring republic of Moldavia had been incorporated into Romania, but here again a border clash arose between the Ukraine and Romania. Both countries considered the Dniester delta and the town of Odessa as their own territory. On the night of 13 July 1986 two tank divisions and three motor rifle divisions of the newly-formed Ukrainian People's Army made a surprise attack on Moldavia and seized the town of Kishinev. The Ukrainian Government demanded that Romania renounce all claims to Odessa and to the Dniester lowlands in exchange for which the Ukraine would remove its forces from Moldavia.