Why did the Soviet Union establish communist governments in eastern Europe after World War II?

After World War II, the Soviet Union established communist governments in eastern Europe primarily to create a "buffer zone" to protect its military interests. By installing pliant regimes in countries such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Soviet-occupied East Germany, the U.S.S.R. sought to mitigate the potential consequences of a future invasion from the West.12

Although Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had pledged at the 1945 Yalta Conference to hold free and fair democratic elections in the territories liberated by the Red Army, he failed to honor this commitment. Instead, Soviet forces supported takeovers by local communist parties and restructured these nations' governments and economies according to the Stalinist model. This expansionist policy effectively subordinated the interests of these nations to those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, ensuring that the region remained under Moscow's high oversight and control. This strategic consolidation of power ultimately led to the formation of the Eastern bloc, which remained a defining feature of 20th-century international relations until the late 1980s.12