USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Soviet leader Joseph Stalin wanted a buffer zone of friendly Communist countries to protect the USSR from further attack in the future. However, British Prime Minister Clement Attlee and US President Harry Trueman made it clear at Yalta and Potsdam that this was unacceptable to the Western governments.

Detailed explanation-2: -Stalin wanted Eastern Europe under his thumb both as a defense buffer to protect the Soviet motherland and to expand socialism, the communist economic system. He believed that “scientific laws” of history determined that the world would eventually become socialist.

Detailed explanation-3: -Poland and other states between Germany and the Soviet Union have sometimes been described as buffer states, both as non-communist states before World War II and later as socialist states of the Eastern Bloc.

Detailed explanation-4: -Territorially enlarged, the USSR came out of the war with an aura of prestige from having fought Hitler’s Germany. Although in 1945 the Communist world was limited to the Soviet Union, it rapidly spread to Central and Eastern Europe, forming a protective buffer zone for the USSR.

Detailed explanation-5: -The Soviets annexed their first territories in eastern Poland on September 17, 1939, under the terms of the Non-Aggression Pact made with Nazi Germany. Soon after, the Red Army went to war with Finland in order to secure a buffer zone of protection for Leningrad (St. Petersburg).