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In the famine after the war, people ate grass to keep themselves from starving. The war was followed by drought, famine, typhus epidemics and purges. Outer Mongolia became the first Communist regime outside of the Soviet Union in 1945 when it taken over by a Soviet puppet government. The Soviet Union also began exerting its influence in Asia. The Allies allowed the Soviet Union to annex Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia in a process that took place mostly at the outset of the war. Only since reunification has Germany renounced their claim on the land that was formerly theirs. It was if the entire country of Poland was slid across the earth to the west. The Communist Party was also strong in Italy and France.Īfter World War II, Russia took a large portion of Poland and Poland in return was given a large portion of Germany. Even Finland was partly controlled by the Soviets. The Baltic countries-Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania-were made into republics. Only Greece and occupied Austria remained free. It took over the governments in Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia. Soviet Union Takes Over Eastern Europe After World War IIĪfter World War II, the Soviet Union extended its control into Eastern Europe. One Russian soldier collected 1.2 million fragments from destroyed frescoes at a church in Novgorod and tried to reassemble them.įrom time to time children are killed or maimed by World War II artillery shells. Russians also worked hard to restore damaged treasures at home. In April 2000, Russia announced it would return the first of some of the trophy art it took: a cache of old master drawings hidden for 50 year under the bed of a Red Army officer. The Soviet Union took an estimated $65 billion worth of booty in World War II. Įvents that marked the end of World War II have traditionally been observed with much more seriousness and solemnity in Russia than the holidays like Memorial day and Veterans Day in the United States. The suffering and losses resulting from the war made a lasting impression on the Soviet people and leaders that influenced their behavior in the postwar era. The war also inflicted severe material losses throughout the vast territory that had been included in the war zone. An estimated 20 million Soviet soldiers and civilians perished in the war, the heaviest loss of life of any of the combatant countries.

But these achievements came at a high cost. The Soviet Union had won island holdings from Japan and further concessions from Finland (which had joined Germany in invading the Soviet Union in 1941) in addition to the territories seized as a consequence of the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. Its battle-tested forces occupied most of Eastern Europe. The end of World War II saw the Soviet Union emerge as one of the world's two great military powers.