Soviet Bloc

Cultural  

1. The communist nations closely allied with the Soviet Union, including Bulgaria, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, whose foreign policies depended on those of the former Soviet Union. It did not include communist nations with independent foreign policies, such as China, Yugoslavia, and Albania. The Soviet Union used its military force several times in the Soviet Bloc to ensure that the countries' governments followed Soviet preferences: in East Germany in 1953, in Hungary and Poland in 1956, and in Czechoslovakia in 1968, for example. (See Warsaw Pact.)

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Example Sentences

The case against him seemed damning when a wiretap captured a KGB officer instructing Ogorodnikova to lure Miller to Warsaw, which was part of the Soviet Bloc.

From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 23, 2025

It has been stationed near the Czech border, close to the former frontier with the Soviet Bloc, since 1960.

From New York Times • Jan. 24, 2023

Francis likened relations with Beijing to the "small steps" policy carried out by Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, a renowned Vatican diplomat, with Soviet Bloc countries in Eastern Europe, staring in the 1960s.

From Reuters • Sep. 1, 2021

And, finally, by 1955 the Soviets had formalized their own military system with the Warsaw Pact, which bound together the Soviet Bloc in a web of military alliances comparable to NATO.

From Textbooks • Jan. 1, 2020

Now that Soviet-style communism has fallen, the flow of both goods and ideas is slowly and painfully taking place, in ways similar to that in the West, in the former Soviet Bloc.

From The Civilization of Illiteracy by Nadin, Mihai