"Occupation by Policy" - How Victors Inadvertantly Provoke Resistance Insurgency

[carl]

Not to overlook all the countries of Eastern Europe it did occupy, each evolved a communist regime that the USSR could normally accept.

They didn't develop regimes acceptable to the USSR on their own. They were guided every step of the way by the gentle hand of the Red Army and the NKVD and often the people who eventually ran those govs were selected and trained by the Russians. It is important to remember that the Red Army was always there to do what needed to be done if the USSR was displeased. They did what needed to be done on several occasions.

Anne Applebaum wrote an extremely good book about how the USSR occupied and thoroughly pacified the countries of Eastern Europe.

http://www.amazon.com/Iron-Curtain-C.../dp/140009593X

It is very much worthy of study from a small war standpoint. What the Russians accomplished was quite remarkable as those countries weren't exactly pre-war hotbeds of communism and the Russians weren't well liked. Remember one of those countries was Poland. But they did it and were able to keep that boot on the faces of those countries until their relative economic power declined. Then they left, they weren't ejected. What the occupied peoples thought about it never really mattered.

'Excessively inappropriate illegitimate in nature and execution policies' followed by the USSR and its communist partners I would contend diminished over the decades.

It did, but that was only because thoroughly entrenched, powerful police states don't need to use the rough stuff so often. The hard part is forcing the guy into the cell. Once he's in there there isn't much need to get physical.