The end of World War II found the East European countries physically, politically, socially, and economically exhausted and devastated. Along with the Jews and Gypsies, a large proportion of whom were systematically exterminated, millions of others had died in death camps, on battlefields, and in their own cities and towns. Even before the conclusion of the carnage it became clear that the independence that East European states had gained at the end of World War I would not be restored to them. Instead, for the next four and a half decades the region fell under the Soviet Union's control. Albania and Yugoslavia, two countries that preserved their independence, were also ruled by communists and suffered similar fates.

Unlike any other regime type, communist or socialist systems were defined by their real or professed adherence to Marxism–Leninism, a holistic ideology that supposedly held the answer to all social, economic, and political issues of consequence to the state and its subjects. With the passing of time it became increasingly clear that Marxism–Leninism could not offer suitable solutions to practical problems, but ruling elites – whose fleeting legitimacy was vested in their knowledge of and allegiance to the state ideology – had continued to pay homage to it even as the ruinous effects of their policies were becoming increasingly apparent. Classical Marxism has remarkably little to say about ethnic minorities and nationalism simply because the latter was expected to disappear and the former to matter little in communist societies where class membership was to be the key to one's identity.