Stalin's domination was now total. After the war Stalin succeeded in establishing a communist buffer zone between Russia and .
Western Europe. Any resistance he met in establishing communist states was quickly suppressed by intimidation and terror. For example Stalin engineered a communist coup in May 1948 in Czechoslovakia in which a government minister Masaryk was killed and the president was forced to resign. (7) This served a warning to other countries against resisting the communist regime. .
Therefore it can clearly be seen that from the establishment of the state that communism never had popular public support. It cannot be denied that there was a significant minority who supported communism, but these were a minority. Can an ideal and a leadership really be built on such a shallow and flimsy basis? This essay would argue that the answer to this question is no. For a leadership to lead, it must have strong support and confidence. It must be seen to work for the good of the people and not merely a vociferous minority. This, therefore, can be argued to be one of the contributing factors in the downfall of communism. .
A second related factor, which had a hand in bringing about the end of communism in Eastern Europe was the fact that communism never really had the support of the people. There was constant societal opposition to communist rule in Eastern Europe. Although this was mainly in the form of a passive rumbling dissent, there were occasional violent and active shows of opposition to communist rule. The states of Eastern Europe in the post-war period had been forced to adhere to the Moscow line. After 1956 however, with Khrushchev's new approach to Socialism and his denunciation of Stalin, there were increasing calls for independence among the communist bloc countries who had never been truly supportive of the communist regime. .
In East Germany in 1953 there were a series of strikes and protests.
