In September 1947, as the Marshall Plan gets under way, the Soviets set up the Cominform, the Communist Information Bureau. They also establish Comecon, the Warsaw Pact's version of an economic trading bloc.

But these new ties among European communists mean an end to Eastern European hopes for different types of socialist governments on the continent. That reality is driven home in February 1948 -- when a communist coup topples the government of Czechoslovakia.
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