To what extent was the communist takeover of eastern Europe justified?

Answer 1

I've got one big reason, which is that.. In the past the Soviet Union had been invaded twice by Germany; ww1 and ww2. Stalin was a seriously paranoid leader (historians argue that it was mainly because of this that he killed millions of his own people), but in this case he may have been justified in taking over Poland. Stalin wanted and needed buffer states to protect him from invasion from the west, the most important of these buffer states being Poland; simply because Poland acted as a giant land barrier between the Soviet Union and Germany. At the peace conferences in Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam, Stalin argued that he needed 'friendly governments' instated in Eastern Europe so that Germany, or any other Western non-communist country for that matter, could invade the Soviet Union; In a nutshell Stalin created the Iron Curtain and instated Communist governments in Romania, Bulgaria, Poland etc mainly so that Germany nor any one else could ever invade him from the West.