Stalin, who opposes the Marshall Plan, has…

Stalin, who opposes the Marshall Plan, has built up a belt of Soviet-controlled nations on his Western border, the Eastern bloc, which includes Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Stalin wants to maintain this buffer zone of states, combined with a weakened Germany under Soviet control.

He feels that American aid will "buy" a pro-US realignment of the new Europe.

He states.

"This is a ploy by Truman.

It is nothing like Lend-Lease — a different situation.

They don't want to help us.

What they want is to infiltrate European countries."

While Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov had initially been interested in the program and had attended its early meetings, he later described it as "dollar imperialism".

Fearing American political, cultural and economic penetration, Stalin eventually forbids Soviet Eastern bloc countries of the newly formed Cominform from accepting the aid.

This results in heightened unpopularity, which is already a threat to the Czechoslovakian coalition government established in the 1946 elections.

In Czechoslovakia, this demand results in the Soviet-backed Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948, the brutality of which shocks Western powers more than any event so far and briefly provokes fear of a new war.

This sweeps away the last vestiges of opposition to the Marshall Plan in the United States Congress.