On the surface, it seems to me that we just traded one despotic regime for another.

This really is not a supportable assertion to make about the material conditions after 1945 compared to the period of German alliance/occupation (ca. 1938-44/45). Although it is hard to deny that the Communist regimes propped up by the Soviet Union were dictatorships, daily life was far more livable under Communist rule than it had been under the aegis of the Third Reich. Stalinism even at its most brutal did not engage in deliberate and systematic genocide on the scale of Hitler. The Soviets and their satellite states did engage in various forms of ethnic cleansing, with the sanction of the Western powers, but nowhere near to the extent or equivalent grandiose visions to render the continent free of these groups. Soviet plans for Europe had no equivalent of the Hungerplan to systematically starve alien population nor was there Generalplan Ost which entailed a mass extermination of racial undesirables. Soviet-style expropriations and collectivizations of agricultural property, for example, was usually partitioned back to natives operating under state supervision, not given to the conqueror as was the case in Polish lands.

And many Eastern Europeans recognized this fundamental difference between the two regimes. As important as periodic revolts like East Berlin in 1953 or Hungary in 1956 or even the civil unrest in Poland in the 1970s are to the collective memory of Soviet rule, most Eastern Europeans between 1945-1989 were not taking to the streets to protest the regime. The overwhelming picture of most of the social history from this period is one of continued frustration with state inefficiency in the planned economy, cronyism among state elites, and persistent shortages of goods. This was a far cry from the various diaries and other primary sources from the period 1939-45 where there was often an existential dread of German occupation. The Third Reich's response to occupation was tended to an increased draconianism in the West and in was genocidal in the East. Mass incarcerations, collective punishment, and arbitrary shootings were the norm rather than the exception under German occupation. Even in quiet sectors, the threat of latent violence was always present. Added to this, the German economic empire was patently exploitative, designed to wring the most economic concessions out of its non-German components. This was part of the reason why the Germans were never able to form anything close to a broad alliance with any potential allies in countries they conquered; German occupation privileged Germany first and brooked no rivals. At least within the COMECON zone there were pretenses made towards creating something of a common economic market based on mutual interests. And, it bears stressing that for all its faults, no one starved under COMECON and the system was not predicated on systematic terror. The economic life in Eastern Europe was definitely a burden for many, it had a shabby egalitarianism to it. While it was often impossible to gain the type of luxuries available to Western consumers, it was also near impossible to live in penury in the Eastern bloc. And, ironically, indices of the quality of life of the average Eastern European in the 1960s and 70s showed they arguably lived better than their equivalent Soviet counterpart. Only in Romania under the very personalist dictatorship of Ceausescu did quality of life really take a hit, and it was no surprise that of the revolutions of 1989, only Romania's turned violent. The right to employment were written into the new constitutions and the states promised subsidies for health care, housing, child care, and transportation.

It was this utopian vision, coupled with the dystopian experience of life under fascism, that prompted a good many Eastern Europeans to actually welcome the new political turn that came with the Red Army. Support for Communism was not a majority of the population, but it was not insignificant either. In the Soviet zone of Germany, membership in the KPD by 1946/47 had roughly doubled from its Weimar heyday, and in a much smaller population than the unified prewar German. Some of this growth was of course for material reasons, but there were some believers in this mix as well. Victor Klemperer, the German Jew diarist whose insight into the Third Reich was quite astute, chose to remain in the Soviet zone and join the SED in no small measure because he was alienated from the materialism and often hypocritical Christian moralizing of the Western zone. This faith in the Communist system would be a persistent undertone in Eastern Europe throughout the Cold War. The name many protesters shouted in 1989 was not Reagan, but Gorbachev, whose reformism seemed to offer the promise of a revival of the flagging promises of the state.

So the question of who was free and who was not tends to generate more heat than light when examining daily life in Eastern Europe. The wartime generation clearly understood the differences between Nazi and Soviet rule; the Soviets might have been disliked, but many Eastern Europeans could live with Soviet rule. Or, as one joke common in the Eastern bloc put it, "Q: Are the Soviets our friends or brothers? A: Brothers, because you can choose your friends." Communism offered an alternative political system to the nightmare politics of the 30s and 40s, and this proved quite attractive to a few Eastern Europeans.