Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Soviet Union signed a secret protocol with Nazi Germany in 1939 that divided Romania, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Finland into German and Soviet spheres of influence. Two weeks after the German invasion of western Poland in September 1939, Soviet forces invaded eastern Poland to enforce this agreement.
Staged elections where single candidates were listed resulted in fabricated approval rates of 92.8 percent in Estonia, 97.6 percent in Latvia, and 99.2 percent in Lithuania. Between mid-June 1940 and August 1940, the Soviet Union formally annexed Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia through fraudulent people's assemblies.
Intershop existed in East Germany, Beryozka in the Soviet Union, Pewex in Poland, Tuzex in Czechoslovakia, Corecom in Bulgaria, and Comturist in Romania. Many premium goods could be purchased only through black markets or these special stores using foreign currency generally inaccessible to most citizens.
Albania withdrew from the Warsaw Pact in 1968 following the invasion of Czechoslovakia under Enver Hoxha's Albanian-Soviet split. The Warsaw Pact formed in 1955 partly in response to NATO's inclusion of West Germany.
In 1986, average dwelling size in the Soviet Union was only 68 percent the size of its equivalent in Hungary. Even by the late 1980s, sanitary conditions in most countries remained far from adequate with 60 percent of dwellings having a density greater than one person per room between 1966 and 1975.