If you ask me? No, it wasn’t. The people’s republics did establish the Warsaw Treaty Organization to defend against the NATO, but the upper classes established the NATO to protect exploitation and potentially crush workers’ revolutions. These two organizations weren’t the same thing.

From what I can tell, the accusations of ‘(social) imperialism’ start with a kernel of truth (the U.S.S.R. extracting some reparations from Eastern Europe, the Hungarian and Czechoslovakian uprisings having some proletarian elements in them, &c.), but they end up misinterpreting the situations, exaggerating certain features, and leaving some arguments unaddressed, resulting in misanalysis. If you want a more in‐depth overview, kindly let me know if you find this book useful.

While I disagree with the accusations of imperialism, I think that it’s still important to understand the other side’s argument, so you can read some of these links later if you want. Just try to take them with a grain of salt.