After World War II, socialist realism on the Soviet model was imposed on the USSR's new satellites, including Romania. This was accompanied by a series of organisational and repressive moves, for instance the incarceration of numerous poets (some of whom had had links to the Iron Guard). Cultural Stalinism, between 1948 and 1956, broke down Romania's pre-existing system of values and corresponding cultural institutions in an attempt to create a "new man". As in the political and economic spheres, cultural Stalinism was forcibly imposed, intellectuals' links with the West were completely severed, and the Romanian Academy and long-standing professional organisations such as the Society of Romanian Writers or the Society of Romanian Composers were dissolved and replaced with new ones, from wh