Section 18: Post-War Central and Eastern Europe (1945–2000)

The question describes a strategy of eliminating opponents one group at a time rather than all at once, attributed specifically to Hungarian communist leader Mátyás Rákosi in the post-1945 period.

This strategy is historically known as salami tactics — a term Rákosi himself coined, comparing the elimination of rivals to slicing salami piece by piece. Non-communist parties were split, discredited, and then banned or absorbed in sequence.

The domino principle refers to the fear that one state turning communist would cause neighbours to follow. Bloc consolidation and the iron curtain method are not recognized historical terms for this specific technique of phased opposition removal.

Salami tactics is the precise, historically documented term for this process, firmly associated with Hungary's communist takeover and testable as a named mechanism in IB Paper 3 essays.

The question asks for the name of a specific political strategy involving the staged, sequential removal of opposition groups, attributed to Rákosi in Hungary.

The domino principle describes the fear of communist expansion spreading from one country to another — it is a Cold War strategic concept, not a technique for dismantling domestic opposition parties.

Bloc consolidation is a general descriptive phrase for Soviet strengthening of its sphere of influence — it is not the specific tactical label for eliminating rival parties one by one.

The iron curtain method is not a recognized historical term at all; the Iron Curtain was Churchill's metaphor for the East-West division, not a tactic for internal political elimination.

Salami tactics is the only option that names the documented strategy: isolating and removing opponents slice by slice, coined by Rákosi and applied systematically in Hungary's communist takeover of 1945–1949.