Warsaw Pact Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
, Polish Premier Wojciech Jaruzelski, Warsaw Pact Commander in Chief Viktor Kulikov, and Czechoslovakian Defence Minister Martin Dzúr discussing Warsaw Pact manoeuvres in Poland, March 1981.]]The Warsaw Pact or Warsaw Treaty was a military alliance of the Eastern European Soviet Bloc countries, who intended to organize against the perceived threat from the NATO alliance (which had been established in 1949). The creation of the Warsaw Pact was prompted by the integration of a "re-militarized" West Germany into NATO through the Western nations' ratification of the Paris Agreements. The Warsaw treaty was drafted by Nikita Khrushchev in 1955 and signed in Warsaw on May 14, 1955.
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2 History 3 Post-Warsaw Pact 4 References |
Members
All the communist states of Eastern Europe were signatories except Yugoslavia. The members of the Warsaw Pact pledged to defend each other if one or more of the members were attacked.
The pact came to an end on March 31, 1991 and was officially dissolved at a meeting in Prague on July 1.
Albania stopped supporting the alliance in 1961 as a result of the Sino-Soviet split in which the hard-line Stalinist regime in Albania sided with the People's Republic of China, and officially withdrew from it in 1968.
The Warsaw Pact was dominated by the Soviet Union. Efforts to leave the Warsaw Pact by member countries were not tolerated - an example of this was the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. During the Hungarian Revolution, the Prime Minister Imre Nagy stated that Hungary was being withdrawn from the Warsaw Pact, but in October 1956 the Red Army entered Hungary and crushed the resistance in two weeks.
Warsaw Pact forces were utilised at times, such as during the 1968 Prague Spring, when they invaded Czechoslovakia to put down the democratic reforms that were being implemented by Alexander Dubček;'s government. This action was explained by the Brezhnev Doctrine, which stated "When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries." (the Soviet Union reserved the right to define "socialism" and "capitalism" as it saw fit). After the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Albania formally withdrew from the pact, although Albania had stopped supporting the pact as early as 1962.
NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries never engaged each other in armed conflict, but fought the Cold War for more than 35 years. In December, 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union at the time, announced the so-called Sinatra Doctrine which stated that the Brezhnev Doctrine would be abandoned and that the Eastern European countries could do what they wished. When it was clear that the Soviet Union would no longer use force to control the Warsaw Pact countries, a series of rapid changes started in Eastern Europe in 1989. The new governments in Eastern Europe were much less supportive to the Warsaw Pact, and in January 1991 Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland announced that they would withdraw all support by July 1st that year. Bulgaria followed suit in February, and it was clear that the pact was effectively dead. The Soviet Union acknowledged this, and the pact was officially dissolved at a meeting in Prague on July 1, 1991.
This is an Article on Warsaw Pact. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Warsaw Pact History
Post-Warsaw Pact
On 12 March, 1999, former Warsaw Pact members the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia followed suit in March 2004 along with Slovenia.References