International military alliance of Eastern European states (1955–1991)
Not to be confused with Warsaw Convention or Treaty of Warsaw.
Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact in 1990
Abbreviation
TFCMA, WP
Successor
Collective Security Treaty Organization
Founded
14 May 1955 (1955-05-14)
Founded at
Warsaw, Poland
Dissolved
1 July 1991 (1991-07-01)
Headquarters
Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Membership
Albania[a]
Bulgaria
Czechoslovakia
East Germany[b]
Hungary
Poland
Romania[c]
Soviet Union
Supreme commander
Ivan Konev (first)
Pyotr Lushev (last)
Chief of combined staff
Aleksei Antonov (first)
Vladimir Lobov (last)
Affiliations
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance
The Warsaw Pact (WP),[d] formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance (TFCMA),[e] was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republics of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955, during the Cold War. The term "Warsaw Pact" commonly refers to both the treaty itself and its resultant defensive alliance, the Warsaw Treaty Organization[5] (WTO).[f] The Warsaw Pact was the military and economic complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon), the regional economic organization for the Eastern Bloc states of Central and Eastern Europe.[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]
Dominated by the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact was established as a balance of power or counterweight to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Western Bloc.[17][18] There was no direct military confrontation between the two organizations; instead, the conflict was fought on an ideological basis and through proxy wars. Both NATO and the Warsaw Pact led to the expansion of military forces and their integration into the respective blocs.[18] The Warsaw Pact's largest military engagement was the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, its own member state, in August 1968 (with the participation of all pact nations except Albania and Romania),[17] which, in part, resulted in Albania withdrawing from the pact less than one month later. The pact began to unravel with the spread of the Revolutions of 1989 through the Eastern Bloc, beginning with the Solidarity movement in Poland,[19] its electoral success in June 1989 and the Pan-European Picnic in August 1989.[20]
East Germany withdrew from the pact following German reunification in 1990. On 25 February 1991, at a meeting in Hungary, the pact was declared at an end by the defense and foreign ministers of the six remaining member states. The USSR itself was dissolved in December 1991, although most of the former Soviet republics formed the Collective Security Treaty Organization shortly thereafter. In the following 20 years, the Warsaw Pact countries outside the USSR each joined NATO (East Germany through its reunification with West Germany; and the Czech Republic and Slovakia as separate countries), as did the Baltic states.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).
^Tismaneanu, Vladimir; Stan, Marius (2018). Romania Confronts Its Communist Past: Democracy, Memory, and Moral Justice. Cambridge University Press. p. 132. ISBN 978-1107025929.
^Cook, Bernard A.; Cook, Bernard Anthony (2001). Europe Since 1945: An Encyclopedia, Volume 2. Taylor & Francis. p. 1075. ISBN 978-0815340584.
^"Протокольная запись заседания Президиума ЦК КПCC (к пункту I протокола № 49)".
^"Slovenské pohl'ady". Matica slovenská. 1997 – via Google Books.
^"Milestones: 1953–1960 – Office of the Historian". history.state.gov.
^Cite error: The named reference NATO Transformed: The Alliance's New Roles in International Security was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference History Channel 1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference History Channel 2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^"In reaction to West Germany's NATO accession, the Soviet Union and its Eastern European client states formed the Warsaw Pact in 1955." Citation from: NATO website. "A short history of NATO". nato.int. Archived from the original on 26 March 2017. Retrieved 24 December 2015.
^Cite error: The named reference The Future of European Alliance Systems was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference christopher was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference enclopedia was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Laurien Crump (2015). The Warsaw Pact Reconsidered: International Relations in Eastern Europe, 1955–1969. Routledge, pp. 21–22.
^Debra J. Allen. The Oder-Neisse Line: The United States, Poland, and Germany in the Cold War. p. 158. "Treaties approving Bonn's participation in NATO were ratified in May 1955...shortly thereafter Soviet Union...created the Warsaw Pact to counter the perceived threat of NATO"
^"Introduction". www.php.isn.ethz.ch.
^"Text of Warsaw Pact" (PDF). United Nations Treaty Collection. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2 October 2013. Retrieved 22 August 2013.
^ abAmos Yoder (1993). Communism in Transition: The End of the Soviet Empires. Taylor & Francis. p. 58. ISBN 978-0-8448-1738-5. Retrieved 1 January 2016.
^ abBob Reinalda (2009). Routledge History of International Organizations: From 1815 to the Present Day. Routledge. p. 369. ISBN 978-1-134-02405-6. Archived from the original on 1 January 2016. Retrieved 1 January 2016.
^[1] Archived 23 December 2015 at the Wayback Machine Cover Story: The Holy Alliance By Carl Bernstein Sunday, 24 June 2001
^Roser, Thomas (16 August 2018). "DDR-Massenflucht: Ein Picknick hebt die Welt aus den Angeln" [Mass Exodus of the GDR: A Picnic Clears the World]. Die Presse (in German).
The WarsawPact (WP), formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance (TFCMA), was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland...
1968, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was jointly invaded by four WarsawPact countries: the Soviet Union, the Polish People's Republic, the People's...
used by Soviet and WarsawPact nations armed forces have a distinct type of side-mounted scope, informally known as a WarsawPact rail. The mount is found...
and continued until 21 August 1968, when the Soviet Union and most WarsawPact members invaded the country to suppress the reforms. The Prague Spring...
Imre Nagy disbanded the ÁVH, declared Hungary's withdrawal from the WarsawPact, and pledged to re-establish free elections. By the end of October the...
deploy forces to West Germany in the event of a conflict with the WarsawPact. The WarsawPact outnumbered NATO throughout the Cold War in conventional forces...
remained in place after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the WarsawPact, and has been involved in military operations in the Balkans, the Middle...
eastern satellite states, the pact has been long considered superfluous. Although nominally a defensive alliance, the WarsawPact's primary function was to...
Soviet Union to form its own military alliance, commonly known as the WarsawPact, in 1955. Neither side ever engaged in direct military confrontation...
least since 1964 by the WarsawPact. It depicted the Soviet Bloc's vision of a seven-day nuclear war between NATO and WarsawPact forces. This possible...
The most limited definition of the Eastern Bloc would only include the WarsawPact states and the Mongolian People's Republic as former satellite states...
Both NATO and the WarsawPact led to the expansion of military forces and their integration into the respective blocs. The WarsawPact's largest military...
direct action by the Soviet Armed Forces (and later by the Soviet-led WarsawPact). Major Soviet military interventions of this nature took place in East...
1989, and was more or less synonymous with the terms Eastern Bloc and WarsawPact. A similar definition names the formerly communist European states outside...
the WarsawPact of 1955. A period of political liberalization in 1968, the Prague Spring, ended when the Soviet Union, assisted by other WarsawPact countries...
there are artillery sights and compasses with 6,400 NATO mils, 6,000 WarsawPact mils or 6,300 Swedish "streck" per turn instead of 360° or 2π radians...
Korea, and expect it to hold its place. Like NATO, the members of the WarsawPact were protected by nuclear weapons of the Soviet Union with the weapons...
since been credited with helping improve relations between the NATO and WarsawPact countries. Many people from the United States and Israel came for the...
and other new countries that were part of the former Soviet Union or WarsawPact. Each of these had massive street protests and/or followed disputed elections...
A defense pact (Commonwealth spelling: defence pact) is a type of treaty or military alliance in which the signatories promise to support each other militarily...
Soviet Union's empire in Eastern Europe and the swift destruction of the WarsawPact and Comecon that followed. Many feared the consequences of Gorbachev's...
without oak leaves (between 1953 and 1990) Logo of the Warsaw Treaty Organization or "WarsawPact" (14 May 1955) After being a member of the Thälmann Pioneers...
international economic and military alliances, such as Comecon and the WarsawPact. To the west of the Iron Curtain, the countries of Western Europe, Northern...
The film postulates a fictional war between the NATO forces and the WarsawPact over Germany that rapidly escalates into a full-scale nuclear exchange...
It was also the last removal of a Marxist–Leninist government in a WarsawPact country during the events of 1989, and the only one that violently overthrew...