| WARSAW PACT |
| The Warsaw pact was the Soviet Union’s answer to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also known as NATO. The treaty was signed on May 14, 1955, by all the nations east of the Berlin Wall in Europe. The seven nations plus the Soviet Union included the following: Czechoslovakia, Albania, Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary, Romania, Poland, and the Soviet Union. The treaty was officially called the formally the Warsaw Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance. But it served a much greater purpose. The purpose of the treaty was to keep the nations under firm rule of Moscow. All nations agreed to have the USSR as the main leader. It essentially kept the Soviet satellite nations under Soviet rule until the communist way was firmly in place. But there were some cases of uprising. One case was in the autumn of 1956, when in the country of Hungary, a cry for reform was heard. The citizens of Hungary wanted to install a democratic form of government. They had successfully taken over the government seats, and proclaimed a democratic Hungary. So the USSR enacted the pact and without strong opposition rolled tanks into Budapest and took over the capital. The attacks killed thousands of Hungarians and caused over 200,000 to flee the country. The attacks shocked the nation. Another case was in August of 1968. The country of Czechoslovakia had elected reform laws offensive to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union once again enacted and utilized their power to invade Czechoslovakia and re-establish the communist regime in the country. The Warsaw Pact could not continue its power forever. In 1961 Albania broke off diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and was removed from the Warsaw Pact. The Pact was renewed for another 20 years in 1985, but most of the world knew that wouldn’t last. The political and economical changes in Eastern Europe had begun to weaken the pact’s authority. The major step was in 1986, when Poland successfully converted to a form of economics known as socialism. Many changes continued to follow, with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the later reunification of Germany in 1990. All joint military operations stopped in March of 1991, and the remaining six members of the pact agreed to dissolve the alliance in July later that year. |