Warsaw pact
The Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, better known as the Warsaw Pact after the city where it was signed, was a military cooperation agreement signed on May 14, 1955 by the Eastern Bloc countries during the period known as the Cold War. Designed under the leadership of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), its express objective was to counter the threat of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, founded in 1949), and especially the rearmament of the Federal Republic of Germany, to which the founding treaty of the European Defense Community allowed to reorganize its armed forces.
The Warsaw Pact was established as a balance of power and counterpart to NATO. 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. Its largest military commitment was the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 (with the participation of all the Pact nations except Albania and Romania), which, in part, caused Albania to withdraw from the pact less than a month later. The pact began to unravel in its entirety with the spread of the 1989 revolutions throughout the Eastern Bloc, beginning with the Lech Walesa-led Solidarity movement in Poland, its electoral success in June 1989, and the pan-European picnic in August 1989, and already entered into frank collapse with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
East Germany withdrew from the Pact after German reunification in 1990. On February 25, 1991, at a meeting in Hungary, the defense and foreign ministers of the six remaining member states declared the end of the Pact, which was made official on July 1, 1991. The USSR itself dissolved in December 1991, although most of the former Soviet republics formed the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CTOS) soon after. In the next 20 years, several of the Warsaw Pact countries outside the USSR joined NATO (East Germany through its reunification with West Germany; and the Czech Republic and Slovakia as separate countries), as did the Baltic republics that had been part of the Soviet Union.
Scope
The scope of the Warsaw Pact included all the socialist states of the Eastern bloc (with the exception of Yugoslavia, over which, despite everything, a powerful influence was exercised), that is, Albania (it withdrew in 1968), Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, the German Democratic Republic, Romania and the Soviet Union; until 1961 the People's Republic of China was affiliated as an observer. It was signed in the Polish capital on May 14, 1955, with Nikita Khrushchev being the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Before the treaty was signed, the Eastern Bloc countries already had a close military relationship with the Soviet Union, whose Red Army had undertaken their liberation during World War II, in the same way as the American and British forces they had done so in West Germany, the western part of Austria, Belgium, Italy, France and Greece, within the framework of what was agreed at the Yalta Conference. The deep Soviet influence in the bloc had been perceived as a challenge by the other Allied powers, who viewed the spread of communism as an immediate threat to the dominant political and economic regime in Europe. The polarization between the American orbit — which with the establishment of NATO broke its secular tradition of military isolation — and the Soviet one would be the determining character of the 45 years of the so-called Cold War (name given to the non-war conflict waged by the USSR and the US from the end of World War II until the dissolution of the first in 1991).
Warsaw Pact member states
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
People ' s Republic of Albania (retired in 1968)
German Democratic Republic
People ' s Republic of Bulgaria
Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
People ' s Republic of Hungary
People ' s Republic of Poland
Socialist Republic of Romania
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Observers
People ' s Republic of China (retired in 1961)
North Korea
Mongolia
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Organization
The members of the Warsaw Pact agreed, in terms very similar to those used by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), cooperation in peacekeeping tasks, the immediate organization in case of foreseeable attack (art. 3), mutual defense in case any of the members were attacked (art. 4), and the establishment of a joint General Staff to coordinate national efforts (art. 5). Consisting of eleven articles in total, the Pact made no direct reference to the regime of government of the members —declaring itself open to “all States”, with the only requirement of the unanimity of the remaining signatories in its admission (art. 9)—, and established a term of twenty renewable years, as well as the freedom to revoke it for each of the member states. It was signed in four copies, one in Russian, one in German, one in Czech and one in Polish.
A Political Committee, made up of the heads of government of the member states, met annually to establish policies and annual objectives. Most of the negotiations also included the presence of the defense ministers, the heads of the armed forces, and members of the General Staff of each of them. In addition to the political committee, the Warsaw Pact had a Military Advisory Committee, a Technical and Investigative Committee, a Council of Secretaries of Defense, and a Joint Chiefs of Staff. Ivan Konev was its first commander-in-chief.
Although the express objective of the Pact was to avoid the declaration of war between its member States and the Western powers was fulfilled, and the military measures should never have been put into effect, the Joint Chiefs of Staff would have been in the event of war the supreme authority over the armies, navies and air forces of member states; the military power that this represented included 6,200,000 soldiers, some 65,000 tanks, two thousand ships and 15,000 combat planes, in addition to nuclear missiles installed in several of the Member States. In peacetime, only forces stationed outside his home country were under his command.
History
The Warsaw Pact was an instrument elaborated in the struggle between the western and eastern blocs, which emerged after the end of World War II. Its limit coincided in global terms with the demarcation lines agreed at the summits that Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had maintained between 1943 and 1945, with few doubts about the German and Austrian territory that were resolved in the partition of the former and the withdrawal of all the forces of the second.
The competition for Asian terrain was partially resolved with the proclamation of the People's Republic in China —the Soviet Union was not very satisfied with the situation, although China would participate as an observer until its break with the Soviet government in 1968— and the US occupation of Japan and Korea, but their ambiguity gave rise to most of the conflicts that eventually broke out between the powers.
The Soviet strategy, like the American one, consisted mainly of securing its zone of influence without leading to open conflict with the opponent, and therefore resulted in a restricted level of military activity even within the borders.
Already in 1948, Marshal Tito's Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia had marked its differences with Moscow, and diplomatic disagreements between China and the Soviet Union on the occasion of the Korean War were prominent. In reality, the foreign policy of both powers was more occupied with trying to take advantage of the economic crises they believed to be imminent, the severity of which led the United States to develop the Marshall Plan and NATO. In the Eastern bloc states, communist movements They were until well into the 1960s "openly committed" to the construction of parliamentary democracies, with representation of the bourgeoisie and landowners, and hybrid economic models.
The resistance of the Stalinist government to revise the limits drawn by the Yalta agreements was based solely on the military weakness of the USSR in comparison with the enormous American weapons, which remained from the war to the present day in the multiple bases it established in Europe and Asia Minor. Rather than complete domination of the home front, the Soviet bet was participation in the arms race, which implied a growing and ruinous investment in military technology, but not an increase in troops. Even Finland, in which the Communist Party was the centerpiece of government, requested and obtained the withdrawal of the Soviet Army from the Porkkala naval base in 1956.
While the Finnish political climate and Tito's tough leadership in tightly controlled Yugoslavia made it possible for these states not to join the Pact, in other countries the internal situation was more complex. In the Hungarian People's Republic, internal dissensions within the local communist party, whose student factions were protesting Soviet military action in the Poznań incidents in the Polish People's Republic, combined with the ultranationalist insurrection of Dudás József to give rise to the uprising, which was suppressed by the forces of the Pact.
It has been argued that the Warsaw Pact was, in practice, an instrument of control by the Soviet Union over the socialist states of Eastern Europe in order to prevent them from leaving its aegis. In some cases, indeed, the attempts of the member countries to leave the Pact were crushed militarily, such as the Hungarian Revolution of 1956: in October of that year, the Soviet Army, relying on the provisions of the Warsaw Pact, entered in Hungary and put down a fledgling anti-communist uprising in just two weeks.
The forces of the Warsaw Pact were also used against some of its members, such as in 1968, during the Prague Spring, when they invaded Czechoslovakia to put an end to the flexible reforms that the government was undergoing, classified by the USSR as tending to destroy socialism. The so-called Brezhnev doctrine of «limited sovereignty», which marked the foreign military policy of the Soviet Union at the time, established: «When there are forces that are hostile to socialism and try to change the development of a socialist country towards capitalism, they become not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem that concerns all socialist countries. The People's Republic of Albania withdrew from the alliance in 1961 as a result of the Sino-Soviet split, in which its hardline Stalinist regime supported the PRC.
Although the NATO and Warsaw Pact countries did not engage in any armed conflict, they kept the Cold War going for more than 35 years. In December 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev, the 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 Eastern European countries could do as they saw fit.
End of the Warsaw Pact
The validity of the Sinatra doctrine contributed to the acceleration of the changes that shook Eastern Europe from 1989. The new eastern governments were less supportive than the previous ones of maintaining the Warsaw Pact, and in January 1991 Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland announced that they would withdraw on July 1 of that same year. With Bulgaria's withdrawal in February, the Pact was effectively dissolved. The official dissolution, accepted by the Soviet Union, was formalized at the meeting in Prague on July 1, 1991.
On March 12, 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, former members of the Warsaw Pact, joined the other rival organization: NATO. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia did so in March 2004. Albania and Croatia did so in April 2009.
Covenant Operations
Invasion of Hungary in 1956
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was a spontaneous nationwide revolutionary movement against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic and its policies imposed by the Soviet Union, which lasted from October 23 to November 10, 1956.
Since the secret speech criticizing Stalin's excesses made by his successor to the head of the USSR Nikita Khrushchev at the XX Congress of the CPSU, the Hungarian people had continuously requested the necessary freedom to choose their own political system away from communism. Thus, movements arose all over Hungary demanding that the activities of the secret police be stopped.
The riot began as a student protest that drew thousands of people to a march through the center of Budapest towards the Hungarian Parliament building. A student delegation was detained as it entered the state radio building with the intention of broadcasting its demands. When protesters in the streets demanded the release of the delegation, the Hungarian political police (Államvédelmi Hatóság or ÁVH) opened fire from inside the building. Some Soviet soldiers fired at the ÁVH, because they mistakenly believed that they were under attack. Some protesters returned fire with weapons taken from the ÁVH or provided by Hungarian soldiers who joined the uprising.
After the failure of Soviet containment, the revolt only increased, drawing ex-soldiers, policemen and people from all over the country.
The news spread quickly and led to the outbreak of disorder and violence in the capital. The revolution spread rapidly throughout Hungary, the government of András Hegedüs was overthrown and Prime Minister Imre Nagy took the 'reins'. Thousands organized themselves into militias to combat the State Security Police (ÁVH) and Soviet troops. Pro-Soviet communists and ÁVH members were often executed or imprisoned, while former political prisoners were released and armed. Makeshift councils wrested municipal control from the Hungarian Communist Party and demanded political changes. The new government headed by Imre Nagy formally dissolved the ÁVH, declared its intention to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact, and promised to restore free elections. By the end of October, the fighting had all but ceased and a sense of normality began.
Unlike the Poznań Protests against the government of the Polish People's Republic, the Hungarian Revolution challenged the Stalinist style of government and thus threatened the very nature of the one-party pro-Soviet regime. Thus, after announcing its willingness to negotiate the withdrawal of the Soviet forces, the Politburo changed its mind and moved to crush the revolution. Taking advantage of the fact that the West was divided by the Suez crisis, the Soviet army mobilized 31,550 soldiers and 1,130 tanks and on November 4, 1956 invaded Budapest and other regions of the country: the Hungarian resistance continued until November 10. More than 2,500 Hungarian and 722 Soviet soldiers were killed in the conflict, and some 200,000 Hungarians fled as refugees. The mass arrests and accusations continued for months. By January 1957, the new Soviet-installed government led by János Kádár had suppressed all public opposition.
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Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968
The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia was an undeclared war in which troops from five Warsaw Pact socialist countries on the night of August 20–21, 1968, led by the Soviet Union, invaded the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Its objective was to stop the economic and political liberalization reforms promoted by the Czechoslovak president, Alexander Dubček, which had previously led to the Prague Spring.
Troops from the republics of Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria, commanded by Soviet troops, participated in the military operation. East German troops, although ready for action, did not cross the border into Czechoslovakia—except for a small number of specialists. The only Warsaw Pact member country that did not participate in the invasion was Romania, and its president, Nicolae Ceaușescu, openly condemned the invasion.
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