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Warsaw Treaty Organization

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:

Warsaw Treaty Organization

Warsaw Pact
Military alliance of the Soviet Union, Albania (until 1968), Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, formed in 1955 in response to West Germany's entry into NATO. Its terms included a unified military command and the stationing of Soviet troops in the other member states. Warsaw Pact troops were called into action to suppress uprisings in Poland (1956), Hungary (1956), and Czechoslovakia (1968). The alliance was dissolved in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and Soviet troops departed. Several Warsaw Pact members later joined NATO.

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Military History Companion:

Warsaw Pact

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Warsaw Pact (or Warsaw Treaty Organization) (1955-91), military alliance comprising eight states—Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the USSR—led by the USSR and throughout its 35-year history the principal opponent of and military threat to NATO.

Following the occupation of central Europe at the end of WW II, the USSR set up tame national armed forces in the countries it had occupied. Those of Poland were commanded, initially, by Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, a Soviet marshal of Polish stock. Although some national characteristics were retained—and later became more pronounced—the armed forces of the states in Soviet-occupied zones were equipped and organized entirely on Soviet lines, were under Soviet command, and had Soviet occupation troops alongside them. In western Europe, the countries liberated at the end of the war retained their own armed forces, but these joined together voluntarily in 1949 as the NATO Alliance. At the Paris Conference in 1954, the Western European Union (WEU) was formed as a European pillar of NATO, and West Germany was invited to join, which it did the following year.

Partly in response to German accession to NATO, eight of the east European socialist countries met in Warsaw on 11 May. Yugoslavia did not attend and never joined. The Pact was signed on 14 May and came into effect on 5 June. Although nominally an alliance between sovereign states, the Warsaw Pact was quite different from NATO. The latter was, and remains, a voluntary alliance which requires consensus to act, although the USA is unquestionably the dominant power. The Warsaw Pact was run by the USSR and used as a cordon sanitaire. Its working language was Russian and the first C-in-C of Warsaw Pact armed forces, appointed in 1956, was the Soviet Koniev.

The Warsaw Treaty stressed the maintenance of international peace and security (Article 1). It proposed effective arms control measures (Article 2), and obliged member states to consult each other on all aspects of international relations (Article 3). Other alliances prejudicial to the interests of the Warsaw Pact were banned (Article 7). In the event of attack on any Warsaw Pact states they would have the right to individual or collective defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter (Article 4). This clause was cited to justify the invasion of Hungary in 1957 and of Czechoslovakia in 1968. In effect, this was the same as NATO's ‘an attack on one is an attack on all’. Like NATO, the Warsaw Pact was declaredly a defensive alliance. NATO never believed this, but it was NATO which expanded after the Pact dissolved, and which first attacked a sovereign state outside its own borders in 1999.

The Pact's military organization comprised the committee of defence ministers (KMO), the combined armed forces (OVS) and the combined command (OK). In addition to the combined command, there was a military committee of the combined armed forces, a combined armed forces headquarters—in Moscow—and a technical committee (TK). Commonality of equipment—all Soviet-designed, although some was later adapted and improved by the ‘Non-Soviet Warsaw Pact’ (NSWP) states—and of training and organization would probably have given the Warsaw Pact the advantage on the battlefield. By the 1980s the NSWP states were increasingly acquiring their own style and equipment. The Poles played a leading role in developing the idea of the operational manoeuvre group, while the Czechoslovaks built their own multiple rocket launchers and self-propelled (SP) guns. Following the collapse of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the unification of Germany, the Warsaw Pact was defunct—East Germany had been a member. In 1990 it was announced that it would be dissolved and the USSR ratified the decision at the end of 1991.

— Christopher Bellamy


(est. 1955)

The Warsaw Pact was created by the Soviet Union on 14 May 1955 as a political‐military alliance of European Communist states to counter the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO), particularly the entry of West Germany into NATO in 1955. Officially called the Warsaw Treaty Organization, the original eight members were Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union. However, unlike NATO, the Warsaw Pact was a multinational rather than a multilateral military defense organization.

Following Soviet suppression of the Hungarian uprising in October 1956, Moscow reduced the influence of the pact's governing body, the multinational Political Consultative Council (PCC), and tightened its own central control. In the subsequent strains, some southern‐tier nations withdrew: Albania, which supported China in the Sino‐ Soviet split, stopped military cooperation in 1961 and left the pact in 1968 (following the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the pact's forces). Romania excluded Soviet troops and refused to participate in military exercises after 1965.

The Soviet Union controlled the alliance, provided 80 percent of the manpower, and bore more than 90 percent of the pact's defense expenditures for forces, which in the early 1980s reached 5.4 million troops. The USSR alone had nuclear weapons and strategic forces, and all nuclear warheads were in Soviet custody.

With declining economies, the shift in Soviet policy under reformer Mikhail Gorbachev, and the increasing independence of the East European nations, the Warsaw Pact lost cohesion in the 1980s. In 1987–88, the pact's doctrine was changed from offensive defense to one that emphasized nonoffensive defense. Following a Soviet proposal in 1987, NATO and the Warsaw Pact agreed in 1990 to substantial reduction of forces.

In 1990, responding to popular demand and the ending of the Cold War, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia demanded the removal of Soviet troops and refused to participate in future military exercises. East Germany left the pact that year with German unification. The military structure was officially ended by the PCC in March 1991; the political organization was terminated in July 1991.

Bibliography

  • R. W. Clawson and L. S. Kaplan, eds., The Warsaw Pact: Political Purpose and Military Means, 1982.
  • W. J. Lewis, The Warsaw Pact: Arms, Doctrine and Strategy, 1982.
  • J. Simon, Warsaw Pact Forces: Problems of Command and Control, 1985.
  • Neil Fodor, The Warsaw Treaty Organization: A Political and Organizational Analysis, 1990
US Military Dictionary:

Warsaw Pact

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A treaty of mutual defense and military aid signed at Warsaw on May 14, 1955 by Communist states of Europe under Soviet influence, in response to the admission of West Germany to NATO; collectively, the group of states which signed the treaty. Following changes in eastern Europe and the collapse of the Communist system, the pact was dissolved in 1991.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Political Dictionary:

Warsaw Pact

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The Warsaw Pact, formally the ‘Warsaw Treaty Of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance’ was formed in May 1955. The immediate reason given for its formation was the Paris Agreements amongst the Western powers that included West Germany in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). To counterbalance this expansion of NATO, the Warsaw Pact set up a mutual defence organization, the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO), with a unified military command and headquarters in Moscow, which embraced the German Democratic Republic, as well as Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union, and the Czechoslovak Republic.

In practice the Warsaw Pact enabled the Soviet Union to station troops in these satellite states. In several satellites, these troops became a focus of protest during anti-Soviet uprisings, as in Poland and Hungary in 1956. Hungary sought to leave the organization at the time, but failed. Similarly, Czechoslovakia failed to leave the Warsaw Pact in 1968, when the Soviet Union invoked the treaty against it to crush the Prague spring. Only Albania successfully withdrew from the pact in 1968, having developed closer links with China. The Warsaw Treaty Organization became defunct with the East European Revolutions in 1989, and the German Democratic Republic's withdrawal from it 1990 was a largely symbolic act, which foreshadowed the Warsaw Pact's final dissolution in July 1991.

— Petra Schleiter

Russian History Encyclopedia:

Warsaw Treaty Organization

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The Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO), also referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was created on May 14, 1955, by Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union. Officially known as the Warsaw Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, it was a Soviet-led political and military alliance intended to harness the potential of Eastern Europe to Soviet military strategy and to consolidate Soviet control of Eastern Europe during the Cold War. The organization was used to suppress dissent in Eastern Europe through military action. It never enlarged beyond its original membership, and was dissolved in 1991, prior to the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself.

The Soviet and East European governments presented the WTO as their response to the creation of the Western European Union and the integration of West Germany into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1955. Though often described as an alliance, the facade of collective decision-making in WTO masked the reality of Soviet political and military domination. The 1955 treaty established the Joint Command of the armed forces (Article 5) and the Political Consultative Committee (Article 6), both headquartered in Moscow. In practice, however, the Joint Command, as well as the Joint Staff drawn from the general staffs of the signatories, were part of the Soviet General Staff. Both the Pact's commander in chief and its chief of staff were Soviet officers. The Joint Armed Forces had no command structure, logistics, directorate of operations, or air defense network separate from the Soviet defense ministry.

Over the years the military structure of the Warsaw Pact was adjusted to reflect the evolution of Soviet strategy and changes in military technology. During the first decade of the organization's existence, political control over the non-Soviet forces was its principal focus. Following Stalin's death, East European militaries were partly renationalized, including the replacement of Soviet officers in high positions with indigenous personnel, and a renewed emphasis on professional training. The Polish October of 1956, and the Hungarian revolt that same year, raised serious concerns in Moscow about the reliability of non-Soviet Warsaw Pact forces.

In the 1960s the lessons learned from de-Stalinization, as well as Albania's defection from the Warsaw Pact, brought about greater integration of the WTO through joint military exercises, intensified training, and the introduction of new Soviet equipment. The most significant reorganization of the WTO took place in 1969, including the addition of the Committee of Defense Ministers, the Military Council, the Military Scientific Technical Council, and the Technical Committees. These and subsequent changes allowed increased participation from the East Europeans in decision making, and helped the Soviets better coordinate weapons research, development, and production with the East Europeans.

In addition to its external defensive role against NATO, the Warsaw Pact served to maintain cohesion in the Soviet bloc. It was used to justify the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and again to prepare for an invasion of Poland in 1980 or 1981 if the Polish regime failed to suppress the Solidarity movement. The Warsaw Pact was also an instrument of Soviet policy in the Third World. In the 1970s and 1980s the Soviet Union relied on several non-Soviet WTO members to assist client states in Africa and the Middle East.

The alliance began to unravel with the introduction of Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika in the Soviet Union, and his attendant redefinition of Soviet-East European relations. Though the alliance was renewed in 1985, as required by the treaty, deteriorating economic conditions and the rising national aspirations in Eastern Europe put its future in question. The Soviet military attempted to adjust to the shifting political landscape. In 1987 the WTO modified its doctrine to emphasize its defensive character, but this and other proposed changes proved insufficient to arrest the decomposition of the alliance. The key development that hastened the WTO's demise was the unification of Germany, which constituted an irreparable breach in the Pact's security perimeter. Under pressure from Eastern Europe, the decision to abolish the military structures of the Pact was taken at a Political Consultative Committee meeting in Budapest in late February 1991; the remaining political structures were formally abolished on July 1, 1991.

The overall value of the Warsaw Pact to the Soviet Union during the Cold War remains a point of debate. Clearly, the organization legitimized the continued Soviet garrisoning of Eastern Europe and provided additional layers of political and military control. In addition, the potential contributions of the East European armed forces to Soviet military strategy, as well as the use of the members' territory, were significant assets. On the other hand, throughout the Warsaw Pact's existence, the ultimate reliability and cohesion of its non-Soviet members in a putative war against NATO remained in question. In addition, the declining ability of the East Europeans to contribute to equipment modernization, especially as their economies deteriorated in the late 1970s and 1980s, raised doubts about the overall quality of the WTO armed forces.

Bibliography

Herspring, Dale R. (1998). Requiem for an Army: The Demise of the East German Military. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.

Johnson, A. Ross; Dean, Robert W.; and Alexiev, Alexander. (1982). East European Military Establishments: The Warsaw Pact Northern Tier. New York: Crane Russak.

Jones, Christopher D. (1981). Soviet Influence in Eastern Europe: Political Autonomy and the Warsaw Pact. New York: Praeger Publishers.

Michta, Andrew A. (1990). Red Eagle: The Army in Polish Politics, 1944 - 1988. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.

Nelson, Daniel N. (1986). Alliance Behavior in the Warsaw Pact. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

The Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact. (2003). <http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php/index.htm>.

Volgyes, Ivan. (1982). The Political Reliability of the Warsaw Pact Armies: The Southern Tier. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

—ANDREW A. MICHTA

 
Columbia Encyclopedia:

Warsaw Treaty Organization

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Warsaw Treaty Organization or Warsaw Pact, alliance set up under a mutual defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, in 1955 by Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union. The organization was the Soviet bloc's equivalent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Initiated as an alliance made necessary by the remilitarization of West Germany under the Paris Pacts of 1954, the treaty was binding for 20 years but would lapse in the event of a general European collective security treaty. A unified military command, with headquarters in Moscow, directed the united forces, which included Soviet divisions stationed in some of the member nations prior to the signing of the treaty. In 1962, Albania was no longer invited to Warsaw Treaty meetings and formally withdrew in 1968. In the same year, the organization sent forces to occupy Czechoslovakia after that country began to take steps toward democratization. The 1989 collapse of the Communist governments in Eastern Europe made the treaty superfluous, as the new governments repudiated their former ally, the Soviet Union. The Warsaw Treaty Organization dissolved in June, 1991.


History Dictionary:

Warsaw Pact

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A military alliance of communist nations in eastern Europe. Organized in 1955 in answer to NATO, the Warsaw Pact included Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union. It disintegrated in 1991, in the wake of the collapse of communism in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

Wikipedia:

Warsaw Pact

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Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance
Military alliance
1955–1991 CSTOODKB.png
Member states: Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany², Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania.
Capital Not specified
Language(s) Russian, Polish, German, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Albanian
Political structure Military alliance
Supreme Commander
 - 1955–60 (first) Ivan Konev
 - 1989-91 (last) Petr Lushev
Head of Unified Staff
 - 1955–62 (first) Aleksei Antonov
 - 1989–90 (last) Vladimir Lobov
Historical era Cold War
 - Established 17 May 1955
 - Hungarian crisis 4 November 1956
 - Czechoslovakian crisis 21 August 1968
 - German reunification² 3 October 1990
 - Disestablished 1 July 1991
¹ HQ in Moscow, USSR.
² A 24 November 1990 treaty withdrew the German Democratic Republic from the Warsaw Treaty; at reunification, it became integral to NATO Pact.

The Warsaw Treaty (1955–91) is the informal name for the mutual defense Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance commonly known as the Warsaw Pact subscribed by eight communist states in Eastern Europe, which was established at the USSR’s initiative and realised on 14 May 1955, in Warsaw, Poland. In the Communist Bloc, the treaty was the military analogue of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CoMEcon), the Communist (East) European economic community. The Warsaw Treaty was the Soviet Bloc’s military response to West Germany’s May 1955[1] integration to NATO Pact, per the Paris Pacts of 1954.[2][3][4]

Contents

Nomenclature

In the West, the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance is often called as the Warsaw Pact military alliance; abbreviated WAPA, Warpac, and WP. Elsewhere, in the member states, the Warsaw Treaty is known as:

  • Albanian: Pakti i miqësisë, bashkpunimit dhe i ndihmës së përbashkët
  • Bulgarian: Договор за дружба, сътрудничество и взаимопомощ
  • Czech: Smlouva o přátelství, spolupráci a vzájemné pomoci
  • Slovak: Zmluva o priateľstve, spolupráci a vzájomnej pomoci
  • German: Vertrag über Freundschaft, Zusammenarbeit und gegenseitigen Beistand
  • Hungarian: Barátsági, együttműködési és kölcsönös segítségnyújtási szerződés
  • Polish: Układ o Przyjaźni, Współpracy i Pomocy Wzajemnej
  • Romanian: Tratatul de prietenie, cooperare şi asistenţă mutuală
  • Russian: Договор о дружбе, сотрудничестве и взаимной помощи
The Cold War (1945–90): NATO vs. the Warsaw Pact, the status of forces in 1973.

Member States

The eight member countries of the Warsaw Treaty pledged the mutual defense of any member who is attacked; relations among the treaty signatories were based upon mutual non-interference in the internal affairs of the member countries, respect for national sovereignty, and political independence. The multi-national Communist armed forces’ sole joint action was the Warsaw Treaty involvement of Czechoslovakia crisis, in August 1968. All member countries, with the exception of the People's Republic of Romania (later Socialist Republic of Romania), participated in the repression. The founding signatories to the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance consisted of the following communist nations:

Structure

The Warsaw Treaty’s organisation was two-fold: the Political Consultative Committee handled civil matters, and the Unified Command of Pact Armed Forces controlled the assigned multi-national forces, with headquarters in Warsaw, Poland. Furthermore, the Supreme Commander of the Warsaw Treaty forces also was the First Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR, and the head of the Warsaw Treaty Unified Staff also was the First Deputy Head of General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR. Therefore, although ostensibly an international collective security alliance, USSR Dominated the Warsaw Treaty armed forces, as the USA dominated NATO Pact.[5]

History

Communist Bloc Conclave: The Warsaw Pact conference, 11 May 1955, Warsaw, Poland.

In May 1955, the USSR established the Warsaw Treaty in response to the West’s integration of the Federal Republic of Germany into NATO in October 1954 — only nine years after the defeat of Nazi Germany (1933–45) that ended only with the Western Allies' (principally the US and Great Britain) and Soviet invasion of Germany in 1944/45 during World War II in Europe. Nevertheless, for 36 years, NATO and the Warsaw Treaty never directly waged war against each other in Europe; but the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies did confront each other in Europe, and they did fight proxy wars within the wider Cold War (1945–91) outside Europe.

Beginning at the Cold War’s conclusion, in late 1989, popular civil and political public discontent forced the Communist governments of the Warsaw Treaty countries from power — independent national politics made feasible with the perestroika- and glasnost-induced institutional collapse of Communist government in the USSR.[6] In the event the populaces of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Albania, East Germany, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria deposed their Communist governments in the period from 1989–91.

On 1 July 1991, in Prague, the Czechoslovak President, Václav Havel (1989–92), formally ended the 1955 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance and so disestablished the Warsaw Treaty after 36 years of military alliance with the USSR. Four months later, the USSR disestablished itself in December 1991.

Eastern Europe after the Warsaw Treaty

On 12 March 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO Pact; later, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia joined during March 2004; and Albania joined on 1 April 2009.

In November 2005, the conservative Polish government opened its Warsaw Treaty archives to the Institute of National Remembrance who published some 1,300 declassified documents in January 2006. Yet the Polish government reserved publication of 100 documents, pending their military declassification. In the event, 30 of the reserved 100 documents were published; 70 remained secret, and unpublished.

Among the documents published is the Warsaw Treaty 's nuclear war plan, Seven Days to the River Rhine — a short, sharp, shock capturing Western Europe, using nuclear weapons, in self defense, after a NATO first strike. The plan originated as a 1979 field training exercise war game, and metamorphosed into official Warsaw Treaty battle doctrine, until the late 1980s — thus why the People’s Republic of Poland was a nuclear weapons base, first, to 178, then, to 250 tactical-range rockets. Doctrinally, as a Soviet-style (offensive) battle plan, Seven Days to the River Rhine gave commanders few defensive-war strategies for fighting NATO in Warsaw Treaty territory.[citation needed]

Soviet philatelic commemoration: At its 20th anniversary in 1975, the Warsaw Pact remains On Guard for Peace and Socialism.

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ David S. Yorst. NATO Transformed: The Alliance's New Roles in International Security. (Washington D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1998), 31.
  2. ^ Arlene Idol Broadhurst, The Future of European Alliance Systems (Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1982) p. 137.
  3. ^ Christopher Cook, Dictionary of Historical Terms (1983)
  4. ^ The Columbia Enclopedia, fifth edition (1993) p. 2926
  5. ^ V>I> Fes'kov, K. A. Kalashnikov, V. I. Golikov, The Soviet Army in the Cold War Years (1945–2007) (Tomsk: Tomsk University Publisher, 2004) p.6
  6. ^ The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, third edition, 1999, pp. 637–8

Further reading

  • Vojtech Mastny, Malcolm Byrne, Magdalena Klotzbach: A Cardboard Castle? An Inside History of the Warsaw Pact, 1955–1991, Central European University Press, Budapest, 2005, ISBN 9637326081, ISBN 978-9637326080
  • William J. Lewis: The Warsaw Pact: Arms, Doctrine and Strategy, Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis. 1982. ISBN 0-07-031746-1. Surveys the armed forces, strategy, a campaign against NATO, matériel, uniforms, and nation- and rank-insignia.
  • Václav Havel: To the Castle and Bac New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2007.
  • (German) Frank Umbach: Das rote Bündnis: Entwicklung und Zerfall des Warschauer Pakts, 1955–1991. Berlin: Christoph Links Verlag, 2005.

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