Warsaw Pact

The Warsaw Pact was a military alliance of the [Eastern Europe]?an Soviet Bloc countries created in by Krushchev? in 1955. It was similar and in response to the [North Atlantic Treaty Organisation]? (NATO). The members of the Warsaw Pact would defend each other if one was attacked. It included all the Communist countries of Eastern Europe except Yugoslavia, but the Warsaw Pact was dominated by the Soviet Union.

Efforts to leave the Warsaw Pact by member countries were crushed, such as the Hungarian revolution of 1956. Hungary planned to leave the Warsaw Pact and declare themselves neutral in the Cold War conflict between East and West, 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 on August 20 1968 when they invaded Czechoslovakia to put down the discontented uprising. This brought to light a successor to the Warsaw Pact, the Brezhnev Doctorine, that 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."

In December 1988 [Mikhail Gorbachev]?, leader of the Soviet Union at the time, announced that the Warsaw Pact/Brezhnev? Doctorine would be abandoned and that the Eastern European countries could do what they liked. 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 and by 1989 the Warsaw Pact collapsed along with the Soviet Union and Eastern European communism.