Throughout the second half of the 20th century, the Warsaw Treaty Organization (better known as the Warsaw Pact) has been a never-ending puzzle for NATO generals. The confrontation between the two most powerful military-political alliances in the world has become an integral part of the Cold War era.

However, few people know that “the fortress of peace” and “the shield of socialism” – as the Warsaw Pact was often called – was established much later than its Western rival.

An alliance of socialist countries

The leaders of the USSR and of the “people’s democracies”, as the socialist countries of central and eastern Europe were called at the time, which were in the orbit of the Soviet Union, were not shaken by the decision of the Western powers to establish the North Atlantic Alliance. in 1949.

The Eastern Bloc believed that the bilateral defense agreements that the Soviet Union had concluded with its new allies, as well as the presence of Soviet troops on their territory, were sufficient to ensure its security.

In addition, the USSR, which suffered enormous losses during World War II, lacked the economic potential and the technical means to establish a NATO equivalent. The reliability of military personnel in countries which had become friends with Moscow only recently, and after many of them had been in the enemy camp, was also in doubt.

Soviet tanks during “Brotherhood of Arms” exercises.

Semelyak / Sputnik

However, over time, the economic situation in the USSR began to improve. Through the efforts of hundreds of Soviet military advisers, the East German, Czechoslovak, Polish, Hungarian and Romanian armed forces were reorganized according to the Soviet model, and many of their officers were trained in Soviet military and military-political academies.

Already in 1951, at a meeting attended by Stalin, the Chief of Staff of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, General Sergei Shtemenko, proposed the creation of a “military alliance of the fraternal socialist countries”. However, the Warsaw Treaty Organization was not established until after the death of the Soviet leader.

The main trigger for its creation was the Paris Agreements signed by the Western Allies in 1954, by which West Germany joined the North Atlantic Alliance and the Western European Union, a military-political organization of European countries, was created. Such an obvious strengthening of the positions of the potential enemy in Central Europe finally led to the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance which was signed in Warsaw in May 1955 by the USSR, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Romania, Albania and Czechoslovakia. , thus formalizing the creation of a military and political alliance of socialist countries.

Under the direction of Moscow

Warsaw Treaty Organization “Vltava” exercises.

B. Gjelsky / Sputnik

Under the terms of this treaty, the parties undertook to assist each other in the event of a military threat, to establish a joint command of their armed forces which, by mutual agreement between them, would be assigned to this command and to carry out “d ‘other concerted actions as much as is necessary to strengthen their defensive force, in order to defend the peaceful work of their peoples, guarantee the inviolability of their borders and their territories and protect themselves against possible aggression ”.

Although the treaty proclaimed the equality of its participants, in reality from the earliest days of the organization’s existence and until its dissolution, the key role was played by the Soviet Union. The drafts of all the key documents that were considered by the highest body of the organization – the Political Advisory Committee (whose sessions were attended by the heads of government of the member states) – were first approved in Moscow. .

In addition, the positions of Commander-in-Chief and Chief of Staff of the Joint Armed Forces of the Warsaw Pact member states invariably belonged to Soviet commanders, while representatives of other armies were usually their deputies.

Czechoslovakian tank crews and Soviet soldiers during joint exercises.

Vladimir Peslyak / TASS

While the United States meticulously calculated and distributed the financial burden of maintaining NATO among all of its member countries, almost all of the costs of the Warsaw Pact were borne by the Soviet Union. The USSR accounted for about 45 percent of funds allocated to the work of the Joint Command and its personnel, while its share in funding the joint armed forces and military infrastructure of the organization exceeded 90 percent.

To fight against the counter-revolution

Soviet leaders viewed the Eastern Bloc military-political alliance as an effective counterweight to the North Atlantic Alliance. Nikita Khrushchev called the Warsaw Pact “an important stabilizing factor in Europe”.

Besides being a foreign policy tool for Moscow, the Warsaw Pact has also become an important instrument for resolving crisis situations in the socialist camp.

Street fights in Budapest, 1956.

Berkó Pál / FORTEPAN (CC BY-SA 3.0)

During the Hungarian Uprising (or, as it is called in modern Hungary, the Revolution) of 1956, Soviet troops entered the country with the aim – by order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Joint Armed Forces Ivan Konev – to render “fraternal assistance to the Hungarian people to defend their socialist gains, to defeat the counter-revolution and to eliminate the threat of a fascist revival”. The official theory was that they acted “at the request of the government of the Hungarian People’s Republic on the basis of the Warsaw Pact concluded between the countries of the socialist camp”.

While the USSR in Budapest was mostly fending for itself (with the support of the Hungarian People’s Army and the country’s security services), the task of suppressing the Prague Spring of 1968 fully involved its Warsaw Pact allies. In addition to Soviet units, Czechoslovakia was invaded by troops from Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary and the GDR.

The Warsaw Pact expired in 1985. Thus, on April 26, the parties extended it for 20 years, fully unaware that it did not have five. After the USSR began to collapse, followed by the fall of socialist regimes in Eastern Europe and the unification of Germany, the existence of the pact became unnecessary.

Troops of the Warsaw Treaty Organization in Prague, 1968.

Tiedemann / Getty Images

On July 1, 1991, representatives of the USSR, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia signed in Prague a protocol on the complete end of the Warsaw Pact. Meanwhile, over the next 20 years, all of Moscow’s former allies joined the North Atlantic Alliance.

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