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The Warsaw Pact (WP), [d] formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance (TFCMA), [e] was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republics of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955, during the Cold War.
Austria was never part of the Warsaw Pact. During the Cold War, the Iron Curtain was a political metaphor used to describe the political and later physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991.
As such, the bloc was opposed to the political systems and foreign policies of communist countries, which were centered on the Soviet Union, other members of the Warsaw Pact, and usually the People's Republic of China. The name "Western Bloc" emerged in response to and as the antithesis of its communist counterpart, the Eastern Bloc.
The members of the Warsaw Pact, sometimes called the Eastern Bloc, were widely viewed as Soviet satellite states. These countries were occupied (or formerly occupied) by the Red Army, and their politics, military, foreign and domestic policies were dominated by the Soviet Union. The Warsaw Pact included the following states: [36] [37]
Two military alliances (The North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact) in Europe during the Cold War. A military alliance is a formal agreement between nations that specifies mutual obligations regarding national security. In the event a nation is attacked, members of the alliance are often obligated to come to their defense ...
The most limited definition of the Eastern Bloc would only include the Warsaw Pact states and the Mongolian People's Republic as former satellite states most dominated by the Soviet Union. Cuba 's defiance of complete Soviet control was noteworthy enough that Cuba was sometimes excluded as a satellite state altogether, as it sometimes ...
The Warsaw Pact countries feared that if the Prague Spring reforms went unchecked, then those ideals might very well spread to Poland and East Germany, upsetting the status quo there as well. Within the Soviet Union, nationalism in the republics of Estonia , Latvia , Lithuania , and Ukraine was already causing problems, and many were worried ...
The destruction of Warsaw was practically unparalleled in the Second World War, with it being noted that "Perhaps no city suffered more than Warsaw during World War II", with historian Alexandra Richie stating that "The destruction of Warsaw was unique even in the terrible history of the Second World War". [1]