Warsaw Pact
Warsaw Pact (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...
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