The Warsaw Pact (also known as the Warsaw Treaty) was a military alliance of the Eastern European bloc countries belonging to the Soviet Union. Organized to balance the perceived threat from the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) alliance, established in 1949. The treaty was created in 1955 and drafted by Nikita Khrushchev, and signed in Warsaw on May 14, 1955. Its members included the Soviet Union, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. This was all of the Communist countries in Eastern Europe except Yugoslavia. The members pledged to defend each other, if one or more of them was attacked. The Warsaw Pact ended, on March 31,1991, and was officially dissolved at a meeting in Prague on July 1. While the pact seemed a beneficial event, it was in fact dominated by the Soviet Union, and efforts to leave were crushed mercilessly. Warsaw Pact forces were used at different times, such as the Prague Spring in 1968, where Warsaw Pact forces invaded Czechoslovakia to suppress democratic reforms that were occurring. This provided public recognition that it was Soviet policy governing the alliance, and that this policy, known as the Brezhnev Doctrine, stated that “When forces that are hostile to socialism and 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.” After this invasion, Albania officially withdrew from the alliance, even though they had stopped supporting it back in 1962. The Warsaw Pact countries and NATO never officially engaged each other in armed conflict, but instead fought the Cold War for over 35 years. IN 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev announced the Sinatra Doctrine, which stated that the Brezhnev Doctrine would be abandoned, allowing Eastern European countries to do as they liked. When it was finally realized that the Soviet Union would not use force to control the Pact’s countries any longer, many changes occurred in Europe. In 1991, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland announced they would withdraw support by July 1st. Bulgaria quickly followed, and the pact was finally officially dissolved at a meeting in Prague on July 1, 1991. On March 12, 1999, former Warsaw Pact countries Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland joined NATO.

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