What did we call the alliances made by the Soviet Union and the other communist countries that it controlled during the Cold War?

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The Warsaw Pact was a collective defence treaty established by the Soviet Union and seven other Soviet satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe:  Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania (Albania withdrew in 1968).

What did we call the alliances made by the Soviet Union and the other communist countries that it controlled during the Cold War?

What did we call the alliances made by the Soviet Union and the other communist countries that it controlled during the Cold War?

Formally known as the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance, the Warsaw Pact was created on 14 May 1955, immediately after the accession of West Germany to the Alliance. It complemented the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, which was the regional economic organisation set up by the Soviet Union in January 1949 for the communist states of Central and Eastern Europe.

The Warsaw Pact embodied what was referred to as the Eastern bloc, while NATO and its member countries represented the Western bloc.

NATO and the Warsaw Pact were ideologically opposed and, over time, built up their own defences starting an arms race that lasted throughout the Cold War.

What did we call the alliances made by the Soviet Union and the other communist countries that it controlled during the Cold War?

Force comparison 1987, NATO and the Warsaw Pact

The Warsaw Pact was declared at an end on 25 February 1991 and the Czechoslovak President, Vaclav Havel, formally declared an end to it on 1 July 1991. Gorbachev’s policy of openness (Glasnost) and restructuring (Perestroika), together with other initiatives, opened the way for popular uprisings. The Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 and communist governments in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Romania and Bulgaria started to fall.

The break-up of the Warsaw Pact was shortly followed by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991.  

The Soviet Union and seven of its European satellites sign a treaty establishing the Warsaw Pact, a mutual defense organization that put the Soviets in command of the armed forces of the member states.

The Warsaw Pact, so named because the treaty was signed in Warsaw, included the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria as members. The treaty called on the member states to come to the defense of any member attacked by an outside force and it set up a unified military command under Marshal Ivan S. Konev of the Soviet Union. The introduction to the treaty establishing the Warsaw Pact indicated the reason for its existence. This revolved around “Western Germany, which is being remilitarized, and her inclusion in the North Atlantic bloc, which increases the danger of a new war and creates a threat to the national security of peace-loving states.” This passage referred to the decision by the United States and the other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on May 9, 1955 to make West Germany a member of NATO and allow that nation to remilitarize. The Soviets obviously saw this as a direct threat and responded with the Warsaw Pact.

The Warsaw Pact remained intact until 1991. Albania was expelled in 1962 because, believing that Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev was deviating too much from strict Marxist orthodoxy, the country turned to communist China for aid and trade. In 1990, East Germany left the Pact and reunited with West Germany; the reunified Germany then became a member of NATO. The rise of non-communist governments in other eastern bloc nations, such as Poland and Czechoslovakia, throughout 1990 and 1991 marked an effective end of the power of the Warsaw Pact. In March 1991, the military alliance component of the pact was dissolved and in July 1991, the last meeting of the political consultative body took place.

READ MORE: Soviet Union: Stalin, Cold War & Collapse 

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What was the Soviet Union alliance called?

The Warsaw Pact was a collective defence treaty established by the Soviet Union and seven other Soviet satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe: Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania (Albania withdrew in 1968).

What were the alliances in the Cold War?

The Cold War world was shaped and divided by political and military alliances. The best known of these alliances were NATO and the Warsaw Pact, formed in Europe after World War II. 2.

What countries did the Soviet Union control during the Cold War?

The United Socialist Soviet Republic, or U.S.S.R. , was made up of 15 republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

Why is it called the Cold War?

It was called the Cold War because neither the Soviet Union nor the United States officially declared war on each other. However, both sides clearly struggled to prevent the other from spreading its economic and political systems around the globe.