USSR forms the Warsaw Pact with East European Communist states

Historical Context Note

Pawel Styrna (University of Illinois at Chicago)

Ed. by Ewa M. Thompson, Rice University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.7.4: Bulgarian Writing and Culture.

Domains

Military
Treaties and alliances

Dates

Date of occurrence 1955-05-14

Places

Bulgaria (Location)
Czech Republic (Location)
Germany (Location)
Poland (Location)
Romania (Location)
Russia (Location)
Slovakia (Location)

Officially known as the Agreement for Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance (in Russian: Dogovor o druzhbe, sotrudnichestve i vzaimnoi pomoshchi), the pact was a communist military alliance dominated by the Soviet Union. Its other members were Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania (until the 1960s). A Soviet marshal was always the head of the Pact’s United Armed Forces. According to communist propaganda, it was a defensive response to “imperialist aggression”, i.e. to the establishment of NATO in 1949 and West Germany’s entry into the alliance in May 1955. However, the armed forces of the Central and Eastern European satellites of the USSR were de facto appendages to the …

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221 words

Citation: Styrna, Pawel. "USSR forms the Warsaw Pact with East European Communist states". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 June 2009 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=3273, accessed 22 November 2024.]

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USSR forms the Warsaw Pact with East European Communist states

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