Akademik

   / Warsaw Treaty Organization

(WTO)

   Created in 1955 as a response to West Germany’s admission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance—or as it was known in the West, the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO) or Warsaw Pact—was a mutual defense arrangement between the Soviet Union and its allies in the Eastern Bloc. In addition to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the original members included Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. Despite a pledge of noninterference in the internal affairs of fellow members, the WTO invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 in response to internal reforms of the Communist Party. As a result of the events of 1989, which saw the end of one-party rule across the Eastern Bloc, the viability of the Warsaw Pact was fundamentally challenged; the reunification of Germany in 1990 only deepened doubts about the WTO’s future. On 1 July 1991, the organization was officially dissolved in Prague. In the wake of its dissolution, a number of former members began talks with NATO, resulting in Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic joining the United States–backed security organization in 1999. Former WTO members Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria followed suit five years later. Albania, which left the Warsaw Pact in 1968, joined NATO on 1 April 2009.