Warsaw Pact

The Warsaw Pact, officially the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republics of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955, during the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact was the military complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon), the regional economic organization for the socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe. The Warsaw Pact was created in reaction to the integration of West Germany into NATO in 1955 per the London and Paris Conferences of 1954, but it is also considered to have been motivated by Soviet desires to maintain control over military forces in Central and Eastern Europe.

Its members were:

• Albania (withheld support in 1961 because of the Soviet-Albanian split and formally withdrew in 1968 in response to the Pact's invasion of Czechoslovakia)
• Bulgaria
• Czechoslovakia
• East Germany (withdrew on 2 October 1990 prior to German reunification)
• Hungary (temporarily withdrew from 1–4 November 1956 during the Hungarian Uprising)
• Poland
• Romania
• Soviet Union

In July 1963, the Mongolian People's Republic asked to join the Warsaw Pact under Article 9 of the treaty, however due to the emerging Sino-Soviet split, Mongolia remained in an observer status. The Soviet government agreed to station troops in Mongolia in 1966.

Debt

Loans were contracted to obtain Western technology and/or consumer goods. However, Western Europe experienced a recession during the 70s, while the Soviets meanwhile had their own economic problems which caused them to raise the prices of raw materials sent to Eastern Europe. Economic problems in the rest of the Eastern Bloc meant that these debts kept accumulating, although Ceaușescu infamously “solved” this by imposing severe austerity measures, which led to his overthrow in 1989. The only countries in the region without large debt problems where Czechoslovakia and Albania, the latter due to its policy of self-reliance and importing as little as possible, but that in turn characterized the entire regime with increasingly spartan living standards and a lack of spare parts for industry.

Indebtedness became so bad that West Germany offered to give Hungary a new loan in 1989 on condition it remove its barriers on the Hungarian-Austrian border. Hungary agreed, whereupon large numbers of East Germans suddenly went “vacationing” in Hungary, which set into motion the events that would lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Protests at the end of the Cold War

In the late 1980s and early 90s the Warsaw Pact economies were stagnant, and the citizens of these countries were gaining a view into the capitalist world, something much pioneered by Gorbachev's policy of Glasnost. Thus they sought a “best of both worlds” situation — an abundance of consumer goods (which they believed existed in the West for most citizens) along with less restrictions of the press, but also full employment and other policies of socialism. Many were dissatisfied with their governments at the time, yet this does not mean the ordinary citizen cared much for the views of Milton Friedman or Hayek.

The CIA had a part in this as well, primarily in supporting Solidarity throughout the 80s. When it came to post-socialist elections there was definite involvement of the US government, mainly via the National Endowment for Democracy.