may 14, 1959 - Warsaw Pact

Description:

The Warsaw Pact (or Warsaw Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance) was a treaty that allowed the unification of military command and the maintenance of Soviet military units on the territories of the participating states. Originally, it included: the Soviet Union and Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. (Even though Albania withdrew from the pact in 1968 and East Germany did so in 1990). It was an important pact, as it strengthened Soviet control over their satellites. The Soviet Union invoked the pact in August 1968 to move Warsaw pact troops into Czechoslovakia after it had started bringing the Czechoslovak regime back into the fold after it had begun lifting restraints on freedom of expression and had sought closer relations with the West (in order to bring the regime back to a more restrictive one). After a string of revolutions and changes of power in the satellite countries of the Soviet Union, the Warsaw treaty was declared "non-existent" the 1st of July 1991, and several of the Soviet Union's satellite countries later joined NATO (such as Poland, Romania, Hungary etc...).