Warsaw Pact was a treaty that held most Eastern European nations in a military command under tight Soviet control. Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union signed the treaty in Warsaw in May 1955. They claimed they signed the treaty as a response to the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a defense alliance formed by the United States and its European allies. NATO was formed in 1949. Albania withdrew from the Warsaw Pact in 1968.
Soviet control of its Warsaw Pact allies declined sharply in 1989 and 1990. This decline occurred as a result of Communist parties being driven from power in peaceful revolutions in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia. In 1990, Hungary declared that it would no longer participate in military operations associated with the pact. Hungary also announced its intention to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact by the end of 1991. Poland and Czechoslovakia announced plans to withdraw from the pact as well. In addition, East Germany’s membership in the pact ended in 1990, when the country became part of a united Germany. In 1991, the leaders of the six nations remaining in the Warsaw Pact formally agreed to dissolve the pact.
