1991, THE WARSAW PACT IS DISBANDED IN BUDAPEST

Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home. She has been reading about the Warsaw Treaty Organization, the defence treaty signed in Warsaw (Poland) in May 1955 during the Cold War. The Warsaw Treaty was disbanded in Budapest on a day like today in 1991.

The Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO), officially the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, commonly known as the Warsaw Pact (WP), was a collective defence 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.

The Warsaw Pact was established as a balance of power or counterweight to NATO.

There was no direct military confrontation between them; instead, the conflict was fought on an ideological basis and in proxy wars. Both NATO and the Warsaw Pact led to the expansion of military forces and their integration into the respective blocs. Its largest military engagement was the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 with the participation of all Pact nations except Albania and Romania, which, in part, resulted in Albania withdrawing from the Pact less than a month later.

More information: Open Democracy

The Pact began to unravel in its entirety with the spread of the Revolutions of 1989 through the Eastern Bloc, beginning with the Solidarity movement in Poland, its electoral success in June 1989 and the Pan-European Picnic in August 1989.

East Germany withdrew from the Pact following German reunification in 1990.

On 25 February 1991, at a meeting in Hungary, the Pact was declared at an end by the defence and foreign ministers of the six remaining member states.

The USSR itself was dissolved in December 1991, although most of the former Soviet republics formed the Collective Security Treaty Organization shortly thereafter. Throughout the following 20 years, the seven Warsaw Pact countries outside the USSR each joined NATO (East Germany through its reunification with West Germany; and the Czech Republic and Slovakia as separate countries), as did the Baltic States which had been part of the Soviet Union.

The Warsaw Treaty's organization was two-fold: the Political Consultative Committee handled political matters, and the Combined Command of Pact Armed Forces controlled the assigned multi-national forces, with headquarters in Warsaw, Poland.

The Supreme Commander of the Unified Armed Forces of the Warsaw Treaty Organization, which commanded and controlled all the military forces of the member countries, was also a First Deputy Minister of Defence of the USSR, and the Chief of Combined Staff of the Unified Armed Forces of the Warsaw Treaty Organization was also a First Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces. 

Therefore, although ostensibly an international collective security alliance, the USSR dominated the Warsaw Treaty armed forces, analogous to the United States' domination of the NATO alliance.

The strategy behind the formation of the Warsaw Pact was driven by the desire of the Soviet Union to prevent Central and Eastern Europe being used as a base for its enemies. Its policy was also driven by ideological and geostrategic reasons. Ideologically, the Soviet Union arrogated the right to define socialism and communism and act as the leader of the global socialist movement. A corollary to this was the necessity of intervention if a country appeared to be violating core socialist ideas, explicitly stated in the Brezhnev Doctrine.

Before the creation of the Warsaw Pact, the Czechoslovak leadership, fearful of a rearmed Germany, sought to create a security pact with East Germany and Poland. These states protested strongly against the re-militarization of West Germany.

The Warsaw Pact was put in place as a consequence of the rearming of West Germany inside NATO. Soviet leaders, like many European countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain, feared Germany being once again a military power and a direct threat. The consequences of German militarism remained a fresh memory among the Soviets and Eastern Europeans. As the Soviet Union already had bilateral treaties with all of its eastern satellites, the Pact has been long considered superfluous, and because of the rushed way in which it was conceived, NATO officials labelled it as a cardboard castle.

The USSR, fearing the restoration of German militarism in West Germany, had suggested in 1954 that it join NATO, but this was rejected by the US and UK.

The eight-member countries of the Warsaw Pact pledged the mutual defence of any member who would be attacked. Relations among the treaty signatories were based upon mutual non-intervention in the internal affairs of the member countries, respect for national sovereignty, and political independence.

More information: Thought

For 36 years, NATO and the Warsaw Pact never directly waged war against each other in Europe; the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies implemented strategic policies aimed at the containment of each other in Europe, while working and fighting for influence within the wider Cold War on the international stage. These included the Korean War, Vietnam War, Bay of Pigs invasion, Dirty War, Cambodian–Vietnamese War, and others.

In 1989, popular civil and political public discontent toppled the Communist governments of the Warsaw Treaty countries. The beginning of the end of the Warsaw Pact, regardless of military power, was the Pan-European Picnic in August 1989. The event, which goes back to an idea by Otto von Habsburg, caused the mass exodus of GDR citizens and the media-informed population of Eastern Europe felt the loss of power of their rulers and the Iron Curtain broke down completely. This broke the brackets of Eastern Europe, which could no longer be held together militarily by the Warsaw Pact.

Independent national politics made feasible with the perestroika and glasnost policies induced institutional collapse of the Communist government in the USSR in 1991.

From 1989 to 1991, Communist governments were overthrown in Albania, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union.

On 25 February 1991, the Warsaw Pact was declared disbanded at a meeting of defence and foreign ministers from remaining Pact countries meeting in Hungary.

More information: Russia Matters

On the day I became Soviet leader, in March 1985,
I had a special meeting with the leaders
of the Warsaw Pact countries and told them:
You are independent, and we are independent.
You are responsible for your policies,
we are responsible for ours.
We will not intervene in your affairs, I promise you.

Mikhail Gorbachev

BUCHAREST: SURVIVING ALL THE ADVERSE EVENTS

The Grandma in front of St. Anton Church

After four days on The Orient Express crossing East Bulgaria without any kind of connection, The Grandma has just arrived this afternoon to Bucharest. The weather is cold 1ºC and 89% of humidity. After visiting the most incredible cathedrals, The Grandma prefers to stay inside the train until tomorrow when the weather predictions are better than today. Meanwhile, she's reading some information about the capital of Romania before visiting one of the most beautiful and enigmatic places in Romania: Transylvannia.

Bucharest is the largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than 60 km north of the Danube River and the Bulgarian border.

More information: Bucureşti Administraţia Locală

The Romanian name București has an uncertain origin. Tradition connects the founding of Bucharest with the name of Bucur, who was a prince, an outlaw, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a hunter, according to different legends. In Romanian, the word stem bucurie means joy and it is believed to be of Dacian origin.

First mentioned as the Citadel of București in 1459, it became the residence of the famous Wallachian prince Vlad III the Impaler.

The Grandma inside St. Spyridon Cathedral

Partly destroyed by natural disasters and rebuilt several times during the following 200 years, and hit by Caragea's plague in 1813–14, the city was wrested from Ottoman control and occupied at several intervals by the Habsburg Monarchy (1716, 1737, 1789) and Imperial Russia (three times between 1768 and 1806). It was placed under Russian administration between 1828 and the Crimean War, with an interlude during the Bucharest-centred 1848 Wallachian revolution. Later, an Austrian garrison took possession after the Russian departure, remaining in the city until March 1857. On 23 March 1847, a fire consumed about 2,000 buildings, destroying a third of the city.

In 1862, after Wallachia and Moldavia were united to form the Principality of Romania, Bucharest became the new nation's capital city. In 1881, it became the political centre of the newly proclaimed Kingdom of Romania under King Carol I. During the second half of the 19th century, the city's population increased dramatically, and a new period of urban development began. 

More information: Romania Tourism

Between 6 December 1916 and November 1918, the city was occupied by German forces as a result of the Battle of Bucharest, with the official capital temporarily moved to Iași, in the Moldavia region.

In January 1941, the city was the scene of the Legionnaires' rebellion and Bucharest pogrom. As the capital of an Axis country and a major transit point for Axis troops en route to the Eastern Front, Bucharest suffered heavy damage during World War II due to Allied bombings. On 23 August 1944, Bucharest was the site of the royal coup which brought Romania into the Allied camp. The city suffered a short period of Nazi Luftwaffe bombings, as well as a failed attempt by German troops to regain the city.

More information: World War II in Romania

After the establishment of communism in Romania, the city continued growing. New districts were constructed, most of them dominated by tower blocks. During Nicolae Ceaușescu's leadership (1965–89), much of the historic part of the city was demolished and replaced by Socialist realism style development: the Civic Centre and the Palace of the Parliament, for which an entire historic quarter was razed to make way for Ceaușescu's megalomaniac plans. On 4 March 1977, an earthquake centered in Vrancea, about 135 km away, claimed 1,500 lives and caused further damage to the historic centre.

The Romanian Revolution of 1989 began with massive anti-Ceaușescu protests in Timișoara in December 1989 and continued in Bucharest, leading to the overthrow of the Communist regime.

To see far is one thing, going there is another - Constantin Brancusi.

NAIARA: ROMANIAN MYSTERY

Naiara visits Hollywood, Los Angeles

Naiara was born in Alba Iulia, one of the towns in Transylvania (Romania) which still conserves its Latin etymology:  Alba (alba-ae) means “light” and Iulia means “consecrated to Jupiter” (Iovis). 

Jupiter was considerate the main god in the Roman mythology. The legend says that Jupiter liked creating handmade things and this is something that connects this god with Naiara, who is a carpenter, and adores working with wood and carve in it.

Romania is the country home of some genius like Nadia Comăneci, who won five medals in the Olympic Games and was the first athlete who reached a 10 mark; Badea Cârţan, a farmer who was an activist defending Transylvanian people rights against the Austro-Hungarian Empire; Herta Müller, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature or Vlad Tepes (aka Dráculae).

Naiara enjoys her work and during The Addams' trip to San Francisco, she decided to visit another acclaimed city: Los Angeles. She wanted to meet Carpenters, her favourite music group and spent some hours in Hollywood sharing time and knowledge with the Twilight’s cast to remember her ancestors.

  

Cine are carte, are parte!

He who has a book, has power.

Romanian Proverb