We All Fall Down: The Dismantling of the Warsaw Pact and the End of the Cold War in Eastern Europe

Abstract

Abstract Using new evidence from Czech, German, Hungarian, Polish, and Romanian archives, a reconstruction of Eastern European diplomacy at the end of the Cold War shows that it was not just the superpowers that shaped events during this pivotal period: the non-Soviet members of the Warsaw Pact also had agency. From 1989 to 1991, these states recognized that the world was changing and that their relationship with the Soviet Union, codified in the Warsaw Pact politico-military alliance, would impede their success in the post–Cold War world. Eastern European policymakers resolved to destroy the Warsaw Pact that bound them to the Soviet Union, and they decided to align with Western Europe. They also sought to exclude the Soviet Union from the European security architecture, including the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe. They sought security and wanted to hedge against a hard-line takeover in the Soviet Union; but their primary aim was to reap the West's economic benefits.