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DsXano t1_jcru7cx wrote

Can someone please explain the warsaw pact and its members and where they are today to me? I love history but I never really learned about it.

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Doctor_Impossible_ t1_jcsezql wrote

The Warsaw Pact was essentially meant to mirror NATO as a military alliance. The countries are where they where then, they haven't moved or anything. East Germany no longer exists as it reunified with West Germany. Poland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania, the Czech Republic all joined NATO over the past 20-odd years. The USSR dissolved.

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elmonoenano t1_jcvfor2 wrote

It was also supposed to create an economic sphere to rival the common market in western Europe. It didn't really work well at that. But part of the reason for it was so that the USSR could offer something in place of the Marshall plan money that the USSR was forcing those countries to turn down.
Tony Judt's book, Postwar, does a good job of covering it, but it covers pretty much everything during the postwar period so it's a pretty weighty tome. But it's one of the best history books I've ever read.

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Eminence_grizzly t1_jd23899 wrote

I think the pact itself was no more than a formality. The Russians de facto controlled all those countries so they decided to write that fact down somehow. Some kind of a cargo cult mimicking NATO, I'd say.

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