In The Warsaw Pact, 1969-1985, young Czech scholar Mat?j Bily analyzes the internal tensions of the Soviet-led Cold War alliance as its careened toward its end. Starting with the peak of the alliance's power under Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, the book follows its ossification to its increasing haplessness under Brezhnev's successors Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko. Rooted in detailed research in Czech, Polish, and German archives, this book presents much previously unknown information about the alliance's mechanisms as it served as one of the Kremlin's increasingly ineffective tools for managing the Eastern Bloc. Bily's findings prove that the Warsaw Pact never became an initiator of political processes within the Soviet sphere of interest and only reactively addressed military issues. The alliance's framework did not allow it to become an incubator or agent of any independent development in the Soviet sphere of influence. To the contrary, events within the Warsaw Pact reflected the overall dismal situation in the Eastern Bloc and the changing policy of the Kremlin toward its East European satellites. Because of the alliance's lack of flexibility and cumbersome internal mechanisms, it was unable to react to the dynamic challenges of the 1980s and helplessly followed a path to its own end.

This book analyzes the last phase of the Warsaw Pact based on unusually large-scale archival research conducted in many countries. Focusing on the changes in the organization's functioning after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union, the author examines the role played by the Warsaw Pact in the final stages of the Cold War, as well as exploring the deepening conflicts between individual member states which resulted from the changing international situation and Gorbachev's initiatives to reform the East European state-socialist dictatorships. The book argues that the causes of the rapid dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in the early 1990s were due to many complicated factors, not simply the collapse of communist power in Eastern Europe, factors such as the loss from early in the second half of the 1980s of important internal ties and the failure to create new ties, disputes between individual member states, and the questioning of the overall legitimacy of the organization, which was indispensable for its effective functioning. The book also highlights the impact of external pressures and developments on the international scene. Overall, the book reveals how an apparently robust and solid multilateral organization can so quickly and unexpectedly disappear.

In The Warsaw Pact, 1969-1985, young Czech scholar Mat?j Bily analyzes the internal tensions of the Soviet-led Cold War alliance as its careened toward its end. Starting with the peak of the alliance's power under Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, the book follows its ossification to its increasing haplessness under Brezhnev's successors Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko. Rooted in detailed research in Czech, Polish, and German archives, this book presents much previously unknown information about the alliance's mechanisms as it served as one of the Kremlin's increasingly ineffective tools for managing the Eastern Bloc. Bily's findings prove that the Warsaw Pact never became an initiator of political processes within the Soviet sphere of interest and only reactively addressed military issues. The alliance's framework did not allow it to become an incubator or agent of any independent development in the Soviet sphere of influence. To the contrary, events within the Warsaw Pact reflected the overall dismal situation in the Eastern Bloc and the changing policy of the Kremlin toward its East European satellites. Because of the alliance's lack of flexibility and cumbersome internal mechanisms, it was unable to react to the dynamic challenges of the 1980s and helplessly followed a path to its own end.