and the Defence Burden, 1940-1945. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Harrison Mark, ed. (1998). The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Samuelson, Lennart. (2000). Plans for Stalin’s War Machine: Tukhachevskii and Military-Economic Planning, 1925-1941. London: Macmillan.
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Simonov, Nikolai S. (1996). “’Strengthen the Defence of the Land of the Soviets’: The 1927 ‘War Alarm’ and Its Consequences.” Europe-Asia Studies 48(8): 1355-64.
One of the Napoleonic wars, the War of the Third Coalition, occurred between 1805 and 1807. Russia first participated in the conflicts arising from France’s efforts to expand its dominance over continental Europe and the Middle East in 1798, in the War of the Second Coalition, along with Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, and the Ottoman Empire. Most of the direct Russian involvement was in the Eastern and Northern Mediterranean, with Admiral Fedor Ushakov occupying the Ionian Islands and General Alexander Suvorov campaigning through Italy. Emperor Paul, however, became annoyed with his allies, especially Britain. In 1800 he withdrew and formed an alliance with France, led by Napoleon Bonaparte. This dramatic reversal contributed to a reaction and the assassination of Paul in March 1801.
His successor, Alexander I, influenced by pro-British and anti-French advisers such as Adam Czartoryski, signed an alliance with Britain in April 1805. This was the linchpin of a third coalition war against Napoleon that also included Austria, Naples, and Prussia. Russian action again centered on the Mediterranean, with a fleet under Admiral Dmitri Seniavin sent from the Baltic to assure dominance of the Adriatic Sea and curb French expansion into the Balkans, especially at the fortress-stronghold of Ragusa (Dubrovnik). Though the British reaffirmed their supremacy over the French at sea at the Battle of Trafalgar (September 1805), poor Russian and Austrian leadership on land in Central Europe led to Napoleon’s decisive victories, especially at Austerlitz in December 1805. Austria was forced to sign a peace treaty, while Russia suffered additional defeats. Finally, at a historic meeting between Napoleon and Alexander I at Tilsit in July 1807, Russia agreed to peace terms that abandoned its Mediterranean positions to Napoleon and joined the French Continental System against Britain, thus leaving all of Europe except Russia under French dominance. Napoleon’s effort to expand that dominance to Russia in 1812 provoked another coalition war that led to his eventual defeat. See also: ALEXANDER I; AUSTERLITZ, BATTLE OF; NAPOLEON I; TILIST, TREATY OF
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mackesy, Piers. (1957). The War in the Mediterranean, 1803-1810. London: Longmans, Green. Saul, Norman E. (1970). Russia and the Mediterranean, 1797-1807. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
WARSAW, BATTLE OF See WORLD WAR II.
The Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO), also referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was created on May 14, 1955, by Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union. Officially known as the Warsaw Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, it was a Soviet-led political and military alliance intended to harness the potential of Eastern Europe to Soviet military strategy and to consolidate Soviet control of Eastern Europe during the Cold War. The organization was used to suppress dissent in Eastern Europe through military action. It never enlarged beyond its original membership, and was dissolved in 1991, prior to the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself.
The Soviet and East European governments presented the WTO as their response to the creation of the Western European Union and the integration of West Germany into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1955. Though often described as an alliance, the facade of collective decision-making in WTO masked the reality of Soviet political and military domination. The 1955 treaty established the Joint Command of the armed forces (Article 5) and the Political Consultative Committee (Article 6), both headquartered in Moscow. In practice, however, the Joint Command, as well as the Joint Staff drawn from the general staffs of the signatories, were part of the Soviet General Staff. Both the Pact’s commander in chief and its chief of staff were Soviet officers. The Joint Armed Forces had no command structure, logistics, directorate of operations, or air defense network separate from the Soviet defense ministry.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
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Over the years the military structure of the Warsaw Pact was adjusted to reflect the evolution of Soviet strategy and changes in military technology. During the first decade of the organization’s existence, political control over the non-Soviet forces was its principal focus. Following Stalin’s death, East European militaries were partly renationalized, including the replacement of Soviet officers in high positions with indigenous personnel, and a renewed emphasis on professional training. The Polish October of 1956, and the Hungarian revolt that same year, raised serious concerns in Moscow about the reliability of non-Soviet Warsaw Pact forces.
In the 1960s the lessons learned from de-Stalinization, as well as Albania’s defection from the Warsaw Pact, brought about greater integration of the WTO through joint military exercises, intensified training, and the introduction of new Soviet equipment. The most significant reorganization of the WTO took place in 1969, including the addition of the Committee of Defense Ministers, the Military Council, the Military Scientific Technical Council, and the Technical Committees. These and subsequent changes allowed increased participation from the East Europeans in decision making, and helped the Soviets better coordinate weapons research, development, and production with the East Europeans.
In addition to its external defensive role against NATO, the Warsaw Pact served to maintain cohesion in the Soviet bloc. It was used to justify the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and again to prepare for an invasion of Poland in 1980 or 1981 if the Polish regime failed to suppress the Solidarity movement. The Warsaw Pact was also an instrument of Soviet policy in the Third World. In the 1970s and 1980s the Soviet Union relied on several non- Soviet WTO members to assist client states in Africa and the Middle East.
The alliance began to unravel with the introduction of Mkhail Gorbachev’s perestroika in the Soviet Union, and his attendant redefinition of Soviet-East European relations. Though the alliance was renewed in 1985, as required by the treaty, deteriorating economic conditions and the rising national aspirations in Eastern Europe put its future in question. The Soviet military attempted to adjust to the shifting political landscape. In 1987 the WTO modified its doctrine to emphasize its defensive character, but this and other proposed changes proved insufficient to arrest the decomposition of the alliance. The key development that
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hastened the WTO’s demise was the unification of Germany, which constituted an irreparable breach in the Pact’s security perimeter. Under pressure from Eastern Europe, the decision to abolish the military structures of the Pact was taken at a Political Consultative Committee meeting in Budapest in late February 1991; the remaining political structures were formally abolished on July 1, 1991.
The overall value of the Warsaw Pact to the Soviet Union during the Cold War remains a point of debate. Clearly, the organization legitimized the continued Soviet garrisoning of Eastern Europe and provided additional layers of political and military control. In addition, the potential contributions of the East European armed forces to Soviet military strategy, as well as the use of the members’ territory, were significant assets. On the other hand, throughout the Warsaw Pact’s existence, the ultimate reliability and cohesion of its non-Soviet members in a putative war against NATO remained in question. In addition, the declining ability of the East Europeans to contribute to equipment modernization, especially as their economies deteriorated in the late 1970s and 1980s, raised doubts about the overall quality of the WTO armed forces. See also: COMMUNIST BLOC; NORTH ATLANTIC
