The Warsaw Pact: disintegration and collapse (1985–1991)

Implementation: 2017–2019

Head of project: Matěj Bílý

Description of project: The analysis of the last years of the existence of the Warsaw Pact in the time of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev draws on the research of primary documents in Czech and foreign archives (Poland, Germany, the USA). It focuses on the political and military structures of the Pact and it puts its development in the context of ongoing breakthrough events not only during the last phase of the Cold War but also of in the course of political and power changes in the Soviet Union and its sphere of interest in Europe. It therefore also reflects the policy of Czechoslovak normalization leadership. The research also addresses the role the Warsaw Pact played in the process of dismantling of the Eastern Bloc. At the same time, it tries to clarify to what extent the individual member states, including the ČSSR, attempted to use the Pact’s multilateral framework to promote their particular interests after 1985.