România în Organizaţia Tratatului de la Varşovia, vol. II: 1962-1968

Autor: Gavriil Preda, Petre Opriş

INST, 2009
17 x 24; 447 p.
ISBN 978-973-7861-50-4
Pret: 17,5 lei

 ROMANIA IN THE WARSAW TREATY ORGANIZATION.

DOCUMENTS (1954-1968), Second tome: 1962-1968

          Petre Opriş and Gavriil Preda have published the second volume of an archival-based collection documenting the sometimes contentious relationship between Romania and the Warsaw Pact (112 documents from 1962 to 1968). Published by the National Institute for the Study of Totalitarianism in Bucharest, the entire collection focuses on the period 1954-1968. First tome was published in 2008 and it contains 131 documents from 1954 to 1961. For more information, contact Petre Opriş (petreopris@yahoo.com).

The establishment of the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO) on 14 May 1955 represented a highly significant event in the dynamic of the Cold War. Following the official emergence of a USSR-led political-military alliance on the European continent, the existing tensions between the superpowers of the time, the USA and the USSR, as well as between the European states divided by the Iron Curtain deepened.

For the political and military leaders of the states within the socialist camp, the establishment of the Warsaw Treaty Organization was not a surprise. The organizational, doctrinal and logistical standardisation of the Polish, Czechoslovak, Hungarian, Romanian and Bulgarian armed forces began as early as 1951. The Soviet military model imposed by Josef Stalin at “The Conference of representatives of the people’s democratic states” (Moscow, 9-12 January 1951) was enforced in all those countries between 1951 and 1954.

As soon as the Warsaw Treaty Organization was officially established in May 1955, the plan of creating Soviet-like armed forces in every member state of that alliance entered a new phase.

Romania’s inclusion on the list of WTO’s founding states was not a surprise. Soviet troops had been stationed in Romania since 1944, and in 1951 the Romanian political and military leaders were enforcing the Soviet standards in the Romanian armed forces, according to the program which Josef Stalin had imposed.