Warsaw Pact

The example of what [the All-Russian Blind Union] had accomplished since its foundation in 1923, the promise of emancipation entailed in Soviet official narratives about disability, and the opportunity to create partnerships with other blind activists in the socialist camp had real appeal to them.

Not simply slogans given out by local communist parties or plans orchestrated from Moscow, Sovietization and friendship among the blind of the People’s Republics were a means to advance the cause of their national blind communities. This can be seen in the intense correspondence that socialist blind activists exchanged, as well as in the concrete ways in which they mingled at international events.

In fact, between 1951 and 1956, Polish, Czechoslovak, Hungarian, and East German blind activists launched a series of cross-socialist international initiatives, which included International Sport Competitions of Blind Youth, blind vacationers’ exchange program, “Agreements” of cultural collaboration, and the increasingly more frequent mutual visits of blind activists on study trips.

Through them, East European activists began to create a common space of socialist blind advocacy. When the Russian activists entered it, they not only partook in the circulation of disability knowledge that this space enabled but also enhanced its political meaning as a theater of cultural diplomacy and its potential value for making blind people more visible.

(Emphasis added.)

Warsaw Pact sergeants.

Although the inevitable traces of liberal cluelessness (‘Soviet despot’, &c.) make this book less pleasant to read, in terms of noncommunist analyses of the Warsaw Pact this may well be the maturest one that you’ll find (in English). For example:

Dissent within the alliance took place at various levels. In the early 1960s it mainly emerged in the bilateral relations between the Kremlin and an NSWP member, thus serving NSWP emancipation. Later in the 1960s the bilateral tensions were gradually absorbed into the structure of the Warsaw Pact. With the absorption of dissent within the WP itself, the influence of the Soviet Union diminished, and that of the NSWP members grew. This book serves to assess the extent to which decision making within the WP thus became more multilateral, as well as the extent to which the alliance transcended the already existing bilateral ties between the Soviet Union and its so-called ‘satellites’. This process will be called ‘multilateralisation’, and will be used to explain the evolution of the WP as a whole from a Soviet transmission belt into an alliance in its own right.

Even the Soviet intervention in the HPR looks—at least relatively speaking—surprisingly reasonable:

Since Khrushchev’s desire for a further demilitarisation of the Cold War had been genuine, he embarked on a very quick tour of Eastern Europe on 2 November in order to legitimise the intervention. Within one day the Chinese, Czechoslovakians, Romanians, Poles and even the Yugoslavs rallied behind Khrushchev. The communist leaders fully realised that the loss of Hungary would weaken the communist bloc, which would threaten their own security too. Khrushchev’s travels prove that he sought a justification for what could otherwise have been regarded as Soviet imperialism; with Eastern European consent it turned into the salvation of communism instead. Moreover, Tito managed to convince Khrushchev against the wishes of some of his Soviet comrades to allow Kadar to form the new Hungarian government, and accordingly had some stake in Hungarian affairs after all. Moscow did indeed call the shots, but the Eastern European assistance in pulling the trigger strengthened its cause.