Abstract
In this article the author challenges conventional wisdom concerning the Warsaw Pact by arguing that the smaller allies had much more room for manoeuvre than has generally been assumed. By means of an analysis of the impact of the second Berlin Crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Sino-Soviet Split on the Warsaw Pact she shows that the first half of the 1960s witnessed a multilateral development within the alliance, surprisingly similar to that in NATO. Several non-Soviet Warsaw Pact members succeeded in using the alliance as a means to assert their own interests. The article concludes with a discussion of the PCC meeting in January 1965, which sealed the end of Soviet choreography. Precisely because the Warsaw Pact was such an empty shell in the first five years of its existence (1955-60), it provided its members with unforeseen opportunities to mould the alliance according to their own wishes.
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