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( Soviet bloc)
During the Cold War, the terms Eastern Bloc, Communist Bloc or Soviet Bloc were used to refer to the member states of the Warsaw Pact, a Soviet-dominated military organization the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and—at least until the early 1960s—Albania. Sometimes, the term is also meant to refer to a wider range of nations, for example including Mongolia, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, or, before the Sino-Soviet Split, the People's Republic of China. Several countries in the Eastern Bloc became communist states as a result of force and the physical elimination of all political opposition to Soviet rule. Afterwards nations within the Eastern Bloc were held in the Soviet sphere of influence through military force. Hungary was invaded by the Soviet Army in 1956 after it had overthrown its pro-Soviet government and replaced it with one that sought a more democratic communist path independent of Moscow, when Polish communist leaders tried to elect Wladyslaw Gomulka as First Secretary they were issued an ultimatum by Soviet military that occupied Poland ordering them to withdraw election of Gomulka for the First Secretary or be "crushed by Soviet tanks"[1]. Czechoslovakia was invaded in 1968 after a period of liberalization known as the Prague Spring. The latter invasion was codified in formal Soviet policy as the Brezhnev Doctrine. During the late 1980s, the weakened Soviet Union gradually stopped interfering in the internal affairs of Eastern Bloc nations. Mikhail Gorbachev's abrogation of the Brezhnev Doctrine in favor of the so-called "Sinatra Doctrine" had dramatic effects across Central and Eastern Europe during this period. The Eastern Bloc eventually came to an end with the collapse of the Soviet controlled governments in Eastern Europe in 1989 (see Revolutions of 1989). The collapse of those governments led to the rapid transition to market economy in countries like Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria. Even before this period, all the countries in the Warsaw Pact did not always act as a unified bloc. For instance, the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia was condemned by Romania, which refused to take part in it.
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