ABSTRACT
Despite the statements of member-state leaders in the early years of the Gorbachev era, the disarmament process did not really act as a cohesive element of the Warsaw Pact in the second half of the 1980s. Although it was not as dividing as other issues of the period, individual members promoted their own, often conflicting interests even in the approach to disarmament. The reasons were varied and reflected the complexity of the situation, both international and within the Eastern Bloc. In the eyes of the Eastern leaders, the vision of economic benefits of disarmament outweighed many of the issues on the road to reach the goal. In consequence, the approach to disarmament shows how enormous and bizarre the Warsaw Pact's defensive turn was in the examined period. The disarmament also failed to stop centrifugal tendencies within the organization. But in a broader perspective, the alliance played an important role in disarmament talks in the second half of the 1980s as its framework helped to maintain a coherent line of East European states on the reduction of conventional forces, which was necessary to reach an agreement, facilitating the conclusion of the CFE Treaty.
