Page 254 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V
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water 2031



                                                                                Gutta cavat lapidem. [Dripping water
                                                                       hollows out a stone.] • Ovid (43 bce–17 ce)





            out in Hungary, the Soviets, without consulting their  Holloway, D., & Sharp, J. M. O. (Eds.). (1984). The Warsaw  Pact:
            allies, crushed it with 200,000 troops. In 1968, when the  Alliance in transition? Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
                                                                The Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Retrieved Feb-
            Czechoslovak government introduced reforms such as    ruary 9, 2004, from www.isn.ethz.ch/php
            greater freedom of the press, the Soviets reacted by occu-  The Warsaw  Pact. Retrieved February 9, 2004, from www.
                                                                  fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1955warsawpact.html
            pying Czechoslovakia withWarsaw Pact forces consisting
            of twenty-three Soviet divisions supplemented by five east
            European divisions and a small group from Bulgaria.This
            preponderance of Soviet forces clearly demonstrated the
            actual position of the east European allies in the organi-                           Water
            zation,as well as the coercive nature of Communist rule in
            general. In 1981, the Soviets were spared the difficult    ater covers nearly 75 percent of the earth’s surface
            choice of whether to use WTO forces to invade Poland, Wand is an integral component of every living
            where the Solidarity movement was challenging the gov-  being. Fresh water is essential for human survival; while
            ernment, when the Polish leadership itself imposed mar-  a person can live for weeks without food, one can only
            tial law. These three crises, especially the last two, led to  survive a few days without water.Throughout history, the
            increasing disillusionment among the east European allies.  location of available water has played an important role
            The Romanians did not send any troops to help put down  in human development and influenced settlement pat-
            the Prague Spring in 1968 and shortly thereafter insisted  terns and farming, social customs, religion, transporta-
            that Soviet troops leave their country.Albania, which had  tion, and power generation.
            already become inactive, completely withdrew in 1968
            also. During the 1980s, meetings of the Political Consul-  Settlement
            tative Committee,allegedly the highest organ of theWTO,  The availability of fresh water for human and animal con-
            often provided the increasingly restive east European allies  sumption and crop irrigation has influenced human set-
            a forum for voicing their views.                    tlement for many millennia. Even though water covers
              In 1989 the sudden and unexpected collapse of Com-  much of the earth’s surface, less than 2 percent of it is
            munism in all the Warsaw Pact countries except the  potable.While many different cultures learned to adapt to
            Soviet Union quickly made the pact obsolete. When   harsh or unforgiving environments, water from natural
            East Germany joined the Federal Republic of Germany,  springs,rivers,or rainfall was a necessity for survival.Dur-
            the futility of maintaining the WTO became manifest. On  ing the early history of humans, the availability of water
            1 July 1991,Vaclav Havel, president of Czechoslovakia,  played an important factor in the survival strategy prac-
            declared the Warsaw Treaty Organization dissolved.The  ticed by humans. Archaeologists have discovered habita-
            fact that Havel was a former dissident lent a peculiar  tion sites that date to the foraging (Paleolithic) era and
            irony to the end of this not particularly effective alliance.  indicate humans arranged their movement so they were
                                                                always relatively near a source of fresh water.This would
                                                   Gale Stokes
                                                                have provided them with water for sustenance and in
            See also Eastern Europe; Russian-Soviet Empire      many cases fish to eat. It also would have provided them
                                                                with an advantageous hunting spot by giving the hunters
                                                                an improved chance of catching animals as they visited the
                               Further Reading                  watering hole.AtWadi Kubbaniya in Egypt, for example,
            Gati, C. (1990). The bloc that failed: Soviet-East European relations in  archaeologists have found a series of sites dating to
              transition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
            Holden, G. (1989). The Warsaw Pact: Soviet security and bloc politics.  17,000–15,000 BCE,which followed the river’s path as its
              London: Blackwell.                                streambed moved across the landscape over the centuries.
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