The Warsaw Pact was a military alliance formed in 1955 by the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries in response to the formation of NATO. The Pact integrated the armed forces of Eastern Europe under unified Soviet command and recognized East Germany as an independent state. It had two major organs - the Political Consultative Committee which handled political matters, and the Combined Command of Pact Armed Forces which controlled multi-national forces assigned to it. The purposes of the pact were to reinforce communist dominance in Eastern Europe and counterbalance NATO by increasing the Soviet Union's international power. Rising anti-Soviet and anti-communist movements in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s weakened the Pact, and it dissolved in 1991 when the Soviet Union relinquished control