This article widens the analysis of international organisations by including communist organisations, in particular the Warsaw Pact and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON). Drawing on archival research in Moscow, Bucharest, Berlin, Geneva and Rome, this article traces the origins, the evolution and the collective actorness of both organisations. Both COMECON and the Warsaw Pact went through a process of institutionalisation, reorganisation and multilateralisation and began to share many characteristics with their Western counterparts, such as the European Economic Community and NATO. Contrary to conventional wisdom these organisations thus developed into multilateral international organisations, which the other members could use to challenge Soviet unilateralism. Comparing COMECON and the Warsaw Pact with each other and with their Western counterparts, this article shows how these Eastern European international organisations contributed to shifting the balance of power within the Soviet Bloc by empowering their members as sovereign states and themselves as collective actors.

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The aim of this article is to investigate how the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (csce) succeeded in channelling the Cold War in a peaceful direction by facilitating a Pan-European dialogue during the second half of the Cold War (1972–1990), and what lessons we can learn from it today in terms of dialogue facilitation, so as to raise the profile of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and reduce international tensions. It is based on the hypothesis that the csce facilitated the ‘multilateralisation of European security’ through dialogue, and stabilised European relations by turning security into a joint venture. This article concludes with ten recommendations for facilitating dialogue through the osce so as to multilateralise European security again today.

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