The Breakup of the Soviet Europe Seldom in world history has there been such a sweeping change of the political map in the absence of major military conflict as the fragmentation of the former Soviet Union and the reorganization of the former states that made up the European members of the Warsaw Pact. East Germany has been reunited with West Germany. Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia have both fragmented, the former into 2 independent states, the latter into 5. The former Soviet Union has fragmented into 15 independent states. Russia and 10 of the newly independent states are loosely bound together in the new Commonwealth of Independent States.