Currently there are sanctions against Iran for missile test, sanction against North Korea for its nuclear activities, sanctions against Russia for its intervention in Ukraine and so on. All these sanctions are having crippling effects.
Did the Western alliance try to put sanctions upon Warsaw Pact countries during Cold War? If yes, then why didn't it have any deterrence effect against the Soviet Block?
USSR was a Superpower with a big economy and a big alliance. Imposing sanctions to do major damages was beyond the capability of the USA.
Superpower is a term used to describe a state with a dominant position, which is characterized by its extensive ability to exert influence or project power on a global scale.
On the contrary, according to the definition, Russia is not a Superpower as it can't project its influence or power on a global scale. This is due to the fact that Russia doesn't have enough allies, and the size of the Russian economy is too small to do anything special.
NATO's Russian version CSTO has only six full members (after the exit of 3 members) and this organization doesn't pose any challenge to NATO whatsoever.
Eurasian Economic Union has only 5 members of which 4 of them are poor countries. BRICS and SCO are dominated by China.
Sanctions generally work when the country which suffers is isolated relatively and rely on trade with the opposite members of the sanctions. When Warsaw Pact existed it formed a separate and relatively independent economic structure from the west. It was named Comecon.
As you said correctly: "All these sanctions are having crippling effects."
This is an essential part of a sanction. If the country or countries don't suffer from the sanction. Of course we all know Comecon as a centrally organized trade agreement was way less efficient than western free trade, but if there were any sanctions against Warsaw Pact members, it would never be efficient at all.
However de-facto there were sanctions between the two blocks, they generally avoided the trade with each other and COCOM list defined a series of high tech equipment which can't be sold to Warsaw Pact members. These actions were not very effective since both of the blocks were capable to maintain at least a basic living standard from their own resources until USSR overspent their money on military race and had serious structural problems. Also interesting fact is that computers generally weren't sold into USSR and allies, but they managed to make replicas like Hungarian Videoton computers.
When you think about sanctions, you have to get your terminology right.
You could say that the capitalist countries had sanctions against the communist countries and vice versa, but that doesn't quite fit the word because two large blocks were facing each other. NATO and the West organized an embargo and some level of boycott, but it was not global and it was not understood to be global. There were non-aligned countries. Some in the West thought "if they're not with us, they're against us," but there were too many to carry this through.
