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Apart from its country-tailored efforts to help promote declassification of security related records of both cold war alliances, the PHP has launched a comparative discussion on declassification policies and procedures. We wish to encourage your comments on the larger issue of declassification policies and would be pleased to consider them for publication on our website. Please send them to php (at) sipo.gess.ethz.ch.
| WARSAW PACT |
PUBLISHED IN |
DATE |
In sieben Tagen am Rhein ( version, 27kb)
Language: German |
Die Welt |
9 May 2006 |
Poland Declassifies over 90 Percent of Warsaw Pact Files
Language: Polish
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Rzeczpospolita |
3 January 2006 |
| Poland Drops the Bomb? |
The Warsaw Voice |
7 December 2005 |
Nukleares Inferno
Language: German |
Spiegel Online |
5 December 2005 |
Licht in Polens düstere Vergangenheit
Language: German |
Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) |
29 November 2005 |
|
Poland Reveals Warsaw Pact War Plans, by Chris Findlay
Language: English |
Security Watch |
28 November 2005 |
Planowano Nuklearną Zagładę Polski, by
Paweł Wroński
Language: Polish |
Gazeta Wyborcza |
26 November 2005 |
World War Three Seen Through Soviet Eyes, by David Rennie
Language: English |
Daily Telegraph |
26 November 2005 |
| Russian Sacrifice: Poland |
International Herald Tribute |
25 November 2005 |
| Poland Risks Ire of Russia over Cold War Files |
Financial Times |
25 November 2005 |
Akta Układu Warszawskiego Zostaną Odtajnione
Language: Polish, English excerpt |
Gazeta Wyborcza |
25 November 2005 |
Akta Układu Warszawskiego: Dwa Miliony Ofiar
Language: Polish
News on Polish Television TVP2
Language: Polish |
Telewizja Polska |
25 November 2005 |
Akta Układu Warszawskiego: Dwa Miliony Ofiar, Polska Agencja Prasowa (PAP)
Language: Polish |
TVP Wiadomości |
25 November 2005 |
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Archiwa Układu Warszawskiego Zostaną Odtajnione, Polska Agencja Prasowa (PAP)
Language: Polish |
Gazeta Wyborcza, Warsaw |
25 November 2005 |
Układ Warszawski wiecznie żywy by Piotr Śmiłowicz
Language: Polish ( 202kb), English Translation by Sven Holtsmark
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Rzeczpospolita, Warsaw |
25 July 2003 |
Loyalties of the Warsaw Pact Seem To Live Forever
Language: English
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Polish News Bulletin |
30 July 2003 |
Comment by Vojtech Mastny
Language: English
|
PHP Website |
13 August 2003 |
Comment by Jordan Baev
Language: English |
PHP Website |
4 September 2003 |
| NATO |
PUBLISHED IN |
DATE |
The Development of the NATO Archives by Lawrence S. Kaplan
Language: English ( 169kb) |
Cold War History 3, No. 3: 103-106 |
April 2003 |
NATO, Secrecy, and the Right to Information by Alasdair Roberts
Language: English ( 87kb) |
East European Constitutional Review 11/12, No. 4/1: 86-94 |
Winter 2002 / Spring 2003 |
Bulgaria
In 1999, the Bulgarian ministers of national defense, foreign affairs and the interior responded favorably to the PHP's request for the declassification of NATO and Warsaw Pact-related documents from the entire Cold War era. As a result, Jordan Baev, the head of the Cold War Research Group-Bulgaria, has provided the PHP with approximately 1,800 documents relating to the Warsaw Pact from the politburo and central committee files in Sofia. In 2000, the Group delivered 3,000 pages of additional documents, including intelligence records, from the foreign and interior ministries archives. An agreement was signed for the subsequent exploration of the Central Military Archives as well as the personal files of the former state and party chief Todor Zhivkov.
A selection of fifty documents illuminating the collapse of the Warsaw Pact (1985-1991) can be found on this website.
For the May 2000 Sofia conference on "The Cold War in the Balkans," the PHP provided support for the publication by Jordan Baev and his team of a book of documents on "Bulgaria and the Warsaw Pact." It has also supported the publication of documents on two CD-ROMs, entitled "Bulgaria in the Warsaw Pact" and "NATO in the Balkans", both of which are available for purchase from the Cold War Group-Bulgaria.
In 2001, Jordan Baev provided the Project with the first batch of documents from the newly opened archive of Todor Zhivkov.
In 2002, the Cold War Research Group-Bulgaria continued its research in the newly available Zhivkov papers. Jordan Baev invited Col. Stancho Stanchev, the newly appointed head of the Archive of the General Staff, to meet with the Project Coordinator in Sofia in August and take part in the Bucharest conference in October.
In 2003, Jordan Baev and his Cold War Research Group-Bulgaria prepared for website publication the complete set of minutes of meetings between Brezhnev and East European leaders from 1972-1981 (the so-called "Crimea Meetings"), an introduction to the collection and translations of the documents. Furthermore, Baev's group selected and delivered to the George Washington University Cold War Group more than 1 500 pages of archival documents on the Vietnam War Soviet-Chinese split for the Budapest conference (30 October - 2 November 2003, Bupapest/Hungary) and started research on new documents regarding the relations between the Warsaw Pact countries and China for the PHP workshop in Beijing in March 2004 (24-26 March 2004, Beijing/China).
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Czech Republic
In response to a request by the PHP, in 1998 the Czech minister of defense ordered the review of all Warsaw Pact-related records in the Prague military archives with the view toward their declassification. By February 1999, however, only a small portion of those records (mainly from the files of the communist party central committee and the operations department of the general staff) had been made available. Following an additional PHP request for further declassification and an administrative reorganization resulting in the creation of the new Central Military Archives, the Ministry of Defense on 22 August 1999 ordered the evaluation within fourteen days of all military files from the Cold War era through 1989, with the goal of lifting their secrecy unless specified otherwise, leading to the anticipated release of an estimated 90 per cent of those files. The tight deadline, however, was not met.
As a result, an interim procedure was adopted whereby researchers may use the available finding aids to request documents, after which the office for the protection of secrets at the Ministry of Defense would rule within a week what, if any, should be withheld on grounds of continued security relevance.
The PHP concluded an agreement with Petr Luňák, a Czech foreign service officer currently assigned to the NATO Office of Information and Press, to undertake a systematic survey of all Czech archival holdings related to the Warsaw Pact and NATO, with the aim of supplying the project with copies of documents. As a result, approximately 12,000 pages of documents have so far been obtained for the Project.
They include extensive records of military planning from the entire Cold War period held at the Central Military Archives, previously withheld records of the communist party central committee up to 1989 from the Central State Archives in Prague, and unique records of meetings of the Warsaw Pact committee of foreign ministers, published on this website as well as additional english annotations, from the archives of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The 1964 war plan, also published on this website as facsimile as well as in an English translation, was among those records.
Warsaw Pact military maps, which Czechoslovakia was in charge of preparing for the entire alliance, and several Warsaw Pact training films, used in preparation of operations against Western Europe, have been located in a special archive.
In 2000, Petr Luňák has obtained a grant from the Czech foreign ministry for the study of the "History of the Military Blocs in Europe." The grant was available in part for research within the framework of the PHP. He has continued a survey of the holdings of the Central Military Archives in Prague and, in 2001, had about 1,500 pages of documents copied. He subsequently delivered for publication on the PHP website Czech archival documents on meetings of Warsaw Pact foreign ministers, consisting of 25 items.
Through Oldřich Tůma, director of the Institute of Contemporary History in Prague, the PHP has received about 500 pages of Warsaw Pact-related documents from the records of the Czechoslovak communist party.
In 2002, Oldřich Tůma agreed to prepare for publication on the PHP website an English translation of the Czech record of the 1 June 1961 meeting between Khrushchev and Czechoslovak party leaders concerning the Vienna summit. It is to be supplemented with the Soviet transcripts of the summit. The Prague Center for Cold War History will conduct research on Czechoslovak participation in the CSCE in the 1970-80s.
In 2003, Oldřich Tůma and the Center for Cold War History selected and copied documents from the party and foreign ministry archives for the project on the security policy situation of Denmark during the Cold War. Topics include relations with the Danish communist party, the peace movement, and the CSCE. For the Budapest (30 October - 2 November 2003, Budapest/Hungary) and Beijing (24-26 March 2004, Beijing/China) conferences, they collected documents from archives in Prague from the 1960-70s concerning the Sino-Soviet rift. Furthermore, documents on the strategic and political role of Mongolia in the Cold War have been collected in anticipation of a possible conference on this subject. Karel Sieber, a member of the Center for Cold War History in Prague and director of the Prague Cold War Web, has begun interviews with Czechoslovak generals on the Warsaw Pact and their country's role in it.
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Germany
Approximately 2,000 pages from the files of the former East German army were obtained by the PHP Coordinator during his two trips to the Federal Military Archives in Freiburg i. Br., Germany. In May 1999, PHP research assistant Christian Nünlist, of the Center for Security Studies and Conflict Research in Zurich, copied in Freiburg 2,500 pages of documents, including a complete record of the meetings of the Warsaw Pact committee of defense ministers (CDM) from 1969 to 1990. The CDM records were published on this website in May 2001.
At the Federal Archives in Berlin (SAPMO) in August 1999, Nünlist researched records of the meetings of the Warsaw Pact political consultative committee, and obtained the total of about 4,000 pages of documents, mainly from the collections Büro Walter Ulbricht, Büro Erich Honecker, and Ministerrat der DDR. To facilitate research in these materials, he compiled the Konkordanzliste of the old and new archival numbers, prepared a detailed list of the copied documents, and drew up organizational charts of the records of the two Büros.
Within the PHP, a Research Group for the Study of Stasi Archives has been established in 2000. Its aim is to analyze East German intelligence documents related to NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Approximately 6,700 pages of records and SIRA printouts have been obtained by the project.
The research group, headed by Bernd Schäfer (who joined the staff of the German Historical Institute in Washington in May 2001), has concluded the first stage of research in the papers of the former East German intelligence services and obtained copies of approximately 5,500 pages of documents. The documents, concerning East German intelligence on NATO, are being processed and evaluated. In November 2001, Schäfer attended in Berlin a conference on the Stasi archives organized by the "Gauck authority," responsible for the archives.
In May 2001, the Coordinator traveled to Berlin and conducted research in the archives of the German Foreign Office to locate records of the Warsaw Pact Political Consultative Committee and had about 2,000 pages of them copied for later publication on the PHP website.
In March and November, Walter Blasi of the Institute of Military Studies in Vienna traveled to Berlin to complete his research on Austria at both the Stasi and the former East Germany party archives in Berlin, and made photocopies.
In 2002, Dr. Manfred Kehrig and Mr. Albrecht Kästner of the Federal Military Archives agreed to cooperate in an oral history project designed to interview former GDR generals and admirals.
In 2003, Klaus Böhme completed oral history interviews with 11 former East German generals and delivered the tapes. Karen Riechert and Bernd Schäfer have transcribed the interviews with Adm. Hoffmann and Generals Streletz, Goldbach, and Harms.
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Hungary
The PHP commissioned Csaba Békés and his associates at the Cold War History Research Center in Budapest to undertake a survey of Warsaw Pact-related documents in the Hungarian party, military, and foreign ministry archives. A 37-page list of such documents with an indication of their contents has been prepared by Imre Okváth. Document collections on Hungary in the Warsaw Pact, on the meetings of the Warsaw Pact's deputy foreign ministers and on operational plans from the 1970s are in the process of being compiled. The Center compiled and translated into English selected materials on Warsaw Pact military exercises from 1956-71 - the resulting collection was published on this website in November 2001. Research on the 1970s and 1980s is continued.
The Center has also selected records of meetings of the Warsaw Pact foreign ministers and deputy foreign ministers. Complemented with documents from East German and Czech archives, these records are being prepared for website publication, most items in English translation.
In September, the Coordinator conducted research in the Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty files on NATO and the Warsaw Pact at the Open Society Archives in Budapest.
In 2002, the Cold War History Research Center delivered the second installment of records of meetings of the Warsaw Pact deputy foreign ministers, consisting of about 220 pages of records of 26 meetings from 1980 to July 1989. The preparation of the collection of documents on Hungary in the Warsaw Pact for online publication is nearing completion.
In 2003, the Open Society Archive provided translations of several hundred Hungarian party and foreign ministry documents, mainly on the CSCE in the 1970s.
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Poland
In June 1999, the PHP addressed to the Polish Minister of Defense a request for the declassification of documents related to the Warsaw Pact. The position adopted by the Polish General Staff that such documents cannot be declassified unilaterally is reportedly being reviewed.
About 600 pages of Warsaw Pact-related Polish communist party documents previously obtained from the Modern Records Archives have been deposited at the National Security Archive. Additional approximately 1,200 pages documents, including records of the Political Consultative Committee meetings in the 1950-70, were obtained in May 2001.
In May 2001, the Coordinator traveled to Warsaw to evaluate taped interviews with Gen. Jaruzelski and other high-ranking Polish generals from the Cold War period. The total of 22 tapes had been recorded by an oral history team of historians from the University of Warsaw, headed by late Prof. Jerzy Poksiński. The highly informative interviews were subsequently transcribed and edited with the assistance of the PHP's Polish associates, Andrzej Paczkowski and Krzysztof Persak, resulting in approximately 350 single-spaced pages.
Through Marcin Zaremba, the PHP received copies of about 1,000 pages of documents from the Polish communist party archives on meetings of the Warsaw Pact Political Consultative Committee in 1956-79.
In December 2001, the Coordinator traveled to Warsaw and discussed access to the still classified military records and records of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in view of the law providing for the declassification in March 2002 of all Polish documents from the Cold War era unless kept classified for specific reasons.
He met with director of the Central Military Archives, Capt. Waldemar Wójcik, his deputy, Lt. Col. Dr. Zygmunt Kozak, and the head of the research and archives division, Maj. Dr. Zdzislaw Kowalski, as well as with Dr. Marek Sedek, director of the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In 2002, the oral history interviews with nine leading Polish Warsaw Pact generals have been prepared for publication on the PHP website. The Coordinator has selected approximately 10 per cent of the text for translation into English and arranged it thematically; Doug Selvage, of the Office of the Historian of the Department of State, is undertaking the translation.
Martin Zaremba conducted research in the central committee files at the Modern Records Archives and photocopied approximately one thousand pages of documents on Poland's role in the Warsaw Pact in the 1960-80s, particularly with regard to the European security conference project.
In June, the Coordinator met in Prague with Pawel Piotrowski, a military historian from the Institute of National Remembrance in Wroclaw, to discuss research in Polish military archives. It was agreed that Pawel would travel to Warsaw to explore and copy documents related to military planning at the Modlin and Rembertów archives and to the Gdynia to study naval planning records at the archives of the Polish Navy, with a particular attention to plans against Denmark and other Nordic countries. Pawel will further examine the papers of the late Professor Poksinski, deposited at the "Karta" Center in Warsaw, and make copies of these and other documents for possible publication on the PHP website, with his commentaries. He will coordinate with Martin further research, particularly in the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In 2003, the PHP coordinator received a negative answer from the director of the Central Military Archives in reply to his letter to the Polish Minister of National Defense, Jerzy Szmajdziński, requesting declassification of the records of the operations department of the General Staff at the Modlin defense ministry archives and the naval archives in Gdynia. The director of the Central Military Archives cited the provisions of the 1991 Warsaw Pact agreement barring access to third parties. Pawel Piotrowski, however, received permission to study other documents in both archives and copy them on the condition that facsimiles would not be published on the website. In Warsaw, Piotrowski copied selected records from the papers of the late military historian Jerzy Poksiński, as well as several hundred documents from the party and foreign ministry archives, mainly on the Warsaw Pact and the CSCE.
See also:
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Romania
In 1999, a sample of about 100 pages of documents from the Romanian party and military archives was received from Professor Mihai Retegan of the University of Bucharest. Following the accession of the Institute for Political Studies of Defense and Military History to the PHP, an agreement was concluded with the director of the Institute, Gen. Mihail Ionescu, to supply previously classified documents concerning Romania and the Warsaw Pact in th 1950-60s in conjunction with an international conference on Romania and the Warsaw Pact, 1955-1970. The conference, cosponsored by the Cold War International History Project of the Wilson Center, was originally planned to be held in September 2001. The Romanian group compiled a partial list of relevant documents located in the former communist party archives and the military archives. In January and May 2001, the coordinator also met with Prof. Dumitru Preda, director of the diplomatic archives of the Romanian foreign ministry then in Washington on a Fulbright fellowship, to discuss the release of documents from his archives for the conference.
Since by the summer 2001 only a small amount of newly declassified archival material necessary for the conference had been obtained, the conference was postponed, and in December the Coordinator traveled to Bucharest with the goal of accelerating declassification and choosing a possible alternative date of the conference. Accompanied by Gen. Ionescu and the Romanian specialist from the School for Slavonic and East European Studies of the University of London, Professor Dennis Deletant, he met with persons whose support was believed to bee necessary to achieve that goal.
They included, besides the heads of the respective archives and their associates, Romania's chief of staff, minister for European cooperation, state secretaries in the ministries of defense and foreign affairs, as well as the President's national security adviser, Dr. Ioan Talpes, who promised to put the necessary declassification decision on the agenda of the next meeting of Romania's National Security Council.
Since, during the Bucharest visit, the Coordinator also received from Gen. Ionescu a number of newly declassified documents of substantial historical value that could be used in preparation for the conference, a new date for holding it was set for the fall of 2002. By that time, further documents, including those from the diplomatic archives, are expected to become available, to be used by the mostly Romanian scholars, who would prepare the conference papers on the basis of new archival evidence, and to other researchers as well. Additionally, the coordinator discussed with the director of the National Archives, Professor Costin Fenesan, the possibility of publishing in digital form stenographic records of the meetings of the Romanian communist party politburo, unique in their significance for the understanding of Romania's maverick position within the Soviet bloc and for the country's independent foreign policy in the second half of the Cold War.
A major effort by the PHP to achieve declassification of Romanian Cold War documents, until now the least accessible in Eastern Europe, has resulted in receiving from Mihail Ionescu a substantial amount of party central committee records concerning relations with the Warsaw Pact through the 1980s (including stenographic minutes of politburo meetings), less from the diplomatic archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and an insignificant amount of documents from the military archives. The most important items are being translated by the CWIHP, to be included in the Bucharest conference document book as well as on the PHP website.
With the assistance in Bucharest of Professor Dennis Deletant, of the University of London, the PHP has made requests for further declassification to Romania's chief of general staff, ministry of defense, and the national security adviser to the President, specifically of documents on military planning against Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey in the 1950s. Action on the requests is still being awaited.
In 2003, Mihail Ionescu, in cooperation with Dennis Deletant, selected and began editing documents on Romania and the Warsaw Pact for publication as a book. They consist mostly of those included in the two-volume briefing book prepared for the October 2002 conference in Bucharest. In the new book, they will appear in both Romanian originals and, in part, in parallel English translations.
The Romanian Institute for Recent History has provided translations of documents for the book and for other PHP projects. In reply to the Coordinator's request for declassification of Romanian records on relations within the Warsaw Pact and assessments of NATO in the 1970-80s, as well as relations with China and Mongolia from 1963 through the 1980s, Mircea Geoana, the Romanian minister of foreign affairs, proposed the conclusion of an agreement between the ministry and the PHP with the view toward providing access to researchers from the Romanian Institute for Recent History. The agreement is pending.
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Russia
In June 1999, the Coordinator traveled to Moscow to take part in the conference on "New Cold War History, Historiography, Theory and Methodology," organized by the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences in collaboration with the National Security Archive and the Cold War International History Project. On that occasion, he visited the Institute of Military History in Moscow, to explore the possibilities of collaboration. He introduced the PHP to members of the Institute and gave them samples of Warsaw Pact documents declassified in central and Eastern Europe.
At the Institute's invitation, the Coordinator subsequently sent its director, Capt. Valerii Vartanov, a draft agreement on cooperation, with extensive supporting documentation. Following further correspondence, Capt. Vartanov, Col. Sergei Lavrenov, and Gen. German Burutin subsequently came to Zurich as PHP's guests to discuss the specifics. At a meeting preceding the workshop in early December 2000, they proposed the conclusion of an agreement between the PHP and Arkhiv-Press, an agency of the Russian Ministry of Defense, which would serve as an intermediary in providing access to archival documents.
As an alternative, the PHP pursued with the Russian representatives the possibility of forming a research group of members of the Military Historical Institute which, as a PHP associate, would conduct research in the Russian archives on specific topics. It was agreed that the Berlin crisis of 1958-61 would be most suitable to start with. A proposal to that effect was subsequently sent to Moscow by the Coordinator.
In 2001, the Institute of Military History in Moscow confirmed its interest in cooperating with the PHP on research concerning the military dimensions of the second Berlin crisis (1958-61), on access to Soviet records of the meetings of the Warsaw Pact Political Consultative Committee, and on conducting oral history interviews with former high-ranking Soviet military officers. The Institute reported having received support by Marshal Viktor Kulikov for the declassification of relevant documents by the Russian General Staff.
In 2002, Matthias Uhl conducted research in the Archives of Economics in Moscow, concerning the Soviet military-industrial complex, especially during the Second Berlin Crisis, and prepared documents for publication on the PHP website.
Following the improvement of NATO-Russia relations, Stefan Libiszewski was in contact with Russian representatives at the NATO headquarters with Brussels, regarding access to Soviet military records. The Coordinator inquired with Sergei Lavrenov, of the Institute of Military History in Moscow, regarding the status of the Institute's projected research in those records in cooperation with the PHP. No progress has been made thus far.
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see also: Archival Legislation
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