After Communist regimes in Eastern Europe collapsed twenty years ago and the Soviet Union disintegrated two years later, immense opportunities for archival research opened. Even though serious obstacles to archival work have persisted in Russia (which houses the central repositories of the Soviet regime), the archives of nearly all of the former Warsaw Pact countries are now fully or at least largely open. As a result, scholars have been able to explore many aspects of the Warsaw Pact that could only be guessed at in the past, including questions of military planning, force preparations and operations, nuclear command arrangements, and civil-military issues.
This seminar is designed to take stock of where we are twenty years after the collapse of East European Communism. What sources have become, or soon will be, available? To what extent have scholars actually been making use of the immense amount of information now available? How have the newly available documents changed our understanding of the Warsaw Pact? What questions can we now answer more confidently? What are some of the major points that are still unknown? How big a hindrance is pose by the continued problems with archival including documents being declassified by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, altered our understanding of the Warsaw Pact?
This seminar is intended to raise questions as well as to provide some tentative answers. We hope to highlight future directions for research and for the release of documents. Most of all, we hope to discuss how our understanding of Soviet-East European military relations has evolved over the past twenty years.
Related products:
The Warsaw Pact Wartime Statutes: Instruments of Soviet Control (Book and DVD) is available here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/041-015-00307-1?ctid=539
Critical Thinking and Intelligence Analysis is available here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-020-01589-0
Other products produced by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/agency/539
Sponsorship 4
Seminar 6
Declassified Cold War Records 7
FOIA Electronic Reading Room 8
Special Collections 10
The Kuklinski Material 15
The Kuklinski Files 16
Comment on Dr. Kramer 39
The Warsaw Calendernote 41
This information would be a valuable resource to students and historians studying this topic. In addition, intelligence professionals, government officials, and military strategists may benefit from this information.
Product Details
- Warsaw Pact, Treaty of Friendship
- Soviet East European Military Relations in Historical Perspective
- Eastern Europe
- Soviet Union
- Russia