Over 1.4 million pages from the British Foreign office, electronically searchable for the first time

During the Cold War, the British Foreign Office was interested in every aspect of political, economic, cultural, social, and dissident life behind the Iron Curtain. So, they had embassies and consulates across the Eastern Bloc reporting on state leadership, party politics, protest movements, agricultural output, international trade agreements, scientific progress, minority populations, religion, sporting events, state-run media, and popular culture. And now, these previously secret files are available for teaching and scholarship—searchable with new tools.

The collection, sourced exclusively from The National Archives (UK), lets us look into the workings of every country in the Eastern Bloc during the post-Stalin era, through thousands of English-language insights written in the first person by officials of the time.

For research

For the first time, the full text of these files can be searched with keyword and proximity functions. Hundreds of thousands of pages of critical materials can now be mined with sophisticated tools.

For learning

Students will be excited to engage with previously secret primary sources. More than 80% of the material is written in English and is itself often written as a briefing, so making it accessible to a wide range of students. Additional learning tools include:

• Introductory essays.

• Specially commissioned essays and lesson plans written by members of the Editorial Board.

• A timeline of key events between 1953 and 1982 documented in the files.

• A glossary of key people, including state leaders, leading statesmen, and East European and UK diplomatic personnel, with hyperlinks to relevant search results.

• A Communist States Fact File that includes glossaries of communist state names, governing parties, key organizations, and state leadership positions.

• A Foreign Office Fact File that includes a glossary of relevant Foreign Office political departments and an overview of the UK’s embassy and consulate network in Eastern Europe.

Document types

• Administrative Records

• Correspondence

• Financial Records

• Legal and Treaty Material

• Meeting Minutes

• Memoranda

• Miscellany

• Parliamentary and Official Government Material

• Press and Media

• Print Publications

• Reports

• Speeches and Public Statements

• Visual Media

Themes

• Border Security and Migration

• Dissent, Resistance, and Human Rights

• Domestic Politics

• Economics and Trade

• Embassy and Consulate Administration

• Industry and Agriculture

• International Relations

• Key Events

• Media and Culture

• Military

• Populations and Social Policy

• Religion

• Science and Technology

• Second World War Aftermath

• Secret Intelligence and Espionage

• Sport, Leisure, and Tourism

• Youth and Education

1953-1960: The Khrushchev Thaw and the process of de-Stalinization; the gradual reform and easing of political terror in the Soviet Union; the reassertion of Soviet power across the Eastern Bloc with the formation of the Warsaw Pact; and the military suppression of uprisings in East Germany, Poland, and Hungary.

1961-1966: Events that altered the trajectory of the Cold War; construction of the Berlin Wall; the Cuban Missile crisis; the rise of Leonid Brezhnev and the removal of Nikita Khrushchev as the head of the Soviet Union; and the enactment of drastic reforms within the Soviet Union that culminated in the Sino-Soviet split.

1967-1975: In-depth reporting of the movements for social change in Czechoslovakia (1968) and Poland (1968 and 1970); the subsequent reinstatement of the Soviet model through suppression and military intervention; and the period of détente, which saw the steady easing of tensions between East and West that culminated in Richard Nixon's visit to Moscow in 1975.

1976-1982: The latter Brezhnev years known as the Era of Stagnation, characterized by steady economic decline across Eastern Europe; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979; the deepening rift between East and West as Soviet influence expanded in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia; the non-ratification of SALT II; and the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, which illustrated the deteriorating relationship between the major powers.

Editorial Board

• Mark Allinson, University of Bristol

• Csaba Békés, Research Chair, Centre for Social Sciences, Institute for Political Science, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest

• Peter Bugge, Aarhus University

• Melissa Feinberg, Rutgers University

• Hope M. Harrison, George Washington University

• Matthew Jones, London School of Economics and Political Science

• Pawet Machcewicz, Institute of Political Studies of Polish Academy of Science, Warsaw

• Kristin Roth-Ey, University College London

• Balåzs Szalontai, Korea University, Sejong Campus

• Stephen Twigge, The National Archives, UK

Access Options

The file is currently available as a one-time purchase of perpetual rights or through annual subscription on the History Commons platform with new features including:

• Ability to cross-search across all the history collections, with additional discovery tools

• Updated, faster user interfaces, with mobile versions

• Enhanced indexing

• Search tables hidden within documents and export the data

• Enhanced search tools, including Boolean and proximity operators

• Zooming, printing and downloading

• Free hosting of your related content