The USSR and the Two German States 1949–1953. Sources from German and Russian archives

Compreted associated Edition project

Funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media and the ZZF (2013–2018)

Project Management: Prof. Dr. Martin Sabrow

Researcher: Ole Kröning

The edition initiated by Jochen P. Laufer († 16.3.2016) presents new sources on the mutual foreign policy of the USSR, the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany. It follows on chronologically from volume 4 of the edition "Die UdSSR und die deutsche Frage" edited by Jochen P. Laufer and Georgij P. Kynin and thus continues the documentation of Soviet German policy for the period up to Stalin's death. The edition also places the new sources in an editorial context with documents from the two German states on their mutual foreign policy and their USSR-related foreign policy in the context of the Cold War.


The edition was developed as a project of the Joint Commission for the Study of the Recent History of German-Russian Relations in cooperation with the Institute for General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow). The documents were selected on the basis of the holdings of the two foreign policy archives, the AVP RF in Moscow and the PA AA in Berlin. In addition, documents from the RGASPI (Moscow) and the Federal Archives were included in the edition.
 One focus of the edition is on hitherto largely unknown Soviet memos on talks between the leaders of the Soviet Control Commission and the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.