The Cold War

Primary source documents

Collections are from US secretaries of state, individual activists and propagandists, and many émigré groups involved in the ideological struggle. Important subsets are collections relating to “citizen diplomacy,” in which individuals and organizations acted to defuse international tensions, particularly the danger of nuclear conflict; records of organizations on the front lines, such as the Free Europe Committee (later RFE/RL), involved in broadcasting and other activities aiming to penetrate the Iron Curtain; and papers relating to the role of the Third World in the confrontation.

From the National Security Archive

From the Wilson Center. The documents are dated from 1976 to 1989 and include reports from Raul Castro on technical assistance to Angola, memos about conversations between Fidel Castro and Soviet leaders, and a range of other official documents.

From the National Security Archive. The site provides users with access to numerous documents related to the activities of Soviet submarines during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Held at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. on October 16, 2013, this document includes authoritative essays and timelines of important events.

Sourced entirely from the National Archives, U.K., Cold War Eastern Europe, Module I: 1953-1960 provides access to over six thousand files from the political departments of the U.K. Foreign Office responsible for reporting on the Soviet Union and the socialist states of Eastern Europe.

Interviews with Hungarian Refugees on Western Broadcasts

The digital collection consists chiefly of summary transcripts of 705 interviews conducted with refugees from the USSR during the early years of the Cold War.

Making the History of 1989 has three key features: a substantial collection of high quality primary sources; a set of multimedia interviews that make visible the processes by which historians transform events and sources into historical narratives; and lesson plans and document based questions provide historical context, tools, and strategies for teaching the history of 1989 with primary sources in ways that make “history making” visible and vivid.

From Macalester College, Seventeen Moments in Soviet History is a multi-media archive of primary materials designed to introduce students and the general public to the richness and contradictions of Soviet history. The archive may be accessed by year or by theme. Subject essays written by a contributing scholar provide brief introductions to over 200 subjects. These essays are supported by more than 1400 images, 270 video clips, music with translated lyrics, and over 600 primary texts, as well as links to relevant materials outside the website.

Published in 1960 and available in full text from the Internet Archive.

This collection of primary source documents discusses international relations during World War II and the years shortly after. It begins with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed in 1939 and ends with documents from the 1950’s. The collection contains a wide variety of documents including agreements, memorandums, meeting minutes, cables, letters, diary entries, and military reports from WWII. The documents mainly come from Russian and Bulgarian archives.