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Documents

October 13, 1972

Telex from Department Head van Well, 'China Visit by the Foreign Minister'

In a meeting with Foreign Minister Walter Scheel, Zhou Enlai expressed support for West Germany’s proposal to join the United Nations, discussed European security, and the China's mistrust of the Soviet Union.

October 12, 1972

Department Head van Well to Foreign Office, 'China Visit by the Foreign Minister'

Report on a West German Foreign Ministry delegation to China lead by Walter Scheel exploring the possibility of opening diplomatic relations. In meetings with Chinese Foreign Minister Ji Pengfei they discuss detente, Chinese mistrust of the Soviet Union, and the CSCE.

November 27, 1972

Report by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on Talks Between Zhou Enlai and Walter Scheel

These statements by the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) concern talks between Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and West German Foreign Minister Walter Scheel. The CC assesses the improvement of relations between China and West Germany as adverse to the interests of East Germany and of Socialism. China is criticized for not supporting the idea of a European conference on security and cooperation and for sustaining the role of organizations such as the European Economic Community and NATO. The CC expresses disagreement with China's abstention from the disarmament process and with its position within the UN.

June 2007

On Human Rights. Folder 51. The Chekist Anthology.

Outlines the KGB’s response to the USSR’s signing of the Helsinki Accords in 1975. The accords obligated signatories to respect their citizens’ human rights. This gave Soviet dissidents and westerners leverage in demanding that the USSR end persecution on the basis of religious or political beliefs.

Some of the KGB’s active measures included the establishment of a charitable fund dedicated to helping victims of imperialism and capitalism, and the fabrication of a letter from a Ukrainian group to FRG President Walter Scheel describing human rights violations in West Germany. The document also mentions that the Soviet Ministry of Defense obtained an outline of the various European powers’ positions on human rights issues as presented at the March 1977 meeting of the European Economic Community in London from the Italian Foreign Ministry.

The KGB also initiated Operation “Raskol” [“Schism”], which ran between 1977 and 1980. This operation included active measures to discredit Soviet dissidents Andrei Sakharov, Yelena Bonner, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, measures designed to drive a wedge between the US and its democratic allies, and measures intended to convince the US government that continued support for the dissident movement did nothing to harm the position of the USSR.