From the holdings of Russian State Archive of Contemporary History, Moscow, Russia = iz fondov Rossiiskogo gosudarstvennogo arkhiva noveishei istorii, Moskva, Rossiia

The files of the International Department of the CC document Soviet foreign policy decision-making during the time of Nikita Khrushchev's consolidation of power. During this critical period, the Central Committee endured not only a turbulent struggle for leadership following the death of Stalin but faced crises in East Germany, Poland and Hungary, as well as confrontation with the West in Asia, the Middle East and Western Europe. (In 1957 the department was reorganized into two departments: the International Department and the Department for Relations with Communist and Workers' Parties of Socialist Countries). Within this collection is documentation of:

• Khrushchev's struggle with Molotov over the direction of Soviet foreign policy
• Soviet support for movements of national liberation in the post-colonial world
• Soviet relations with the Communist Parties of Eastern Bloc nations
• The Soviet Union's response to the Korean cease-fire and the decolonization of Indochina
• The initial cracks in the Iron Curtain as the USSR joined selected international organizations and permitted increased cultural, athletic, religious and political contact with the non-Communist world
• Soviet withdrawal from Austria and the decisions surrounding the Geneva summit conference of 1955
• The monitoring of foreign emigres and foreign delegations in the USSR
• The Soviet dilemma of dealing with the revisionist path of Yugoslavia
• The demands of Communist parties of the Eastern Bloc for greater diversity in the aftermath of Stalin's death