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Foreign Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office: East-West Contacts Department...

Description and record details

Reference FCO 34
Title Foreign Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office: East-West Contacts Department and Cultural Exchange Department: Registered Files, Cultural Agreements and Technological Exchanges with the Communist Bloc (EW and PW Series)
Date 1968-1976
Description

This series consists of the records of the East-West Contacts Department and its succesor from February 1971, the Cultural Exchange Department, relating to cultural agreements and exchange programmes with the Soviet Union, China, and Mongolia, and technological and cultural agreements and exchange programmes with Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.

Arrangement

Former file reference within annual file cycles

Related material

For earlier records see FCO 27

For records of the Northern Department see FCO 28

Held by The National Archives, Kew
Former reference in its original department EW and PW file series
Legal status Public Record(s)
Language

English

Creator

Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Cultural Exchange Department, 1971-1977

Foreign and Commonwealth Office, East-West Contacts Department, 1968-1971

Foreign Office, East-West Contacts Department, 1967-1968

Physical description 369 file(s)
Access conditions Open unless otherwise stated
Immediate source of acquisition

From 1998 Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Accruals Series is accruing annually
Administrative/ biographical background

The East-West Contacts Department dealt with the technological and cultural exchange programmes and agreements with most of the communist world where the government allowed such programmes, though technological agreements with the Soviet Union were handled by the Northern Department and its successors, and with China and Mongolia by the Far East Department. Such programmes for East Germany and Berlin were handled by the Western Department and its successors. No such programmes and agreements were possible with Albania, Cuba, North Korea and North Vietnam.

The department was replaced by a Cultural Exchange Department in February 1971, which handled the above and questions of youth exchanges, cultural and technical exchanges and town twinning.