Selected Declassified Russian Archives: Sino-Soviet Relations, Volume One

The 12-volume Selected Russian Declassified Archives: Sino-Soviet Relations, edited by Shen Zhihua, director of the Center for Cold War International History Studies at East China Normal University, contains 2,625 declassified Russian documents from 1945 to 1991. Some are unique copies, the only ones known to exist anywhere in the world; others were declassified and made available by certain Russian archives in the last century, only to be hidden away again soon afterward.

The collection covers China's political and military situation in different periods, Sino-American and Soviet-American relations, relations between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and the Korean War. It even includes exchanges of letters in which the leaders of China and the Soviet Union berated each other as their relationship soured. Bringing together the full range of archival documents on Sino-Soviet relations, it also includes a research introduction by the editor, along with the compilers' textual studies and explanations. It offers scholars and anyone interested in the inside story of Sino-Soviet relations from after World War II to the dissolution of the Soviet Union an invaluable collection of firsthand historical materials.