ABSTRACT
Since the late 1960s, the necessity of finding an agreement with the West on the convention of a general European security conference (ESC) came to dominate the meetings between the Soviet Union and its East German ally as a sort of “monotone lullaby.” This came to be a recurring leitmotif in the foreign-policy planning guidelines elaborated by the Politburo of the East German Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) as one of the main goals to be attained while the relationship between the two German states evolved in parallel through the paces of the Ostpolitik.
