ABSTRACT
The Helmut Schmidt Foundation generously granted permission to work with Schmidt's private papers at the Archiv Helmut Schmidt in Hamburg. Schmidt's Soviet Union file contains his correspondence with Leonid Brezhnev as well as memoranda of conversations and notes on his personal meetings with Leonid Brezhnev, Andrei Gromyko, Nikolai Tichonov, Vladimir Novikov and other Soviet leaders. The bulk of Schmidt's Soviet Union file concerns his backchannel communications with Valeri Lednev as well as memoranda and reports from Egon Bahr's meetings with Lednev and Wjatcheslav Kevorkov. The German Committee on East European Trade Relations was another key player in terms of the Federal Republic's Soviet trade. The evidence at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley contributed decisively to the findings of this book. In terms of US-Soviet relations, the papers of Jack Matlock provide a meticulous account of George Shultz's efforts to work for the establishment of renewed dialogue with the Soviet Union.
