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

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.

Former file reference within annual file cycles

For earlier records see FCO 27

For records of the Northern Department see FCO 28

• 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

From 1998 Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Topics

International

Asia

Europe and Russia

Communism

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.