Cold War History Research Center Budapest

Location:
Cold War History Research Center, Budapest
Közraktár u. 4-6. V. 513
H-1093 Budapest
Hungary

Contact:
Prof. Csaba Békés
Tel. +36 (0)1 482 7236
bekes.csaba[at]tk.mta.hu

www.coldwar.hu/

Description: 

The Center was established in December 1998, as the first scholarly institution founded as a non-profit organization in East Central Europe. Its English language website, providing articles, documents, chronologies, bibliographies and finding aids is the only such institution in the former Soviet Bloc and now it is an indispensable resource for international scholars and students interested in the history of the Cold War, Communism, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Bloc. Since 2009 the Center has been affiliated with the Institute of International Studies at Corvinus University of Budapest, and beginning in 2017, also with the Centre for Social Sciences, at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

 

Cold War Interests: 

The Cold War History Research Center (CWHRC) is specialized in historical research in the Cold War era, focusing on the former Soviet Bloc. Thus, from the time of its establishment the Center has been contributing to the flourishing of the "new Cold War history" aimed at transforming the previous one-sided approach based primarily on Western sources, finally into a really international discipline through the systematic exploration of the once top secret documents found in the archives in the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries.
One of the Center's main projects has been the creation of an extensive (approx. 3000 pages) English language online Cold War history chronology on East-Central Europe: The Chronology of the Soviet Bloc, 1945-1991. (Parts 1, 2 and 3 covering the period 1945-1980 are already available, while Part 4, up to 1991 will be completed in 2017).

The Center works together with researchers and various international cooperating partners from all over the World, among others, the Cold War International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC, the Parallel History Project on Cooperative Security (formerly: on NATO and the Warsaw Pact), the National Security Archive, Washington DC, the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on War Consquences, Graz, European Institute, Columbia University, New York, etc.

In 2009 the Center launched an (unpaid) internship project and so far the internationally renowned research activity of the Center has attracted more than 130 interns from Western and Eastern Europe (mostly in the framework of the Erasmus program), the United States, China, Ukraine, Turkey, Greece and many more countries. In 2017 the Center also became an official internship partner of Oxford University. Since 2010, the Center has also organized an annual two-day English language international student conference on the Cold War:  the 8th iteration was held at the Central European University in Budapest in June 2017.

The increasingly popular Facebook page of the Center, fully operated by our interns runs the "On this day" project drawing attention to important (but often forgotten) events and personalities of the Cold War era. It also has a special focus on women's history.