Polskie Dokumenty Dyplomatyczne 1972

This inaugural volume in the series Polish Diplomatic Documents contains 240 documents on Polish foreign policy in 1972. Created by Polish authorities (mostly the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), public institutions, press, political parties and other social organizations, these source materials come from the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Central Archives of Modern Records. As with most of similar foreign publications on diplomatic activity, documents created by military and civilian intelligence remain outside the purview of this volume.

The volume presents documents previously unpublished — most of them got classified status — while leaving out that year’s official foreign policy documents: agreements, communiqués, conventions, declarations and statements. Annex 3 provides information about major bilateral agreements. The volume comes with a name index, a subject index and a block diagram of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ organizational structure in 1972.

The documents are presented in chronological order, and selection criteria include proportionality and illustrative potential: even though the archive materials on Czechoslovakia and East Germany are incomparably more numerous than those relating to e.g. Austria or Iraq, such countries of relatively lower weight in Polish foreign policy are taken into account, too, with at least one document specific to them being included in the collection.