Polskie Dokumenty Dyplomatyczne 1977

This 11th volume in the series Polish Diplomatic Documents presents 352 documents on socialist Poland’s foreign policy in 1977.

That was a year when the human rights question rose to become an increasingly important element of foreign policy, following the June 1976 events and the subsequent emergence of a political opposition in Poland.    The violation by “people’s democracies” of the so-called third-basket commitments under the Helsinki Final Act, was also high on the agenda of the CSCE review conference in Belgrade.

On the bilateral front, a major event (also related to human rights) was the December visit to Poland by the U.S. President and its impact on Polish-Soviet relations.

Important visits were also paid by Edward Gierek to France and Italy (during which he had an audience with Pope Paul VI), and by German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to Poland.

The sources in the volume come mainly from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Communist party’s Central Committee, and they are interestingly supplemented with documents created by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The bulk of the materials are classified, and previously unpublished. The volume has a name index and an extended subject index, with information about the MFA’s organizational structure and operations provided in the preface and in annexes.