October 3^rd 2002 marked the opening of the International Conference Romania and the Warsaw Pact, 1955-1989 organized by the Cold War International History Project in cooperation with the Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact (Zurich, Switzerland) and the Institute for Political Studies of Defense and Military History (Bucharest, Romania).

The conference brought together Romanian and Western scholars working on the Cold War to discuss the role played by Romania in the Cold War, specifically, Romania's important role in the creation and evolution of the Warsaw Pact as a military alliance. It also facilitated discussions between policy makers, archivists, and historians from all major Romanian Universities as well as scholars from Hungary, Bulgaria, Moldavia, the UK and the US on topics such as declassification and conservation.


The CWIHP, together with its partners, put together a document reader, containing newly declassified documents from Romanian and US archives. These documents, some of which have been translated by CWIHP, are available in the CWIHP Virtual Archive in the Romania and the Warsaw Pact 1955-89 collection.

The conference in Bucharest is the begining of a major CWIHP involvement in the obtaining, declassifying and publishing documents on Romania's role in the Cold War. Other conferences and document collections will follow.