For the first time the BStU has made available online 30 key documents on cooperation between the East German Ministry for State Security (MfS, Stasi) and the Soviet KGB. These documents include records of conversation, directives, and transcripts from visits: http://www.bstu.bund.de/DE/Wissen/MfS-Dokumente/MfS-KGB/_inhalt.html?nn=1704304.

The documentation came into being in conjunction with a joint project with the History and Public Policy Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWICS) in Washington, DC. In this joint project, various archives in the former “satellite states” of the Soviet Union are seeking to make up in part for the relative unavailability of the KGB files in Russia for Western researchers (although individual KGB documents can be found in various places). The traces the KGB left behind in today’s more available archives are being pursued.

In addition, 50 basic documents regarding the work of the East German secret police, the Stasi, have been placed online: http://www.bstu.bund.de/DE/Wissen/MfS-Dokumente/Grundsatzdokumente/_inhalt.html?nn=1704304. These include directives, decrees, and orders. This is supplemented by a complete index of the over 1,000 documents edited and published by the Research Division of the BStU during the last 20 years in various publications: http://www.bstu.bund.de/DE/Wissen/MfS-Dokumente/Verzeichnis/_inhalt.html?nn=1704304.

The basic documents from the BStU’s archives focus among other things on the status, tasks, and functioning of the MfS. The should assist researchers in analyzing the Stasi records on a primary-source basis. For example, the documents include the law establishing the MfS and guidelines for its public-relations work.

The offering of online documents will be steadily supplemented. In this way, the BStU seeks to present the public with a means for a quicker and at the same time a substantive entry point into the MfS as a topic of research.