The Treaty of Moscow was signed on 12 August 1970 between the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

and

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

. It was signed by

Willy Brandt Willy Brandt (; born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm; 18 December 1913 – 8 October 1992) was a German politician and statesman who was leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 1964 to 1987 and served as the chancellor of West Ge ...

and

Walter Scheel Walter Scheel (; 8 July 1919 – 24 August 2016) was a German statesman. A member of the Free Democratic Party of Germany (FDP), he first served in government as the Federal Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development from 1961 to 1966 and l ...

for West Germany's side and by

Alexei Kosygin Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin ( rus, Алексе́й Никола́евич Косы́гин, p=ɐlʲɪkˈsʲej nʲɪkɐˈla(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ kɐˈsɨɡʲɪn; – 18 December 1980) was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as the Premi ...

and

Andrei Gromyko Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko (russian: Андрей Андреевич Громыко; be, Андрэй Андрэевіч Грамыка; – 2 July 1989) was a Soviet communist politician and diplomat during the Cold War. He served as ...

for the Soviet Union.

Description

In the 1970s, West German Chancellor

's ''

Ostpolitik ''Neue Ostpolitik'' (German for "new eastern policy"), or ''Ostpolitik'' for short, was the normalization of relations between the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, or West Germany) and Eastern Europe, particularly the German Democratic Republ ...

'' was a policy that "abandoned, at least for the time being, its claims with respect to German self-determination and reunification, recognising de facto the existence of the

German Democratic Republic German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

(GDR) and the

Oder–Neisse line The Oder–Neisse line (german: Oder-Neiße-Grenze, pl, granica na Odrze i Nysie Łużyckiej) is the basis of most of the international border between Germany and Poland from 1990. It runs mainly along the Oder and Lusatian Neisse rivers a ...

".The Federal Republic of Germany's ''Ostpolitik''
on CVCE website (Centre for European Studies). Both sides expressed their ambition to strive for a normalisation of the relations between the European states while they kept international peace and to follow the guidelines of the Article 2 of the

UN Charter The Charter of the United Nations (UN) is the foundational treaty of the UN, an intergovernmental organization. It establishes the purposes, governing structure, and overall framework of the UN system, including its six principal organs: the ...

. The signees renounced the use of force and recognised the postwar borders, specifically, the

, which hived off a large portion of

historical eastern Germany The former eastern territories of Germany (german: Ehemalige deutsche Ostgebiete) refer in present-day Germany to those territories east of the current eastern border of Germany i.e. Oder–Neisse line which historically had been considered Ger ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

and the Soviet Union. It also enshrined the division between

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

and West Germany, thus contributing a valuable element of stability into the relationship between the two countries.

References

Wording of the Treaty Of Moscow

Texts of FRG Treaties with Socialist Countries in 1970–1973

(in English) retrieved from the CVCE website. Source: United States-Department of State. Documents on Germany 1944–1985. Washington: Department of State, .d. pp. 1103–5.
Europe: The End of World War II
August 17, 1970 ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

''.

Footnotes

Moscow Treaty, 1970 Moscow 1970 1970 in the Soviet Union Germany–Soviet Union relations Treaties concluded in 1970 Boundary treaties Moscow 1970 Willy Brandt 1970 in Moscow

Description

See also

References

Further reading

Footnotes