The Treaty of Moscow was signed on 12 August 1970 between the Soviet Union and West Germany.[1][2] It was signed by Willy Brandt and Walter Scheel for West Germany's side and by Alexei Kosygin and Andrei Gromyko for the Soviet Union.
Type | Bilateral treaty |
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Signed | 12 August 1970 |
Location | Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
Original signatories | |
Ratifiers |
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In the 1970s, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik 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 (GDR) and the Oder–Neisse line".[3]
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 signees renounced the use of force and recognised the postwar borders, specifically, the Oder–Neisse line, which hived off a large portion of historical eastern Germany to Poland and the Soviet Union.
It also enshrined the division between East Germany and West Germany, thus contributing a valuable element of stability into the relationship between the two countries.