The Cold War : Primary Source Documents: Declassified Docs

"Constructed and maintained by the Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program, the Digital Archive contains newly declassified historical materials from archives around the world—much of it in translation and including diplomatic cables, high level correspondence, meeting minutes and more. "

Starting with World War II and the atomic bombing of Japan, this policy-oriented documentary takes the story of U.S. nuclear policy, with a focus on the history of nuclear deterrence through the course of the Cold War, and then from the early post-Cold War period to the aftermath of 9/11."
For a breakdown of the contents of each disc, see Annex C.

The National Security Archives collects documents released via Freedom of Information Act requests.
The freely available material on the website includes Electronic Briefing Books providing overviews and selected documents on over 450 topics.
Proquest is digitizing the complete archive on a collection-by-collection basis. See also the Cornell library's subscription to Proquest Digital National Security Archive, below.

Digitized collections of the National Security Archive.
Note: The library has been purchasing collections by request.
Browsing the collection:
To get a better sense of what's in a particular collection, go to http://proquest.libguides.com/dnsa/collectionlist.

"The Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series presents the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity." [web site]

This database of the Foreign Relations of the United States is very helpful if you are searching for something specific, i.e., a mention of a particular individual or incident.
Scroll through the menu to find Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS); browse through the volumes or enter your search in the top window. The Advanced Search offers additional filtering options.
Please note: The date limit is not very helpful as volumes are published many years after the date of the documents.
Tip: To search words proximate to one another, enclose your search terms in quotation marks and then use the tilda ~ and x number of words apart, e.g., "gorbachev berlin"~15 finds the name Gorbachev within 15 words of the term Berlin. This can be helpful when searching across the full-text of this large collection.

Declassified intelligence analysis reports from the CIA.
"This collection of declassified analytic monographs and reference aids, designated within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Directorate of Intelligence (DI) as the CAESAR, ESAU, and POLO series, highlights the CIA's efforts from the 1950s through the mid-1970s to pursue in-depth research on Soviet and Chinese internal politics and Sino-Soviet relations."

First, Deselect All. Next, select U.S. Declassified Documents Online