The Cold War Research Group was established in 1998 as an Inter-University Consortium, which main aim was to manage various research and educational projects in the field of the contemporary political, diplomatic, intelligence, and military history and to facilitate the process of declassification of archival documentation in cooperation with the respective state institutions. CWRG functions within the framework of the Bulgarian Association of Military History, a national professional NGO. In the last decade representatives from ten Bulgarian universities and research centres took part in the CWRG activity (Sofia University, University of National & World Economy, New Bulgarian University, Rakovsky Defense and Staff College, and Police Academy in Sofia, Plovdiv University, Varna Free University, American University in Blagoevgrad, Institute of History and Institute of Balkan Studies at the Bulgaria Academy of Sciences).

CWRG collaborated with more than twenty partners in Europe, North America, and Asia for the implementation of its research projects (amongst them were Harvard University Center for Cold War Studies, Cold War Studies Centre at LSE in London, Cold War Center at East China University in Shanghai, Center for Cold War Studies at the Institute of World History in Moscow, Cold War History Research Center in Budapest, etc.). The largest projects were realized in cooperation with the Cold War International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C., Parallel History Project on Cooperative Security in Zurich, and Mannheim University' European Security Project, sponsored by Volkswagen Stiftung. Since 1998 CWRG members published more than 70 publications, among them eight volumes of newly declassified documentary collections on various issues Bulgaria in the Warsaw Pact, NATO in the Balkans, Dossier Vatican, Bulgarian Intelligence and Security Services in the Cold War years, Middle East Conflict and Bulgaria, etc. The Group was co-organizer of different international workshops and seminars, for instance, "Cold War in the Balkans: History and Consequences" International conference (Plovdiv, 2000), "The Cold War and its Legacy: Crisis management, Ethnic Conflicts and the Challenges to International Security and Regional Cooperation" HESP Postgraduate Summer School (Pamporovo, 2002), "The European dimension in history teaching: 1939-1989: half a century living with communism", Council of Europe Bulgarian-Romanian Seminar (Sofia and Ruse, 2005), etc. In September 2008 started a new regional multicultural project "Lights and Shadows in the Balkans" with CWRG participation, sponsored by the Hellenic Foundation for Culture in Athens.

Most recently, CWRG published An Odyssey into Two Worlds, by Jordan Baev and Kostadin Grozev (Sofia, 2008). The book deals with the case of George Andreytchine, a Bulgarian American shot by Stalin's secret police in 1950. An Odyssey into Two Worlds was acclaimed as a "non-fiction bestseller" by Bulgarian National TV, and was chosen by the weekly Kultura as the "book of the month" in Bulgaria.