The Reinsurance Treaty of June 18, 1887 was an attempt by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to continue to ally with Russia after the League of the Three Emperors had broken down in the aftermath of the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian War.

Facing the competition between Russia and Austria–Hungary on the Balkans, Bismarck felt that this agreement was essential to prevent a Russian convergence toward France and to continue the diplomatic isolation of the French so ensuring German security against a threatening two-front war. He thereby hazarded the expansion of the Russian sphere of influence toward the Mediterranean and diplomatic tensions with Vienna.

The secret treaty signed by Bismarck and the Russian Foreign Minister Nikolay Girs was split in two parts:

As part of Bismarck's system of "periphere diversion" the treaty was highly dependent on his personal reputation. After the dismissal of Bismarck, his successor Kaiser Wilhelm II felt unable to obtain success in keeping this policy, while the German Foreign Office under Friedrich von Holstein had already prepared a renunciation toward the Dual Alliance with Austria–Hungary.

Sahra Wagenknecht (born July 16, 1969 in Jena, Thuringia) is a German politician. She is a Member of the Bundestag, author, and a member of the National Committee of the Left Party. Since May 2010 she is deputy chairperson of Die Linke.

Wagenknecht was born on July 16, 1969, in the East German city of Jena. Her mother worked for a state-run art distributor. Her father, whom she never met, was Iranian. She was cared for primarily by her grandparents until 1976, when she and her mother moved to East Berlin. While in Berlin, she became a member of the Free German Youth (FDJ). She completed her Abitur exams in 1988 and joined the Socialist Unity Party (SED) in early 1989.

From 1990 until 1996 she studied Philosophy and New German Literature in Jena, Berlin and Groningen. Her final thesis covered the topic of the young Karl Marx's interpretation of Hegel. The dissertation was published as a book in 1997.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the transformation of the SED into the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), Wagenknecht was elected to the new party's National Committee in 1991. She also joined the PDS's Communist Platform, an orthodox Marxist faction.