Russian Archives: Prospects for Cold War Studies

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Notes

 [1] See Jonathan Haslam, “Collecting and Assembling Pieces of the Jigsaw: Coping with Cold War Archives.” Cold War History 4, no. 3 (April 2004): 144–48.

 [2] Now these collections are stored at the Russian State Archive on Socio-Political History (Rossiiskii Gosudarstvenny Arkhiv Sotsialno-Politicheskoi Istorii – RGASPI) and the Russian State Archive on Current History (Rossiiskii Gosudarstvenny Arkhiv Noveishei Istorii – RGANI).

 [3] Here we are talking about document publications with research institutions and projects acting as important co-participants, rather than those prepared under official bilateral agreements between Foreign Ministries involving specialists from relevant archives. Examples of the latter include series like “Soviet–Rumanian Relations 1917–1947” (vol. 3, 1941–1947); “Soviet–Israeli Relations” (vol. 2, 1954–1967), and planned new publications – “Russia/USSR–Italy 1861–1961,” “Russia–Canada 1900–2000,” etc.

 [4] G. P. Murashko, ed., Eastern Europe in the Documents from Russian Archives, 2 vols. Novosibirsk: Sibirskii Khronograph, 1997–98; T. V. Volokitina, ed., Soviet Factor in Eastern Europe. 1944–1953: Documents, 2 vols. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1999–2000; G. N. Sevostianov, ed., Soviet–American Relations. 1945–1948. Moscow: MFD, 2004.

 [5] Unlike the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 (see Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble.” Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy 1958–1964. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1997), the Berlin Crisis of 1958–1961, conflicts at the Middle East in 1956, 1967, 1973 and Angola in the 1970s, as well as many others, so far have been only partly traced through Russian archival collections.

 [6] Documents from opis 128 are now in the process of declassification.

 [7] As we know, materials of CPSU CC Plenums up to 1966, as well as those of CPSU Congresses, which are of considerable value for Cold War studies, are declassified at RGANI.

 [8] Aleksandr Fursenko, ed., Presidium TsK KPSS 1954–1964, vol. 1. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2003, 2004.

 [9] N. S. Simonov, Voenno-promyshlennyi komplex SSSR v 1920–1950 gody: Tempy ekonomicheskogo rosta, struktura, organizatsiya upravleniya i proizvodstva (Military-Industrial Complex of the USSR in the Years 1920–1950: Rates of Economic Growth, Structure, Organization of Management and Production). Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1996; Matthias Uhl and Vladimir I. Ivkin, “‘Operation Atom’. The Soviet Union's Stationing of Nuclear Missiles in the German Democratic Republic, 1959.” The CWIHP Bulletin 12–13 (2002): 299–307; Natalia I. Yegorova, “Stalin's Conception of Maritime Power: Revelations from the Russian Archives.” Journal of Strategic Studies 28, no. 2 (April 2005): 157–86.

[10] Jonathan Haslam, “Collecting and Assembling Pieces of the Jigsaw,” 149.