Bulletin No. 2, Fall 1996

PROGRESS ON THE TRAGEDY OF THE SOVIET COUNTRYSIDE

The history of Soviet collectivization has long been obscured by official taboos, historical falsification, and restricted access to archival source material. Until recently, most essential archival material on the subject was classified, closed even to Russian scholars. Since August 1991, state and Communist Party archives have opened their doors to Russian and Western scholars alike, declassifying and making available formerly inaccessible materials on collectivization.

In 1992, V. P. Danilov, Roberta T. Manning, and I began work on a documentary collection, entitled The Tragedy of the Soviet Countryside in Documents and Materials. Our project capitalized on the new openness with the formation of a team of over 30 leading Russian, Canadian, American, English, and Australian scholars to explore the newly available documentation on collectivization.

Our research team is preparing the publication of a five-volume document series on collectivization, from the end of the 1920s to the eve of World War II, to be followed by a one-volume English-language edition. The first three Russian-language volumes will cover the period from 1927 to 1933 when violence, famine, and destruction swept the countryside as collectivization spread. The final two volumes will be devoted to the second half of the 1930s. Volume 4 will focus on the consolidation of the collective farm system in the years from 1934 to 1936, and Volume 5 will trace the story of state-peasant relations from the Great Purges of 1936-1938 to the outbreak of war in 1941. Research will take place in all the central Moscow archives, including the archives of the former KGB (TsA FSK). The Presidential Archives have only partially opened their doors to project members, but have been extremely helpful in facilitating the declassification of key materials, including most recently (in June 1996) a large run of documents from the Mikoian and Molotov fonds.

To date, our first volume has been prepared in draft form and is scheduled to be sent to press (in Russia) in early 1997. Thereafter, we expect to produce one volume in each successive year.
--Lynne Viola

SERAP WORKSHOPS: PAST AND FORTHCOMING

The SERAP Workshop Series features distinguished historians and political scientists who have been invited to the University of Toronto to discuss their most recent research in the archives of the former Soviet Union. The Workshops address problems of archival research, document analysis, and reinterpretations of the Stalin era. In 1996, SERAP hosted the following workshops:

Supply Crises and Consumption in Stalin's Russia: New Archival Discoveries
Elena Osokina, Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences

On 25 January 1996, Dr. Elena Osokina delivered a presentation on supply crises and consumption in Stalin's Russia. The talk continued the focus on Stalinist supply policies in the 1930s presented in her book Hierarchy of Supply (1993). Using mainly the archival material of the former Narkomat of Trade and letters to Molotov and Vyshinskii, Dr. Osokina covered the three major supply crises of the 1930s -- 1928-1933, 1936-1937, and 1939-1941 -- all of them resulting to a certain degree from the policies of intensive industrialization and collectivization of agriculture. Generally speaking, the Soviet state deliberately subordinated supply policy to the issue of industrialization, and thus singled out well-defined strategic sectors of the population to be supplied as a matter of priority. Even after the state had abolished the rationing system in 1935, the problems of supply remained unchanged and the policies of restricted trade did not resolve the social unrest. Then some conflict arose between the Soviet leadership and the local apparatus, between the population and these local powers, as well as between workers and peasants who believed that the others were being given unfair advantages.

A careful examination of the documents, according to Dr. Osokina, presents the high leadership deliberately pursuing industrial goals at the very expense of the largest segments of the population. At the same time, the vast majority of the people constantly reinvented new forms of supply, and the local officials were affected by local pressure and "improvised" means of supply. These "grassroot" forms greatly varied from region to region. Thus Dr. Osokina shed new light on the responses of the people and the local officials to the incoherent policies of the state. The attitude of the state, based on the conviction that there was no need for a rationing system, led to the elimination of the queues in front of stores in order to present a better image of Soviet society on the eve of the Second World War.
--Jean Levesque
Conducting Research in Local Saratov Archives on the Russian Civil War: Sources and Strategies
Donald Raleigh, Department of History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

On 7 March 1996, Professor Donald Raleigh, outlined his research in the Saratov provincial archives. Concentrating on social and cultural aspects of the Civil War in the Volga region, Dr. Raleigh addressed several issues: the life and experiences of the common people during the conflict, the interactions of various groupings within the Saratov Party structure, and the Party's oppressive and/or cooptative methods to win the population to the Bolshevik cause.

Dr. Raleigh asserted that the remoteness of the province gave Saratov Bolsheviks a substantial degree of independence from Moscow. However, squabbling within the organization soon resulted in a mushrooming of several hostile groups, with each pursuing its own policy in defiance of the centre. The heretical Left SRs, represented in the province by the Revolutionary Communist Party, remained a substantial force in the provincial administrative apparatus throughout the war. All the same, large sections of the population, which was caught up in the maelstrom of the Civil War, "escaped" Soviet power by occupying themselves primarily with economic problems and trying to survive by means fair and foul.

Dr. Raleigh also suggested that apart from the archives, museums of regional studies could be excellent sources for scientific research. Personal contacts, however, are the most important tool to penetrate seemingly impassable bureaucratic jungles. Despite the inadequate archival catalogues, a shortage of paper, lack of photocopying machines, and, in some cases, an obtrusive defiance on the part of the personnel, working in the archives is a highly rewarding experience.
--Alexander Prusin
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The Nuremberg Trials: Fifty Years After--A Symposium

In March 1996, SERAP helped sponsor a one-day symposium to mark the 50th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials. Half of the program was dedicated to the "history" of the trials themselves, half to an exploration of some of their longer-range consequences and implications. Speakers and topics included the following:

Michael Marrus (Department of History, University of Toronto): "The Holocaust at Nuremberg;"
Natal'ia Lebedeva (Institute of World History, Moscow): "The Soviet Union's Road to Nuremberg;"
John Brownlee (Department of History, University of Toronto): "The Other Nuremberg: The Tokyo Trials of Japanese War Criminals;"
Ronald W. Pruessen (SERAP and Department of History, University of Toronto): "Reintegrating the Pariah: 'Germany' and the International Community after Nuremberg;"
Lorraine Weinrib (Faculty of Law, University of Toronto): "The Waning Shadow of Nuremberg in Canadian Law;"
Edith S. Klein (Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto) : "The War Crimes Tribunal and Former Yugoslavia."

Natal'ia Lebedeva's paper was of particular importance to SERAP's ongoing efforts. A senior researcher at Moscow's Institute of World History, Lebedeva has long been involved in studies of Soviet policies toward Germany and Eastern Europe. Recent work on the Nuremberg Trials has drawn substantially on newly accessible fonds in GARF and RTsKhIDNI.

Dr. Lebedeva's paper for the Toronto Symposium focused on the way drawn-out and complex "Grand Alliance" negotiations preceded the 1945-46 war crimes proceedings. As early as 1941-42, for example, Moscow and London were discussing and disagreeing about the most appropriate way to deal with Germany's political and military leaders: Soviet policy strongly favoured trials while Churchill and other British leaders advocated speedy executions. The US's approach was often ambivalent, but finally came down on the Soviet side in early 1945. French representatives then joined the Soviets, British, and Americans, for preparatory discussions in London in the summer of 1945, producing the "statutes" which were intended to guide the International Military Tribunal. Cooperation among the four countries was substantial here and in the months preceding the trials. There was full and explicit agreement on such matters as the need to limit any "defence" ability to raise "slippery" questions like the Munich agreement and the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939.

Mutual support continued between the prosecuting teams in Nuremberg itself, as well, with no overt moves to criticize or exploit the skeletons in various allied closets. Under Andrei Vyshinskii's watchful eye, the Soviet team did evidence some suspicion concerning a possible US role in providing the defence with a copy of the Non-Aggression Pact. (The May 1946 publication of the purported text was a serious problem from Moscow's perspective with the "accidental" death/suicide of General Nikolai Zoria being an exclamation point connected with it.) The American team, for its part, tried to dissuade the Soviet representatives from even raising the issue of the Katyn' massacre at the trials. Moscow wanted to elaborate its case concerning German responsibility, however, and its insistence on proceeding only succeeded in allowing the defence to call witnesses who challenged Soviet contentions. (Dr. Lebedeva has written separately and extensively about the Katyn' case, most notably in her book, Katyn': Prestyplenie protiv chelovechestva [Moscow, 1994].)

Dr. Lebedeva's study of the Soviet role in the Nuremberg trials will be published shortly in the SERAP Working Paper series.
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The Smolensk Archive as a Historical Resource
Evgenii Kodin, Smolensk Pedagogical Institute

On 22 April 1996, Evgenii Kodin gave an enthusiastic and energetic talk on what has become known in the western scholarly community as the "Smolensk Archive." Kodin, an historian and the current Vice-Rector of the Smolensk Pedagogical Institute, was in North America conducting research on his most recent project which examines the role of the "Smolensk Archive" in creating at least two rival schools of Western Sovietology.

The "Smolensk Archive" is a collection of documents seized first by the retreating German army and then subsequently by the United States as war booty at the conclusion of the Second World War. The material was then microfilmed and presented to the Harvard scholar Merle Fainsod and a number of his graduate students. From the sources Fainsod produced his monumental work, Smolensk Under Soviet Rule. A Russian edition of the volume has just been translated under Evgenii Kodin's supervision. In his talk, Kodin challenged the views of western specialists like Patricia Grimsted, J. Arch Getty, and Daniel Brower about the nature and origins of the documents contained in the archival collection. These scholars all agree that the documents were selected from the Smolensk Party Archive. Kodin challenged this position, claiming the material was not selected by the Germans or the Americans, but did not have a theory of his own about how the documents came together as they did. Kodin further emphasized that the document collection was hardly an "archive," but rather an odd collection of 538 files, or 200,000 pages, which he pointed out was a mere drop in the bucket when compared with the actual holdings of the Smolensk Party Archive.

The "Smolensk Archive" has long been a source of international controversy. In the mid-1960s, the Soviet Union had its first opportunity to repatriate the documents. However, according to Kodin, repatriating the documents meant admitting that they were authentic and that the sensitive materials involving collectivization, terror, and the purges reflected Soviet reality. The documents were rejected as falsified. In 1992, as a gesture of good will, it was suggested that the "Smolensk Archive" be returned to Russia. The suggestion was voted down in Congress due to unheeded demands for the return of the "Schneerson collection" which is being held at the Lenin Library.

Ultimately, however, Kodin verified that, based on his own extensive experience in regional party archives in Smolensk, Tver, Kaluga, and Leningrad, the documents in what we know as the Smolensk archive are absolutely typical for the Central European area and therefore of great value to the western researcher provided they are approached with caution. Kodin impressed on his audience that the documents, the majority of which were prepared by party officials reporting on local crises and excesses, emphasized the most negative aspects of Soviet rule in the periphery. This comment engendered a lively discussion about the methods of historical inquiry and interpretation.
--Janet Hyer and Tracy McDonald
New Archival Evidence on the Soviet Committee for Arts Affairs, 1936-1938: Stalin's Ministry of Culture
Leonid Maximenkov, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto

On 19 September 1996 Dr. Leonid Maximenko presented a lecture on new evidence from the Central Party Archive (formerly TsPA IML; currently RTsKhIDNI) and the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI). Dr. Maximenkov was particularly struck by the files that reveal the work of secret commissions on the arts, the level of NKVD involvement in determining the status of artists, and the extent of Stalin's involvement in cultural affairs. For the purposes of his talk, however, Dr. Maximenkov focused on aspects of the bureaucratic infighting that arose as the state brought the arts increasingly under its control.

In January 1936, by a decision of the Politburo, the Committee for Arts Affairs of the Sovnarkom was created. Its first head was P. M. Kerzhentsev, an old Bolshevik with a history of activity in arts affairs; its role was to oversee all aspects of visual and audio arts (literature was already under the purview of the Union of Soviet Writers). The Committee was disbanded in 1953 when its functions were transferred to the Ministry of Culture. The first two years of the Committee are crucial to the history of Soviet culture: it instituted artistic censorship, enforced in part by the program of socialist realism; put the life of the artist in a straitjacket of financial dependence; and created a system of perks and "table of ranks." At the same time, however, there were bodies within the Party structure that supervised the arts, and the campaign surrounding Dmitrii Shostakovich's opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, reflected the struggle between the government and the Party over who would be gatekeeper. The head of the Central Committee's music section, Viktor Gorodinskii, had been spearheading a campaign to create Soviet opera. As part of his efforts to support revolutionary music (for example, that of Shostakovich), he recommended the composer to head the Academic State Opera Theatre. Kerzhentsev felt threatened by Gorodinskii's campaign and brought Stalin to see Lady Macbeth on 26 January 1936. Two days later, a denunciatory, unsigned editorial appeared in Pravda. The editorial had, in fact, been written by Kerzhentsev. According to Dr. Maximenkov, Kerzhentsev's skill in shaping cultural policy resided in his understanding of the interconnections between the demands of socialist realism and those of the Stalinist cult of personality.
--Janet Hyer
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Collectivization in Ukraine
Valerii Vasil'ev, Vinnytsya Pedagogical Institute, Ukraine

On 10 October 1996, Valerii Vasil'ev, a visiting scholar at CREES from the Vinnytsya Pedagogical Institute in Ukraine, delivered a lecture (in Russian) on the collectivization of agriculture in Ukraine at the close of the 1920s. As the author of a number of significant publications on peasant revolts during the Stalin era, Dr. Vasil'ev utilized his experience with the various Ukrainain regional archives to present solid arguments on the tragic outcome of the collectivization campaign.

Dr. Vasil'ev's speech outlined two distinct waves of collectivization in Ukraine. The first, spanning from the close of 1929 to April 1930, can be characterized as a frantic drive, engineered from the top by state-Party leadership. It stemmed from idealistic views of quota fulfillment within a ridiculously short period of time. The second wave appears to have stemmed from an attempt by local representatives of state and Party institutions to respond to unrealistic pressures "from above." This trend is well described in a report by Sergo Ordzhonikidze, following his short visit to the Ukraine, stressing that in some regions "everything was collectivized, even wives."

One tantalizing issue presented by Dr. Vasil'ev is undoubtedly his data from OGPU material which he uncovered in the regional archives. Correspondence between security officials shows that the organization was prepared to counter peasant resistance with pre-defined quotas of persons to be arrested in the Ukraine. Furthermore their intervention was defined as a true military operation with OGPU troops and their local Party-state and Komsomol helpers well armed and ready to intervene at the first sign of anti-Soviet behaviour among the population. The peak of peasant resistance was achieved in March 1930, when approximately one million Ukrainian peasants were in open rebellion against the Soviet state. Dr. Vasil'ev argued that the pattern of the collectivization campaign was the same across the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, a long tradition of resistance to the Soviet regime had made Ukraine the most rebellious region of the USSR during the collectivization of agriculture.

While publishing and research conditions can be very difficult in post-Soviet Ukraine, Dr. Vasil'ev's own research demonstrates that scholarship of a high calibre is still being produced by the historians of the Former Soviet Union.
--Jean Levesque
Studying Soviet Bureaucracy
Moshe Lewin, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania

In the West, one of the most pervasive images of the post-Stalinist Soviet state is that of an impersonal, bureaucratic monstrosity, characterized by inefficiency, ineptitude, and corruption. Indeed, the slothfulness of the Brezhnev "era of stagnation" (zastoi) has often been seen as a direct consequence of the unchecked growth of bureaucratic institutions. It is therefore surprising that scholars have hardly studied the Soviet bureaucracy in any comprehensive and systematic manner.

On 22 October 1996, SERAP had the honour of hosting Professor Moshe Lewin, the preeminent Western historian of Russia and a founding father of Soviet social history. Professor Lewin discussed his recent probings into the convoluted realm of Soviet bureaucratic studies, seeking to direct the attention of interested scholars toward this poorly studied yet extremely important area of research. Lewin insisted that most existing bureaucratic studies are unfocused, sloppy, and methodologically weak, and in his view invariably bear the stamp of the dominant ideological discourse. However, he was quick to point out that the tendency for scholars to "get lost" in the vortex of bureaucraticsm is part and parcel of studying this complex phenomenon: "you should get lost, it's normal; [you will] cook your dish" as you muddle your way through the intricacies of the bureaucratic world.

Lewin argued that the Soviet regime was perpetually engaged in an interminable battle with its bureaucracy. Fearing institutions outside of the centre's direct control, the Soviet leadership was forever attempting to reconcentrate power at the top. This, according to Lewin, was "the paranoia of the system," the Soviet state's innate contradiction that ultimately led to the malignant germination of bureaucratic institutions. Paradoxically, the government itself became inundated by the very bureaucracy it sought to control, leading ultimately to the regime's own demise. Lewin insisted that Stalin shrewdly recognized the system's tendency toward bureaucratization. Wishing to preserve his "autocracy" at all costs, Stalin made a concerted effort to stifle the growth of this incipient "ruling class," which threatened to gobble up the Party itself and reduce Iosif Vissarionovich to the post of bureaucrat No. 1. The purge, according to Lewin, was his weapon: terror precluded the system's normalization and, therefore, its bureaucratization. With the repudiation of such tactics in the post-Stalin period, bureaucracy ineluctably triumphed.

Throughout his talk, Lewin emphasized the global nature of the bureaucratic disease. In all developed countries, bureaucracies are characterized by their mishandling of customers, their inefficiencies, an appetite for privilege and power, and a penchant for secrecy. Lewin thus maintained that Bureaupathology was not sui generis to the USSR; the "disease" was simply more debilitiating and conspicuous there because of the bureaucracy's sheer magnitude, a direct result of the centrally planned economy.

Even though Professor Lewin mainly grappled with issues that have been on the table for some time, he provided his listeners with a certain focus and a degree of clarity hitherto absent in bureaucratic studies. Lewin's dynamism, eloquence, and inimitable wit constantly animated the discussion.
--Jarrod Tanny
Scheduled SERAP workshop speakers for 1997 include: Hope Harrison, Vojtech Mastny, and Nikolai Krementsov.

SERAP Workshops are held at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto, Robarts Library, 14th Floor Board Room (14352). For details on dates and times, or other SERAP information, please call (416) 978-3330 or (416) 978-8192; e-mail: stalin@ chass. utoronto.ca.

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CONFERENCES ELSEWHERE:

VIENNA CONFERENCE LAUNCHES COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH PROJECT ON "EAST CENTRAL EUROPE IN THE COLD WAR"

SERAP was centrally involved in planning a November 1995 conference held in Vienna on "The Political Structures of Central Europe, 1945-1947." Ron Pruessen organized the conference in partnership with Oliver Rathkolb (Institute of Contemporary History, University of Vienna, and Director, Bruno Kreisky Archives Foundation). Funding and other support was provided by several Austrian institutions and agencies, including the Friends of the Bruno Kreisky Archives Foundation, the Ministry for Science, Research and the Arts, and the Austrian Parliamentarian Society. Conference sessions were held in one of the principal meeting rooms of the Austrian Parliament building.

This conference was designed to relate newly available archival materials to research concerning East Central Europe in the mid-1940s. The program explicitly sought to explore two broad themes: the nature of "Great Power" influence and the relevance of local dynamics, including the impact of pre-World War II political patterns and problems. Comparisons of country-by-country experiences were emphasized in discussions following formal paper presentations.

Speakers and papers included the following:

I. Introduction: An overview of the Central European scene and the impact of the origins of the Cold War between 1945 and 1947: Wilfried Oth, Director, Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut, Universitat GH Essen;

II. Developments within individual countries and areas:
  1. Hungary: Gyorgy Litvan, Director, Institute for the History of the 1956 Revolution, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest;
  2. Yugoslavia: Jerca Vodusek-Starik, Institute of Contem- porary History, Ljubljana;
  3. Austria: Oliver Rathkolb, Kreisky Archives Foundation, Vienna;
  4. Czechoslovakia: Petr Mares, Institute of International Studies, Charles University, Prague;
  5. Italy: Antonio Varsori, Universita degli Studi di Fir- enze;
  6. US Occupation Zone in Germany: Rebecca Boehling, University of Maryland, Baltimore;
  7. Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany: Jochen Laufer, Forschungschwerpunkt Zeithistorische Studien, Potsdam;
  8. Poland: Andrzej Packowski, Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw.

III. The Great Powers and the onset of the Cold War in Central Europe:
  1. The United States and Germany: Ronald W. Pruessen, University of Toronto;
  2. The United States and Austria: Josef Leidenfrost, University of Vienna;
  3. The Soviet Union and Germany: Alexei Filitov, Institute of World History, Moscow;
  4. The Soviet Union and Czechsolovakia: Valentina Marina, Institute of Slavonic and Balkan Studies, Moscow;
  5. The Soviet Union and Yugoslavia: Leonid Gibianskii, Institute of Slavonic and Balkan Studies, Moscow;
  6. The United States, the Soviet Union, and Italy: Ilaria Poggiolini, Universita degli Studi di Firenze.
Discussions held during and after the Vienna conference solidified plans to launch a larger collaborative research project: with the working title "Caught in the Middle," this multi-year international undertaking will have as its focus the history of East Central Europe during the Cold War period, both during and after the "Stalin era." Efforts are now being expanded in several directions, with SERAP and Vienna being joined by new partners including the Institute of Slavonic and Balkan Studies, Moscow, and the Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Hungarian Academy of Sciences. A volume of papers from the initial conference is being prepared for publication in 1997, for example. As well, a cluster of research teams is being organized to allow more in-depth attention to individual country experiences in the 1940s and 1950s. Groups focusing on Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Germany will hold a series of workshops during the next 18 months. Each team will work toward producing a new early Cold War history of the country involved, emphasizing international scholarly collaboration as well as full utilization of expanding archival research opportunities in Moscow, Warsaw, Budapest, Prague, Belgrade, Berlin, etc.

While the organization of individual research teams will allow intensive consideration of specific national experiences, this phase of the "Caught in the Middle" project is very much designed to prepare the ground for comparative analysis as well. A larger-scale conference will be held about two years hence in order to provide an opportunity for formal attention to broad regional and international patterns.

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"HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION..." THE COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY CONFERENCE AND THE CURRENT STATE OF RUSSIAN COLD WAR ARCHIVES

For the student of twentieth-century Russian political and diplomatic history, these are uncertain times. The window of archival accessibility, relatively open for the last several years, shows some disturbing signs of closing once again. Formerly declassified documents are being re-restricted and the publication of new document collections has been interrupted. The nature of the changes taking place and the potential impact of these changes on researchers was made sometimes painfully obvious to me this past summer. While conducting research in Moscow as a graduate research assistant with SERAP, I found myself outside the archival window looking in.

I arrived in Moscow just in time to sit in on a workshop jointly sponsored by the Cold War International History Project (Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC) and the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Russian and Western scholars discussed the state of Cold War studies with Russian archivists with a variety of problems being identified. It was clear that the presidential election was having a negative impact on historical research, for example, as instability and political uncertainty engendered more restrictive archival policies. Other difficulties seemed to emerge from the dyamics of scholarly activities themselves, however. Some of these were of a technical nature, involving things like the differences between Russian and "western" practices concerning co-authorship credit for archivists. Some were more substantive and grew out of the severe financial predicaments of Russian academia: e.g., the perhaps inevitable discomforts of Moscow historians and archivists as they witness European or North American colleagues carrying off thousands of quite expensive photocopies.

The workshop ended with hopes that this clearing of the air would give way to further collaboration and at least some reports in subsequent months suggest that this may be happening. In my own case, unfortunately, the hope did not become reality quickly enough. My forays into four Russian archives in search of material on Soviet-American relations (1953-1956) were only partially successful. While I managed to access relevant material at GARF (State Archive of the Russian Federation) and RTsKhIDNI (Centre for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Contemporary History), I had considerably less success at TsKhSD (Centre for the Preservation of Contemporary Documentation) and AVP RF (Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation), two of the major repositories for foreign policy documents. Indeed, I was informed at TsKhSD that all post-1952 material pertaining to international relations had been temporarily reclassified. I was encouraged by the archivists to return later in the year in anticipation of the possibility that the window of archival access would begin to inch open once again by then.
--Trevor Smith

HUNGARY AND THE WORLD, 1956: THE NEW ARCHIVAL EVIDENCE. AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE, BUDAPEST, SEPTEMBER 26-29, 1996.

SERAP provided both financial support and participants for one of the conferences marking the 40th anniversary of the Budapest uprising. Principal organizers were the Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) and the Cold War International History Project (Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC). More than forty speakers from a dozen countries were included in the program.

The primary focus of the four-day meeting was on the international dimensions of the dramatic 1956 developments in Hungary and Poland. Soviet and US policies received substantial attention in this respect, of course, but scholars also offered papers concerning German, Yugoslav, and Chinese reactions and examined the impact of the chronologically overlapping "Suez Crisis."

Ron Pruessen contributed a paper which traced the evolution of US views on "liberation" during the Eisenhower years. Throughout the early and mid-1950s, he argued, Washington continued to emphasize the use of pressure tactics (short of military intervention) to encourage a breakdown of the Stalinist/Soviet "satellite" system: if anything, American determination to bring about rapid change increased in the face of the more detente-oriented policies which emerged in Moscow following Stalin's death.

Leo Gluchowski, a CREES Associate and participant in other SERAP efforts, also contributed a paper to the Budapest conference: "Military Aspects of the Polish-Soviet Confrontation: The Situation in the Polish Internal Security Corps, 17-23 October 1956." This paper grew out of the extensive work Gluchowski has been doing in newly opened Polish archives.

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ARCHIVAL NEWS ELSEWHERE

CATALOGUE OF RUSSIAN DOCUMENTS ON THE DOUKHOBORS COMPLETED AT CARLETON UNIVERSITY, OTTAWA

In connection with its ongoing undertaking to establish a large and unique collection of Russian documentation on Canada, the Centre for Research on Canadian-Russian Relations (CRCR) at Carleton University has acquired copies of some 10,000 pages from archives in Moscow and St. Petersburg. These documents all relate to Canada, and cover wide-ranging subjects from the early 1820s to the 1950s. CRCR already has the most extensive university-based collection of Russian archival material on Canada in Canada and the collection will continue to grow.

CRCR acquisitions related to foreign policy range from documentation of Russian interference in Canada's rebellions of 1837-38 to dispatches sent from the Soviet embassy in Canada to Molotov and company between 1942-45. These and many other sources on trade and cultural matters (e.g., VOKS links with Canadians in the 1930s) are now listed by file, and are available for study by special appointment.

With the help of generous funding from the Canadian Heritage Program, a large bloc of documents on the Doukhobors and their emigration to Canada has been fully catalogued. Each document has been summarized, cross-referenced, and indexed by John Woodsworth. Altogether some 600 separate documents, found mostly in the State Archives of the Russian Federation (GARF), Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (AVPRF), and the Russian State Historical Archives (RGIA), have been catalogued.

The documents cover the years from 1895 to the mid-1920s in detail, and then include scattered materials from the 1940s and 1950s. Among the documents are: The documents were located and copied for CRCR, for the most part, by Dr. George Bolotenko, National Archives of Canada. Dr. Sergei Danilov, Institute of the USA & Canada, and Liudmila Selivanova, VISAR, Moscow, were also instrumental in finding some of the materials. The project is in the charge of J. L. Black, Director, CRCR.

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FORTHCOMING CONFERENCES

STATE AND SOCIETY IN THE STALIN ERA THROUGH THE PRISM OF REGIONAL ARCHIVES

The Stalin-Era Research and Archives Project of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto, announces a symposium on State and Society in the Stalin Era through the Prism of Regional Archives, to be held in Toronto, 15-22 June 1997, subject to the availability of funding. The symposium will bring together junior faculty and advanced graduate students who have recently undertaken major research projects in the regional archives of the Former Soviet Union. The objectives of the symposium are to disseminate the most current research in the field; to share archival information, experiences and methods; to work toward a new synthesis of research findings; and to publish a volume based on the conference proceedings.

The Stalin-Era Research and Archives Project invites applications from doctoral students and junior faculty interested in presenting papers at the symposium; successful applicants will have their transportation and accommodation expenses covered. Applications will be adjudicated on a competitive basis, and the invited papers are expected to be prepared and circulated in advance of the symposium. To obtain further information concerning the symposium, please contact the Project at the address given below; to be considered for participation, please submit to the same address an application consisting of: (1) a one-page curriculum vitae; (2) a five-page statement describing your project in full detail (subject of research; methodology; substantive issues addressed; specific problems of archival research); and (3) two letters of reference. Applications will be accepted up to January 15, 1997.

SERAP HOLDINGS

The growing SERAP collection is housed at the Petro Jacyk Russian and East European Resource Centre, University of Toronto Robarts Library. Tel: (416) 978-0588.

The Kalinin Collection
RTsKhIDNI, fond 78, opisi 1, dela 3, 6-9 (1896-1946)

Microfilmed by Chadwyck-Healey Ltd. 1994, as part of its series "Leaders of the Russian Revolution." Series Editor: Jana Howlett, University of Cambridge.

The Kalinin collection is held by the Stalin-Era Research and Archives Project and is housed at the Petro Jacyk Resource Centre on Russia and East Central Europe, Robarts Library, University of Toronto.

Highlights of the Kalinin collection are the thousands of letters sent to the political leader from workers, peasants, Red Army soldiers, pioneers, and foreigners from 1918 through the mid-1940s. Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin (1875-1946), who served as chairman of the Central Executive Committee from 1922 to 1936, was one of the more popular and trusted Soviet leaders of his time and as such was the target for letters from ordinary people with requests, complaints, salutations and colourful descriptions of life in the Soviet Union after the Revolution. The letters are often deeply moving, and they reveal a society in flux, with groups giving voice to and promoting their separate interests. The majority of letters are requests for work, financial, or other assistance, and personal contact. Some of the most compelling letters are the "counter-revolutionary" submissions, many of them anonymous, in which citizens critiqued and often cursed the regime's policies. This correspondence is grouped in a separate category for almost every year. Dramatic also are the pleas for amnesty from citizens who were jailed or exiled, particularly during the Civil War period, collectivization, and the Great Terror. "Here, Comrade, sit many innocent people waiting to be shot," wrote O. A. Braukfield, a member of the Romanian S. D. Party from a Moscow prison in 1919. "There is much suffering here. A word or visit from Comrade Kalinin would be the best balm for us all." Implicit in the letters is the assumption that if only Kalinin knew of the injustices being carried out, he would intervene and set everything right.

The letters are also interesting in style. The correspondence, mainly from semi-literate citizens, demonstrates a rapid politicization of language after 1917, with many writers peppering their letters with Soviet phrases and slogans in an apparent effort to supplicate or persuade. There is little evidence in the archive that Kalinin ever responded to this correspondence; although on occasion he would write brief notes, such as the one in 1937 to Nikolai Ezhov, head of the NKVD, complaining about a decline in the number of snitch letters from Ukraine and Russia.

Correspondence is grouped according to the year it was written and by whom; for example, "letters from peasants," or "letters from Red Army soldiers." The material is not organized by region and in general there is episodic correspondence during the 1920s and 1930s from republics outside Russia and Ukraine. There seems to be an increase in letters from women in the 1930s, but on the whole men wrote the bulk of the letters.

The Kalinin files also include family papers, photographs, diary entries, speeches, official and personal correspondence to and from Kalinin, correspondence with the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, notes on a book about Stalin, speeches, documents from the Supreme Soviet, a draft of his biography and the transcript of a 1962 interview with his family.
--Jennifer Clibbon

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CURRENT HOLDINGS IN JOURNALS:

Istoricheskii arkhiv:
1992 #1
1993 #1-6
1994 #1-6
1995 #1-6
1996 #1-3
Rossiiskii arkhiv: #1-5
Istochnik:
1994 #1-6
1995 #1-6
1996 #1-3, 5
Rodina:
1993 #4
1995 #1-2, 5, 7-12
Arkhivno-informatsionnyi biulleten':
1994 #5, 6 Arkhivy Kremlia i Staroi ploshchadi
1995 #9, 10 Istoriki Rossii XVII-XX vekov
1996 #11 Arkhiv Soveta po delam religioznykh kul'tov pri SM SSSR (1944-1965 gg.)

REFERENCE MATERIALS:

Arkhiv Akademii Nauk SSSR: Obozrenie arkhivnykh materialov (Leningrad, 1986) [description of the fonds of Soviet figures in science and technology]
Arkhiv noveishei istorii Rossii. Tom III, Osobaia papka N. S. Khrushcheva (1954-1956 gg.). Perepiska MVD SSSR s TsK KPSS (1957-1959 gg.): Iz materialov Sekretariata NKVD-MVD SSSR. 1954-1959 gg. Katalog dokumentov (Moscow, 1995).
Bibliograficheskii ukazatel' izdanii obshchestva "Memorial" (1988-1995) (Moscow, 1995). [photocopy]
D. A. El'iashevich, comp., Dokumental'nye materialy po istorii evreev v arkhivakh SNG i stran Baltii: Predvaritel'nyi spisok arkhivnykh fondov (St. Petersburg, 1994).
Federal'nye arkhivy Rossii i ikh nauchno-spravochnyi apparat (Moscow, 1994) [photocopy]
Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii. Putevoditel'. Tom 2 Fondy Gosudarstvennogo arkhiva Rossiiskoi Federatsii po istorii RSFSR. (Moscow, 1996) [Volume V in the Russian Archive Series]
Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Tul'skoi oblasti. Putevoditel' (Tula, 1968) [photocopy]
Kratkii slovar' arkhivnoi terminologii (Moscow-Leningrad, 1968) [photocopy]
Partiinyi arkhiv Vinnitskogo obkoma Kompartii Ukrainy (putevoditel') [photocopy]
L. A. Rutkovskaia, comp., Goroda Rossiiskoi Imperii na 1.01.1914 so svedeniiami o nikh na 1.01.1987: Spravoch- nik (St. Petersburg, 1996)
Tsentral'nii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov SSSR, Putevoditel'. Tom 1 [of four (Moscow, 1991).

COLLECTIONS:

Iz podvala: Narodnyi arkhiv: Al'manakh, vypusk 1 (Moscow, 1993)
Natal'ia Lebedeva, Katyn': Prestyplenie protiv chelovechestva (Moscow, 1994)
N. S. Lebedeva and M. M. Narinskii, Komintern i vtoraia mirovaia voina, 1939-1941 gg. Part 1 (Moscow, 1994)
Liudskie poteri SSSR v period vtoroi mirovoi voiny: Sbornik statei (St. Petersburg, 1995)
Raskulachennye spetspereselentsy na Urale (1930-1936 gg.): Sbornik dokumentov (Ekaterinburg, 1993)
Sbornik zakonodatel'nykh i normativnykh aktov o repressiiakh i reabilitatsii zhertv politicheskikh repressii (Moscow, 1993)
Nicolas Werth and Gael Moullec, eds., Rapports secrets sovi‚tiques, 1921-1991: La soci‚t‚ russe dans les documents confidentiels (Paris, 1994)

SECONDARY SOURCES:

Merl Feinsod [Merle Fainsod], Smolensk pod vlast'iu sovetov (Smolensk, 1995)
O. V. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro: Mekhanizmy politicheskoi vlasti v 1930-e gody (Moscow, 1996)
T. Khorkhordina, Istoriia otechestva i arkhivy, 1917-1980-e g. (Moscow, 1994)
E. V. Kodin, Smolenskii naryv (Smolensk, 1995)
E. A. Osokina, Ierarkhiia potrebleniia: O zhizni liudei v usloviiakh stalinskogo snabzheniia, 1928-1935 gg. (Moscow, 1993)
D. Dzh. Reili [Donald Raleigh], Politicheskie sud'by Rossiiskoi gubernii: 1917 v Saratove (Saratov, 1995)
D. Dzh. Reili, Saratov ot avgusta 1914 do avgusta 1991 (Saratov, 1994)
Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, The Odyssey of the Smolensk Archive: Plundered Communist Records for the Service of Anti-Communism. Carl Beck Papers, No. 1201. Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh.

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SERAP PUBLICATIONS NEWS

SERAP is pleased to announce the publication of its first Working Paper, The CPSU's Top Bodies under Stalin: Their Operational Records and the Structure of Command, by Jana Howlett, Oleg Khlevniuk, L. P. Koshelova, and L. A. Rogovaia (ISBN 0-9697723-1-9). The paper is available on request from SERAP offices.

New publications of SERAP's Project Directors include:

Peter H. Solomon, Jr. Soviet Criminal Justice under Stalin (Cambridge University Press, 1996). A comprehensive account of Stalin's struggle to make criminal law in the USSR a reliable instrument of rule, this monograph makes use of recently declassified archives and offers new perspectives on nonpolitical justice, collectivization of the peasantry and the Great Terror, and disciplining of the labour force.

Peter H. Solomon, Jr., editor. Reforming Justice in Russia, 1864-1994 (M. E. Sharpe, forthcoming in Spring 1997). Based on papers presented at a SERAP sponsored conference in 1995, this volume contains studies addressing various dimensions of judicial reform from the tsarist to the post-Soviet eras.

Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin (Oxford University Press, 1996). Based on newly declassified Soviet archives, including secret police reports, this monograph documents the manifestation in Stalin's Russia of universal strategies of peasant resistance in what amounted to a virtual civil war between state and peasantry. The book is both a history of the vast peasant rebellion against collectivization and a study in peasant culture, politics, and community seen through the prism of resistance.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH WITH SERAP:

The offices of the Stalin-Era Research and Archives Project are located on the 14th floor
of the Robarts Library on the University of Toronto St. George campus. Our address is:

Stalin-Era Research and Archives Project
c/o Centre for Russian and East European Studies
Robarts Library, Suite 14335
University of Toronto
130 St. George Street
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A5
Canada

Tel: (416) 978-8192
Fax: (416) 978-3817
E-mail:stalin@chass.utoronto.ca

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