Working Paper No. 1

THE CPSU'S TOP BODIES UNDER STALIN:
THEIR OPERATIONAL RECORDS AND STRUCTURE OF COMMAND

Jana Howlett, Oleg Khlevniuk, Liudmila Kosheleva and Larisa Rogovaia
with a Foreword by Peter H. Solomon, Jr.

Working Paper No. 1, 1996

The Stalin-Era Research and Archives Project

Centre for Russian and East European Studies
Suite 14341, Robarts Library
University of Toronto
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Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A5 Canada
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E-mail: stalin@chass.utoronto.ca
©Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto
ISBN 0-9697723-1-9

Foreword, by Peter H. Solomon, Jr.
About the Authors
Introduction
Archives of the Party and state: The Presidential (Kremlin) Archive
(APRF-Arkhiv prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii); The Centre for the Preservation of Contemporary Documentation
(TsKhSD-Tsentr khraneniia sovremennoi dokumentatsii); The Russian Centre for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Recent History
(RTsKhIDNI-Rossiiskii tsentr khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii); State Archive of the Russian Federation
(GARF-Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii)
Decision-making organs of the Communist Party: The Congress (S"ezd); Party Conferences; The Central Committee; Plenums of the Central Committee; Central Committee Commissions and Consultative Committees; The Politburo; Politburo Commissions; The Orgburo; The Secretariat; Departments and Administrations of the Central Committee; Informal and Temporary Structures
Documents of the Communist Party: Protocols of the Politburo; Protocols of the Orgburo and Secretariat; Special protocols (osobye papki); Verbatim records of Politburo, Orgburo and Secretariat meetings; Materials for Politburo, Orgburo and Secretariat protocols; Deloproizvodstvo subdivisions of the Central Committee
Conclusions
Notes

FOREWORD

This publication is the first in a series of Working Papers published by the Stalin-Era Research and Archives Project (SERAP) at the University of Toronto. The Project, which is described in detail in Bulletin No. 1 of SERAP, is a multi-year endeavour, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under its program of Major Collaborative Research Initiatives.

The series of Working Papers has a number of goals: first, to bring the results of current archival research to scholarly readers as rapidly as possible; second, to publish and explain important sets of archival documents; and third, to provide to scholars and graduate students research aids and methodological materials relating to archival research on the USSR under Stalin.

This first working paper falls squarely into the third category. It is unique, unlike any previously published work in English (the most similar work is another study by the same authors published in French--see note 5 to the text). The paper offers a detailed analysis of the command structure of the Central Committee of the CPSU in the Stalin period--its institutions (such as the Politburo, Orgburo, Secretariat, and departments) and its system of paperwork (deloproizvodstvo). Not only are these subjects of intrinsic interest to historians, but they also represent vital intelligence for anyone using the documents generated by the CPSU's top bodies. This paper goes on to characterize the documents themselves, including the protocols of meetings of the various bodies and the materials that were prepared for them.

This rich and informative paper represents a team effort, the product of a special multi-national group of scholars and archivists. The co-authors include one of the best and most prolific historians working in Russian archives, two especially able and devoted archivists who work to make the records of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union accessible, and an energetic British scholar pursuing the preservation and publication of these documents. Two Toronto-based scholars, Edith Klein and I, helped with editing and preparing the study for publication.

Peter H. Solomon, Jr.
The Stalin-Era Research and Archives Project

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Jana Howlett is University Lecturer in the Department of Slavonic Studies, University of Cambridge. Since 1993 she has been involved as Consultant and Secretary to the Editorial Board in the identification and description of material for the Archives of the Soviet Communist Party and Soviet State, published jointly by the State Archival Service of Russia and the Hoover Institution.

Oleg Khlevniuk works as an editor at the journal Svobodnaia mysl'. He is the author of three monographs: 1937-i: Stalin, NKVD, i sovetskoe obshchestvo (Moscow, 1992); Stalin i Ordzhonikidze. Konflikty v Politbiuro v 30-e gody (Moscow, 1993), also in English as In Stalin's Shadow: The Career of "Sergo" Ordzhonikidze, edited by Donald Raleigh (Armonk, NY, 1995); and Le cercle du Kremlin: Staline et le Bureau politique dans les années 30: les jeux du pouvoir (Paris, 1996); and he is the co-editor and compiler (with Liudmila Kosheleva, Larisa Rogovaia, et al.), of Stalinskoe Politbiuro v 30-e gody (Moscow, 1995) and Pis'ma I. V. Stalina V. M. Molotovu 1925-1936 gg. Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow, 1995), also in English as Stalin's Letters to Molotov (New Haven, CT, 1995).

Liudmila Kosheleva is Senior Researcher at the Russian Centre for the Preservation and Documentation of Recent History (RTsKhIDNI). She has collaborated on the publications listed above as well as SSSR-Pol'sha: mekhanizmy podchineniia 1944-1949 (Moscow, 1994) and (with Larisa Rogovaia, Gennadii Bordiugov, et al.) SVAG Upravlenie propagandy (informatsii) i S. I. Tiul'panov 1945-1949 (Moscow, 1994).

Larisa Rogovaia heads the Department of Documents on the Political History of Russia, at the Russian Centre for the Preservation and Documentation of Recent History (RTsKhIDNI). She collaborated on the various publications listed above.

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INTRODUCTION

"Who, apart from archival rats, could doubt that the Party and its leaders must be judged, first of all, by their actions"--wrote Stalin in 1931, attacking the historian Slutskii for his interpretation of Party history.¹ This phrase sums up the official Soviet approach to the study of primary sources for most of the existence of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Party leadership combined a proprietary attitude toward the documented past with an emphasis on secrecy, which ensured that even within the higher echelons of the Party access to documents was restricted.² Until the archival reforms that followed the outlawing of the CPSU in 1991, only one archive holding records of the Communist Party admitted researchers.³ In these circumstances, studies of the decision-making process in the USSR were based, of necessity, on deductions made from a limited range of published sources, memoirs, and interviews.⁴ Only in the 1990s, when scholars gained access to a large part of the formerly inaccessible Party records, did it finally become possible to provide an outline of the command structure of the Central Committee based on the records or the deloproizvodstvo of the Communist Party.

Like many Russian administrative terms, the word deloproizvodstvo has no exact English equivalent. Literally, it means "the making of records," but the term refers to much more than that. Deloproizvodstvo is a system for the organization of paperwork, from the filing of incoming information to its circulation. An understanding of the Soviet system of paperwork, based to a large extent on its tsarist predecessor, is vital for anyone trying to evaluate the quality and authenticity of the evidence now available.

This study presents an introduction⁵ to this complex system. The first part describes the archives in which the sources for this study are held and provides information about access. The second part sets out the command structure and deloproizvodstvo of the Central Committee. The third part offers a guide to the types of documents that the Central Committee and its system of paperwork generated.

ARCHIVES OF THE SOVIET PARTY AND STATE

Before describing the four main archives of the highest echelons of the Communist Party and Soviet state, it is important to note that the collections (fondy) they hold are organized according to two different principles: deloproizvodstvennyi and kollektsionnyi. Deloproizvodstvennye collections hold all the papers of a given department and are organized chronologically--this applies to the collections of such organs as the Politburo and Orgburo. Kollektsionnye collections, as the name implies, are organized by subject--the Molotov fondy in the Presidential Archive and in RTsKhIDNI (see below) are an example of this type.

1. The Presidential (Kremlin) Archive (APRF-Arkhiv prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii).
This archive has its origins in the Secret Archive created in 1926 as the VIth Sector of the Secret Department and later disbanded.⁶ In the early Brezhnev years the Central Committee returned the processing of information to the system of sectoral divisions that it had used in the late 1920s. In this context a special Politburo archive was created from some of the papers held in the (revived) VIth sector, now in the General Department.⁷ The Politburo Archive held [End Page 1] especially sensitive material (such as documents relating to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact), originals of Politburo minutes, and the personal papers of about fifty Party figures, including all the Party secretaries from Stalin to Gorbachev. When Gorbachev became President of the USSR, this archive was transferred out of the jurisdiction of the Central Committee and became the Presidential Archive.

The Presidential Archive holds fondy organized according to both the deloproizvodstvennyi and kollektsionnyi principles (e.g., fond 3 contains Politburo papers, fond 56 Molotov's papers). Among its valuable resources are perechni or lists of documents gathered from various sources on such subjects as "writers," "railway catastrophes," etc.⁸

The Presidential Archive remains the most inaccessible of all former Party archives.⁹ No guides to its collections have been published, and it seldom responds to requests for material. This is all the more galling to historians, because documents from the Archive are frequently published by members of the Archive's staff, sometimes under the provocative heading of "Historical Sensations."¹⁰ In the last two years, however, partly as a result of public pressure, the Presidential Archive has transferred some of its (mainly older) documents to RTsKhIDNI¹¹ and TsKhSD.

2. The Centre for the Preservation of Contemporary Documentation (TsKhSD-Tsentr khraneniia sovremennoi dokumentatsii)
The TsKhSD came into being in the autumn of 1991. The core of the Archive's collections consists of the papers of the VIth Sector of the General Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party from 1953 onwards (and includes Congress papers from the XXth Party Congress onward). The General Department looked after all the documents issued and received by the Central Committee of the Communist Party and its numerous departments.

In 1991 some of the collections of the Centre were opened to researchers,¹² though access remained restricted. At present the administration at TsKhSD requires the submission of research topics for approval. Once approval is obtained, the Archive's employees select from de-classified material documents which they consider appropriate to the theme.

The organization of the material in TsKhSD reflects the fact that it was once part of the same archive as the present Presidential Archive. The numbering of its fondy runs in sequence with the fondy of the Presidential Archive. Thus fond 3 of the Presidential Archive (Politburo) is followed by fond 4 of TsKhSD (Secretariat and Orgburo). To confuse matters, fond 5 (Apparat of the Central Committee) contains the papers not of one specific body--instead, its 96 opisi contain the papers of several bodies (e.g., opis' 30, General Department, opis' 12, Secretariat¹³ decrees), their commissions or auxiliary bodies (such as the Technical Secretariat of the Orgburo, opis' 2).

Because TsKhSD was originally a deloproizvodstvennyi archive serving the work of the Central Committee, it has several detailed card indexes. These provide information about every person and subject discussed in the papers in the Archive's keeping, an invaluable research tool at present available only to the Archive's personnel.

3. The Russian Centre for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Recent History (RTsKhIDNI-Rossiiskii tsentr khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii)¹⁴
RTsKhIDNI used to be called the Central Party Archive (Tsentralnyi partiinyi arkhiv, or TsPA), of the Institute of Marx-Engels-Lenin. It was created in 1928 from the merger of the ISTPART archive (documenting the history of the Soviet Party) with the archive of the Institute of Marx-Engels-Lenin (IMEL), which collected documents on the history of the world communist movement.¹⁵

In 1978, the Central Party Archive received many Central Committee papers for the years up to and including the XIXth Party Congress (1982) from the working archive of the General Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. TsPA had served researchers for some decades, but until 1991 it was accessible only to [End Page 2] senior members of the Communist Party pursuing approved topics. In addition to personal papers from all the major figures of Soviet history, RTsKhIDNI documents fall into the following groups:

Working papers of the Central Committee and its subordinate departments, sections, and commissions before 1952, from Politburo level down to specialist departments and commissions;
Papers of Party conferences and congresses, and membership censuses;
Papers of various socialist parties and fractions and international socialist organizations;
Papers of the editorial boards of Central Committee newspapers and journals; and
Papers of state agencies subordinated to the Central Committee (for example the State Committee for Defence) and of Party organizations within state organs, such as the politicheskie upravleniia of several ministries.

RTsKhIDNI has its own system of classification of documents, different from that used in the Central Committee itself and the other Party archive (TsKhSD), which houses more recent materials (see above). Most of the papers of the Central Committee in RTsKhIDNI are classified under a single number--fond 17--with over 160 opisi. Thus, papers of the General Department held in fond 5 at TsKhSD are kept at RTsKhIDNI in opisi 65, 66, 96, 101, and 130 of fond 17.

In the last two years RTsKhIDNI has received from the Presidential Archive a number of collections of "historical" (as opposed to current) importance. Most have not yet been catalogued, but should be available soon.¹⁶

4. State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF-Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii).¹⁷
Since the Communist Party played a leading role in all aspects of political, economic, and social organization, its leaders stood also at the helm of major state institutions. This is one of the reasons why the materials in RTsKhIDNI and TsKhSD are complemented by collections in this Archive.

GARF was created in April 1992 from the Archive of the October Revolution (TsGAOR SSSR) and the Central Archive of the RSFSR (TsGA RSFSR). The former was initially responsible for gathering collections documenting the formation of the Soviet state, but after 1938 it became the repository for the papers of all USSR-level state institutions such as Sovnarkom, NKVD, and others. The latter gathered materials from government bodies of the RSFSR.

All the Archives described above--Party and state alike--are located in Moscow. Although they contain the most data on the higher echelons of the Party, local (city, region, territory) archives also provide insights about Party activities, in the centre as well as locally. Fortunately, local archives use a standard system of classification.¹⁸ As a result, a researcher looking for documents on, say, Party education, will find them under G-1(1) in the local party archives, whether he or she is in Krasnodar, Perm, or elsewhere.

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DECISION-MAKING ORGANS OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY

Current legislation allows unrestricted access to materials more than 30 years old, unless they concern matters of security or personal matters. However, because most materials documenting the work of the Party after 1952 are held in TsKhSD, in practice access to anything after 1952 is limited. Still, the Communist Party was a conservative institution in its organization and bureaucracy, so even information about the Stalin era drawn from RTsKhIDNI collections helps clarify the later work of the Party also.¹⁹

The structure of decision-making at the top of the Communist Party underwent several changes during its history. At all times the formal structure was laid down by the Ustav or Regulations of the Party. According to the Ustav's original version (adopted at the IInd Congress of the RSDRP in 1903), the Party's highest decision-making body [End Page 3] was the Central Committee. By 1919 the Central Committee had been subdivided into smaller organizational units, the Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat--a development recognized in the new Ustav adopted at the VIIIth Party Congress. Formally, this version of the Ustav remained in force throughout the Stalin years.Figure 1 represents the theoretical system of relationships between main Communist Party bodies as laid down by the Ustav.

In actual fact the Politburo of the Central Committee soon came to be at the apex of all decision-making in the Soviet Party, more accurately represented by Figure 2. As Figure 2 shows, the actual system was far more complicated than the theoretical one, because while bodies technically subordinate to the Politburo (e.g., the Secretariat) were meant only to execute instructions from above, they often initiated actions on their own.

The Congress (S"ezd)
Technically, the Congress was the supreme organ of the Communist Party. According to the Party Regulations (Ustav) the Congress decided all key questions relating to the course or policies pursued by the Party and the state. The Congress was formally responsible for revisions of the Regulations and of the Party program, and the Congress was supposed to appoint members of the Central Committee, the Central Control Commission (later the Committee for Party Control), and the Revision Commission, and was required to receive reports from these bodies.

Until the late 1920s, Congresses did play an important role in policy making, as can be seen, for example, from the unpublished verbatim reports of the discussions of the VIIIth Congress in 1919.²⁰ But after the elimination of "factionalism" within the Party, and the victory of Stalin in 1929, Party Congresses ceased to have real power. In 1934, 1939, 1952, and then every three to four years, specially selected delegates would gather in Moscow to demonstrate the "democratic" structure of the Communist Party, rubber-stamping decisions made by the central organs of the Party. The Congress proceedings, with their speeches and reports, were mainly for show, which is why verbatim reports of all the open sessions were usually published. The sole exception was the XIXth Party Congress, which met in October 1952. When Stalin died on 5 March 1953 the verbatim reports of this Congress had yet to be published, and his successors evidently preferred to keep them out of the public domain.²¹

RTsKhIDNI holds the documents for all Party Congresses with the exceptions of the Ist Congress of the RSDRP. Materials for the VIIIth (1919) to the XVIIIth (1939) Congresses are the most complete. They contain verbatim reports of speeches with corrections by their authors, reports corrected by the editorial boards responsible for their publication, materials of the commissions dealing with organization and mandates, as well as records of votes. For the XIXth Congress (1952) onwards RTsKhIDNI holds only Congress bulletins containing edited versions of Congress discussions, the originals of which are in TsKhSD fond 1.

Party Conferences
In the pre-war period, decisions of the Congresses of the Central Committee were supplemented by decisions of Party Conferences, which were attended by representatives of regional and territorial Party organizations. As a rule, the Conferences examined the same sort of questions as the meetings of the Central Committee, and the decisions of Conferences had to be ratified by the Central Committee. The verbatim reports of most Conferences were bound and published in book form. The sole exception was the XVIIIth Conference (January-February 1941), but the texts of the reports, speeches, and decisions made at that Conference were published in Pravda during its sessions. They match closely the verbatim report kept at RTsKhIDNI.

The Conferences, like the Congresses, offered a venue for reasonably genuine discussion until the late 1920s. However, the "official" records of the conferences did not always correspond to the actual proceedings. A comparison of the [End Page 5] uncorrected²² and corrected²³ copies of speeches made as late as 1929 by a delegate to the XVIth Conference shows striking differences. The original was recorded by three stenographers and typed. Later the author and editorial commission made corrections that transformed a criticism of unspecified "right-deviationists" into an attack on the ideas of Bukharin.

The Central Committee
From the point of view of deloproizvodstvo it would not be an exaggeration to say that there were two Central Committees. One of them was the body of elected representatives of the Communist Party. The other was the name used in documents produced for and by any number of Central Committee bodies, from the Politburo to the temporary commissions.

Thus, the decrees of the Central Committee were seldom prepared by that body. Instead, they were initiated, discussed, and finalized in the Politburo. For example, the Politburo minutes of 30 November 1930 criticize regional Party committees for not carrying out "the Central Committee decree of 20 November." From the agenda for that date it is clear that the decree referred to was, in fact, a Politburo decree.²⁴ In the same way, documents that bore the heading "For the attention of the Central Committee" were usually intended for the Politburo.²⁵

Plenums of the Central Committee
According to the Party Ustav, the work of the Party between Congresses (the period is known as the sozyv) was to be carried out by the Central Committee. The Central Committee had the right, at least on paper, to elect all Party leaders including members of the Politburo and Secretaries of the Central Committee. Meetings of the Central Committee were, at first, regular and frequent. But by the early 1920s the work of the Central Committee was limited to approximately two plenums a year. The role of the plenums grew during the period of "inter-Party struggle" when votes taken at the plenum of the Central Committee could provide backing for a given group within the Party. But even then the opinion of the Politburo was decisive, since it was the Politburo that proposed what questions should be discussed at the plenum and drafted the decrees to be adopted by the plenum.

For most of the Party's history the questions discussed at Central Committee plenums were general and declaratory. To be sure, the discussions at the plenums were more candid than those at the congresses, because plenum members knew that even though their deliberations were being stenographed only the decisions of the plenum would be made public. Three versions of plenum proceedings exist:

The original verbatim reports of plenum proceedings recorded in shorthand by "technical secretaries."
Edited verbatim reports of the plenums, from August 1924 printed as brochures and sent to local Party leaders. These printed reports omitted decisions on organizational questions, such as elections to the Politburo and Secretariat.
Newspaper publications of plenum decisions, sometimes accompanying more detailed reports of plenum proceedings.

RTsKhIDNI holds papers of the Central Committee Plenums from March 1918 to February 1941, but the holdings for some of the Plenums are not complete. The richest collection covers the years 1925-1929, and includes preparatory materials, such as the relevant Central Committee decisions, draft resolutions, often in several versions, materialy or information documents used by plenum members as backup evidence in their discussions, and so on. The files on later Plenums often omit these materials. Plenum papers for the years 1941 onwards are kept in the Presidential Archive.²⁶

A comparison of the three types of plenum reports provides valuable insight into the mind-set of the Party leadership, for the editing reveals what issues it considered most sensitive.

The original verbatim reports of plenum proceedings were, like the Congress proceedings described above, edited by both the authors of the speeches and an editorial board. This is why [End Page 6] papers from plenums can be found not only in the plenum collections, but also in personal collections. For example Voprosy istorii published an article entitled "Fragments of the verbatim report of the December 1936 Plenum of the Central Committee of the VKP(b)." The introduction to the article claimed that "this verbatim report of the Plenum does not exist in the archive of the Politburo of the Central Committee. The fragments discovered recently among the papers of Stalin's personal archive in the Presidential Archive permit us to reconstruct a part of the Plenum discussion."²⁷ In actual fact the verbatim report of the December 1936 Plenum does exist in an archive, though not of the Politburo: both the original and edited versions are in the RTsKhIDNI Plenum collection, together with separate copies of individual speeches and responses to the discussion edited by the speakers themselves before publication. The publication by the Presidential Archive was probably based on Stalin's own edited copy of his replies to points made by other speakers. Since we know that the materials of the December 1936 Plenum were not published--on Stalin's orders--it is probable that he had decided not to return the edited copy to the archive, which is how it came to be found in the Presidential Archive in the Stalin fond.

The edited record of plenum discussions removed all differences of opinion. In some cases the edited version of plenum proceedings even leaves out discussions of major issues. For example the published report of the February-March 1937 Plenum did not include the discussion of the case against Bukharin and Rykov, and the official "verbatim" record of the Plenum of March 1940 does not include Molotov's report on foreign policy or Voroshilov's report on the lessons of the Finnish war.²⁸

It should be noted that, though several original verbatim reports of plenums have recently been published (February-March 1937, July 1953, June 1957, October 1964, October 1987) and are accessible to scholars, most reports of post-1940 plenums, as well as parts of the reports of pre-1940 plenums, remain out of bounds in the Presidential Archive.

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Central Committee Commissions and Consultative Committees
RTsKhIDNI possesses the protocols of numerous commissions and consultative committees (soveshchaniia) of the Central Committee.²⁹ It should be noted, however, that because they were frequently set up by the Politburo and their decisions required Politburo approval, they differed from Politburo commissions in composition only.

The Politburo
The Central Committee meeting of 23 October 1917 established a Politburo "to provide leadership during the Revolution," but it did not outlast the event. The Politburo as a permanent body was established in 1919 by the Eighth Congress of the Bolshevik Party. Its official role and functions were set out in the Party Ustav of 1919. The Politburo was supposed to be subordinate to the Central Committee, and its members were to be elected by Central Committee plenums. In fact, for most of the Politburo's existence, these roles were reversed and Central Committee plenums became rubber stamps for Politburo decisions, including those affecting Central Committee membership.³⁰

Politburo Commissions
The Politburo carried out its work through a number of commissions. They were formed as a result of Politburo decrees and consisted of members of the Politburo and other leaders of Party and state organizations.

Most of the commissions were created ad hoc to make proposals for draft decrees on issues raised at Politburo meetings. The draft decrees would then be submitted to the Politburo for approval. Such commissions usually functioned for short periods--anything from 24 hours to several months. Other commissions were empowered not only with the drafting of decrees but also with the supervision of their implementation. Certain commissions of the Central Committee were instituted [End Page 7] on a permanent basis and worked for many years. They were responsible for specific segments of Party and state policy. Among such commissions in the 1930s were the defence commission, the currency commission, the railway transport commission, and the Mongolia commission.³¹

The Politburo Commission for judicial affairs (sometimes called the Commission for political affairs, for verdicts, for capital punishment, or for the review of verdicts of the "supreme measure of social defence," i.e., capital punishment) worked permanently throughout the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s (at least to June 1947). It supervised the organizations of political trials and approved or overturned capital punishment verdicts for "political crimes." The Commission was particularly active during the purges of 1937-1938, as can be seen from the frequent references to the confirmation of its protocols in the protocols of the Politburo.

Though most decisions made by the various commissions had to be confirmed by the Politburo, occasionally commissions had a right to make final decisions in the name of the Politburo. The significance of Politburo commissions as a key mechanism for decision-making and supervision declined considerably in the second half of the 1930s.

The materials of the Politburo commissions should interest researchers. The commissions discussed in detail many questions that were eventually decided by the Politburo, and the preparatory material and expert reports gathered by them are invaluable in assessing the decision-making process. Protocols of different commissions can be found in appendixes to Politburo protocols. They can also be found in the personal fondy of members of the Politburo, such as Lenin, Kamenev, or Stasova, secretary to the Politburo from 1917 to 1920, because Politburo members frequently kept papers which they received during their work in their "personal archives."

The Orgburo
The Orgburo of the Central Committee, also elected at the plenums, was the most important institution in the Party hierarchy after the Politburo, and made key decisions about Party and organizational work. The main job of the Orgburo was to check that the work of local Party organizations was satisfactory and to supervise personnel decisions, the so-called kadrovye voprosy. The functions of the Orgburo and the Politburo were frequently intertwined. In Lenin's words, "the main task of the Orgburo is the distribution of the Party's forces, whereas the Politburo has to deal mainly with political questions. It is clear that such a distinction is to a point artificial, since no policy can be carried out unless the necessary people are allocated to the task."³² Therefore the Politburo confirmed a significant part of Orgburo decisions. The work of the Orgburo was supervised by the deputy to the General Secretary of the Central Committee, in effect the Second Secretary of the Party, though formally such a post did not exist. The Orgburo functioned from 1919 to 1952, until the XIXth Congress, when the Orgburo was merged with the Secretariat.

The Secretariat
The Secretariat was formed in 1919, at the same time as the Politburo and the Orgburo were established on a permanent basis. Initially its tasks were purely technical, the servicing of Politburo and Orgburo work (e.g., organization of typing, shorthand, and filing). It was headed by a Chief (otvetstvennyi) Secretary, who had to be a member of the Orgburo, and staffed by several technical secretaries responsible for the actual execution of the various tasks.

By 1922 the Secretariat became one of the most important parts of the Central Committee. All Secretaries of the Central Committee, starting with the General Secretary (a post created in 1922 and first held by Stalin), were members of the Secretariat. From the 1920s until the late 1940s, the Party Ustav required the Central Committee to elect the members of the Secretariat who were, in turn, required to carry out the day-to-day organizational and executive work of the Party. Even though the Secretariat had some independent functions, its primary function was to safeguard the smooth running of the Politburo and the Orgburo. [End Page 8] Molotov, explaining the functions of the Secretariat at a session of the Orgburo on 3 May 1927, said: "We, the Secretaries of the Central Committee, meet on Fridays at 11:00 a.m. in order to discuss the agenda of the next meeting of the Orgburo. During this meeting we are able to assess whether enough information exists to allow the inclusion of a given point for discussion."³³ Judging from a report made by A. A. Kuznetsov³⁴ to the Central Committee Administration of Cadres nearly twenty years later, this pattern remained true: "The Secretariat can and does meet several times a day, in the mornings and evenings. Its primary responsibility is the preparation of questions for discussion by the Orgburo and the checking of the implementation of Politburo and Orgburo decisions. In preparation for the Orgburo meetings the Secretariat reviews the draft agenda and all draft decrees of the Orgburo, and organizes the execution of Central Committee decisions via corresponding Administrations (upravleniia) and Departments of the Central Committee. The Secretariat of the Central Committee is also responsible for the allocation of leading Party, soviet and economic cadres."³⁵

The lines of command between the Secretariat, the Orgburo, and the Politburo were not simple, as Politburo protocol No. 62 for 21 September 1921 illustrates.³⁶ A discussion about the selection of speakers for the Plenum states: "a) About those who will report to the CC Plenum (Orgburo protocol 68, para. 9) . . . b) Comrades should immediately notify the Secretariat of the Central Committee about the names of those whom they have appointed to report." It is clear that in this case the original question of speakers at the Plenum was raised by the Orgburo, which put forward a proposal for the Politburo to approve. The Politburo was then expected to notify the Secretariat which arranged the details. Thus neither the original question nor the implementation of the decision was in the hands of the Politburo. Though this example concerns a relatively unimportant matter, similar examples can be found frequently.

The role of the Secretariat in supervising the implementation of decisions of the Politburo or Orgburo may explain the fact that it was usually headed by a "second" secretary, second in command to the General Secretary.

Departments and Administrations of the Central Committee
The Secretariat of the Central Committee was also directly responsible for the work of Central Committee Administrations and Departments. Though the names and composition of these changed over the years, the principles behind their activities remained basically the same. Each secretary of the Central Committee was responsible for one or more Departments.³⁷ Most of the Departments were organized according to specialization: branches of the economy, work of Party and state bodies, propaganda, and so on. Departments responsible for the selection and distribution of cadres were the most important.

The Central Committee departments functioned as a link between the leading organs of the Party and local Party organizations. As a result they collected vast quantities of information about various aspects of the life of the Party and state. As a rule, the departments were also responsible for the work of their "instructors," who were regularly dispatched to check on the implementation of policies at the local level, away from Moscow. Their reports on inspection visits and investigations provide rich documentation on local administration.

Departments frequently raised issues for discussion by the Central Committee, and they were frequently also entrusted with supervision of implementation of decisions.

The RTsKhIDNI³⁸ collection of documents from Central Committee departments is almost complete for the 1920s and for the post-war years. However, the collection for the 1930s contains large gaps, possibly because material may have been destroyed during preparations for the evacuation of Moscow during the German advance. We know that in early 1941 the Central Committee Administration of Affairs wrote to Secretaries of the Central Committee, proposing that they destroy documents from the Organization and [End Page 9] Instruction Department: correspondence with local Party organizations; reports from regional (oblast') and territorial (krai) Committees, Central Committees of the Communist Parties of the Republics; daily reports compiled by the Department from reports sent to the centre by local Party organizations; copies of reports by the various Central Committee Departments dealt with personally by Party secretaries; and so on.³⁹

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Informal and Temporary Structures
In addition to the Party structures described above, whose rights and duties were set out by the Party Ustav, there existed informal and temporary bodies which, nonetheless, wielded real power. The best known of these was the semerka or group of seven which, in the late 1920s, ensured the exclusion of Trotskii from Politburo decisions by meeting before Politburo sessions to discuss the agenda and agree on decisions. Judging by available evidence, documentation for semerka meetings may well exist in the Presidential Archive.⁴⁰

After the split between Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, during the struggle with the "united" opposition in 1926-1927, Stalin and his supporters in the Politburo started to hold preliminary meetings at which decisions on key issues were made prior to official Politburo meetings. This can be seen from Stalin's letters to Molotov, many of which were in effect addressed to the whole Stalin-Bukharin group in the Politburo.⁴¹ The mechanism behind the victory of Stalin's faction in the Politburo against Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomskii in 1928-1929 is not yet clear, but we can surmise from available evidence that preliminary decision-making was regular.

It seems that this practice continued into the 1930s. On 4 November 1930 at a joint session of the Politburo and the Presidium of the Central Control Commission Stalin felt it necessary to deny an accusation made by S. I. Syrtsov⁴² that "the Politburo is a fiction. In actual fact everything is decided behind the back of the Politburo by a tiny group, which gathers in the Kremlin . . .Kuibyshev, Voroshilov, Kalinin, Rudzutak, all members of the Politburo, are excluded from this group, while non-members such as Iakovlev, Postyshev, and others are included."⁴³

There were also small "formal" groups in the Politburo. According to Molotov, the Politburo always had a leading group. "In Stalin's time it did not include Kalinin, Rudzutak, Kosior, or Andreev. Members of the Politburo simply received materials about different questions . . . But the most important questions were decided by the leading group of the Politburo."⁴⁴ According to Khrushchev's memoirs, in the post-war period Stalin frequently made decisions without consulting anyone except one or two members of the Politburo: "I was then already a Politburo member, but we never discussed the problem [of West Berlin]. I do not know who discussed it with Stalin, but I think he talked only to Molotov about it, and to no one else." . . . "I had no concrete information [about the size of the Navy at that time]. . . . Any interest shown by any one of us [in the Politburo] in any weapon could arouse his suspicion: Stalin was perfectly capable of considering any one of us an enemy agent, recruited to the cause of the imperialists."⁴⁵

According to V. P. Nikolaeva,⁴⁶ another "inner circle" was of a more formal nature. In 1928-1929 members of the Politburo met on Mondays to discuss the agenda for the forthcoming sessions of the Politburo and propose draft decisions. The existence of these "Monday sessions" (ponedel'nicheskie zasedaniia) of the Politburo is confirmed by one of Stalin's letters to Molotov in 1929.⁴⁷

In 1937 the practice of singling out a "leading group" was legalized. On 14 April 1937 the Politburo adopted a special decision about the preparation of agenda questions for the Politburo. A permanent commission was created in order to prepare, "and in cases of special need, to decide, questions of a secret nature." The commission consisted of Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, and Ezhov. An analogous commission for the preparation of urgent current economic questions consisted of Molotov, Stalin, Chubar, Mikoian, and Kaganovich.⁴⁸

How such commissions or how any other "fractional" and informal meetings of the Party leadership worked remains a mystery. But we do know how official Party organs, primarily the Politburo, [End Page 10} Orgburo, and Secretariat, carried out their deloproizvodstvo.

DOCUMENTS OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY

Protocols of the Politburo
The work of the Politburo was originally recorded in hand-written protocols, occasionally verbatim. The practice of stenographing Politburo proceedings was not common until the 1970s. Politburo protocols were maintained in several copies: podlinnye (original); podpisnye (signed); spravochnye (reference); zapasnye (reserve); rassylochnye (for sending out); kontrol'nye (control); dlia rezki (for cutting out); nezaverennye (unauthenticated).

Podlinnye protocols are the original versions of the protocol. Once the agenda of the Politburo had been prepared by the Secretaries of the Central Committee, the Bureau of the Secretariat (later the Secret Department) would prepare cards, with a single card assigned to each point on the agenda. Under the heading "present" the card listed members of the Politburo expected to attend the meeting.⁴⁹ Underneath this are two columns: slushali ("heard," but in this context "discussed") on the left, postanovili ("decreed") on the right.

Until the late 1930s the slushali column contained the name of the initiator of a proposal. But beginning with protocol No. 51, for Politburo resolutions from 20 June to 31 July 1937, the names of participants and persons reporting were almost always omitted, perhaps because so many of the Politburo members had been purged. The omission of names continued through the 1940s up to the end of the period covered by RTsKhIDNI holdings.

On most cards the postanovili column was filled in by hand at the meeting. But, judging by the fact that some of the cards contain an error-free typed text, sometimes a draft decision was entered by the Bureau before the Politburo meeting. This was then altered by hand at the meeting.

Members of the Politburo present entered their vote by hand on the card, sometimes with comments. Each card would then be signed by a Secretary of the Central Committee, who also recorded to whom a copy of the decision should be sent for information or implementation. After the meeting the cards for all agenda points would be bound together with relevant materialy.

The podlinnye protokoly were then typed as a single typescript for each meeting. Podpisnye protocols are such typed copies signed by the Secretary of the Central Committee. In the period under discussion the signature was mostly Stalin's, or, in his absence, Molotov's or Kaganovich's. The original signature distinguished podlinnye or podpisnye protocols from all other versions. Spravochnye, kontrol'nye, rassylochnye protocols were not signed, but stamped with the facsimile stamp of the Secretary who had signed the original protocol and the stamp of the Central Committee.

Spravochnye protocols were for the use of Secretariat staff, as a reference copy. Rassylochnye protocols were sent out to members of regional Committees, territorial Committees, etc., as listed in a special list.⁵⁰ The purpose of kontrol'nye protocols is not clear. Protocols dlia rezki were cut up so that a card index could be compiled to provide a subject index to the protocols.

For Politburo sessions from 1919 to 1923 RTsKhIDNI has protocol copies retyped in 1925-1926 in the Secret Department of the Central Committee. These are nezaverennye as they lack the required signature or stamp.

It should be noted that the protocol of a Politburo meeting is not evidence, per se, that such a meeting took place. Instead, an agenda could be circulated with a draft resolution requiring individual assent or comment by Politburo members. This was called approval by questionnaire (opros) and was used a great deal during the Stalin years. There were several methods of getting a decree approved by opros.

The first was opros of Politburo members actually present at a meeting. An agenda point which, according to the Secretaries, required no discussion would be circulated round the table on a blank headed na golosovanie v krugovuiu (to be voted on by circulation) with a draft decision for members to sign their approval or otherwise. But on 16 [End Page 11] October 1932 on Stalin's initiative the Politburo adopted the following decision: "The Secret Department of the Central Committee should be instructed to stop the carrying out of voting by opros during Politburo sessions, so as not to distract the attention of Politburo members from discussion of the agenda."⁵¹

The second common opros method was by a telephone known as the kremlevka or vertushka. Unlike standard telephones, which required an operator to connect a call, the vertushki were connected to a very limited number of subscribers. Each subscriber could dial direct⁵² to another subscriber, so their conversation would be confidential.⁵³ As Voroshilov wrote in a letter to Stalin dated 21 June 1931: "A pity that for some strange reason there is no vertushka in Sochi--we could talk to each other more often rather than having to communicate by letter."⁵⁴

For the opros an assistant of the Politburo secretary would telephone members with the text of a draft resolution and record their responses. Not all such decisions were made on a single date, or by all members of the Politburo, but all were entered in the approved archival copy of the Politburo protocols as Politburo decisions. A similar opros could also be made by sending round papers via the Kremlin courier.

After the XVIIIth Congress of the VKP(b) beginning with protocol No. 1 (22 March to 19 April 1939) all Politburo decisions adopted, whether at standard or extraordinary sessions or by opros, were recorded in protocols under the same rubric: "decisions of the Politburo."

Not all draft decrees proposed at Politburo meetings were adopted. In some cases the protocol bears the words sniat' s rassmotreniia (remove from the Agenda), otlozhit' vopros (defer decision), or poruchit' reshit' . . .(instruct . . . [Sovnarkom or some other body] to make a decision on this question).

Not all Politburo decrees were drafted by Politburo members. Every Department of the Central Committee--indeed, any part of the apparat from the Politburo down--could prepare decrees for consideration. Most often Departments sent a draft to the Secretariat, which allocated the document for consideration either by a Secretary with the relevant competence or by the Orgburo or Politburo.

The draft document would be headed Proekt postanovleniia TsK, illustrating the point about the use of the Central Committee designation for documents issued by, or intended for, any of its subordinate bodies. That is why it is important to study the materialy otdelov, because they show what information was presented in support of such drafts, and indicate which draft decisions were not adopted.

The originals of most pre-1952 Politburo protocols were recently transferred to RTsKhIDNI, though without the materialy which accompanied them or the besprotokol'nye decrees. These are at present being processed, so that most scholars have been working with edited copies of the originals, the podpisnye and kontrol'nye copies.⁵⁵

In addition to the open Politburo sessions which were carried out in accordance with an adopted timetable several times a month, Politburo meetings also took place in closed and extraordinary sessions. The practice of calling closed sessions began in the 1920s. For example, on 20 March 1924 the Politburo adopted a decision to carry out special weekly sessions on matters of foreign policy.⁵⁶ On 5 February 1927 the Politburo decided to arrange closed sessions of the Politburo twice a month "in between normal sessions." The closed sessions included not only Politburo members, but also candidates for Politburo membership and representatives of the Central Control Commission.⁵⁷ In a decision of 29 July 1927 the practice of calling regular closed sessions of the Politburo was abandoned and instead closed sessions were to be arranged to deal with specific issues each time on the basis of a special decree to be made by the Politburo.⁵⁸ However, in 1931 the practice of regular closed sessions of the Politburo was renewed. At Stalin's suggestion on 30 December 1930, six sessions of the Politburo were to be held every month: three regular open sessions, and three closed sessions open only to members of the Politburo (for agenda points affecting the internal affairs of the Party) or with specially invited representatives of such organizations as the OGPU, NKID (Commissariat of Foreign Affairs), NKO (Commissariat of Defence), and NKF [End Page 12] (Commissariat of Finance) to discuss agenda points affecting them. The agendas for these meetings were compiled by the Secretariat together with Molotov.⁵⁹ Extraordinary sessions of the Politburo for specific questions continued to be convoked by a special Politburo decree.

Proceedings of closed and extraordinary sessions of the Politburo were seldom recorded even in the early 1930s. It appears that decrees adopted at such sessions were entered as appendixes to the protocols of standard sessions under the heading "Politburo decisions."⁶⁰

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Protocols of the Orgburo and Secretariat
The Secretariat of the Central Committee started keeping protocols after the Xth Party Congress in March 1921. The Orgburo protocols in RTsKhIDNI date from 1919. The protocols for the years 1919-1920 are not originals, but copies typed in 1925-1926, containing a number of inaccuracies.

The originals of the protocols of Orgburo and Secretariat sessions consist of cards the size of about half a sheet of standard paper, each of which records the date of the session, the numbers of protocols and points, and the title of the question discussed (with surnames of those who raised the questions and those who reported on them also recorded). The decision itself, the record of who was to receive extracts from the decision, and the number under which the card was filed were placed in the archive. It seems that such cards were prepared in advance during the preparation of the agenda for each session. This is suggested by the fact that more than one card was prepared for the same question, including the formulation of the question and occasionally even the decisions. At the meeting the "prepared decision" was either left untouched or corrected by hand. Since some of the cards are handwritten one assumes that certain decisions were made at the session itself. After discussion of an issue on the agenda, the corresponding card was signed by a secretary of the Central Committee, perhaps at the meeting itself, and acquired the authority of a decision recorded in the protocol.

Special cards were produced for decisions adopted v krugovuiu or by opros.⁶¹ Such a card would have the numbers of the protocol and the agenda point, the formulation of the question (with surname of the initiator in brackets), and decision taken. The cards also recorded the results of voting.

From these cards the typed protocols of the Orgburo and Secretariat were compiled, bound into foolscap protocol volumes, with information about who participated in the session and the discussion of particular points of the agenda and what resolutions were adopted. If the resolutions were lengthy they were sometimes bound at the end of the protocol as an appendix. A separate heading recorded decisions taken by opros in the period between sessions of the Orgburo and the Secretariat. As with Politburo protocols, podpisnye, spravochnye (or kontrol'nye) copies were made.

Protocols of the Politburo and Orgburo are headed, for example, by an identifier of the type "Protocol No. 35 of 2 March 1929." This identifier is written on all materialy or documents attached to the agenda in the format 60/3-5.1.24, meaning Point 3 of Protocol No. 60 for a meeting on 5 January 1924.

Protocols of the sessions of the Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat were not numbered until March 1920. For most of 1920 protocols of Politburo and plenum sessions had a common number. Subsequently each protocol of Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat sessions had its own number, with the numbering starting with "l" at the beginning of each new sozyv, i.e., after each Congress of the Party which would elect a new Central Committee. Until 1940 the sequence could be restarted even within the same sozyv or even the same year. The sozyv number corresponded to the Congress number. Thus the Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat "elected" at the XVth Congress were referred to as the Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat of the XVth sozyv.

Within the protocol itself, each agenda paragraph became a decision with a separate number. To this a letter could be added, designating the [End Page 13] manner by which the decision had been agreed. Thus "2" or "2s" meant that the decision had been adopted by all those present at the meeting, while "2g" or "2gs" meant that it had been adopted by opros or v krugovuiu.⁶² In the jargon of the apparat the two types of decrees were zasedancheskie or "sessional," and golosovannye or "voted upon."⁶³

We have already noted that a large number of draft decrees never reached the Politburo. In some cases a department could make a decision which would then become a resolution (postanovlenie) of the plenum or Orgburo. In some cases such draft resolutions are recorded as a decision which the department entrusted to or imposed upon some other body.

Apart from the decisions actually recorded in the various protocols, there were also so-called besprotokolnye (non-protocol) decrees of the Secretariat and the Orgburo. These bear the comment: "not to be entered in protocol" in the protocol originals. It is not quite clear yet how these decisions were taken or why they were to be excluded. The most likely conjecture is that they were decisions made personally by a secretary of the Central Committee.

Special protocols (osobye papki)
All resolutions of the Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat were secret. They could be seen only by the most important leaders in Moscow and local Party organizations. Typically, separate directives were sent to those state or economic leaders of a middle level responsible for implementation of Party resolutions. The procedure for sending out, keeping, and returning of Central Committee materials, such as verbatim reports of Central Committee plenums, protocols of Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat sessions, were regulated by a set of resolutions "on conspiracy" (po konspiratsii),⁶⁴ most of which had been adopted in the 1920s.

Certain Politburo decisions were not recorded in the standard protocol. Already on 8 November 1919 the Politburo protocol states: "decisions on the most important questions should not be recorded in the official protocol, but Comrade Krestinskii should make an aide-memoire and carry them out personally."⁶⁵

By 1922 such decisions were occasionally entered in a separate osobaia papka or "special folder." On 1 February 1922, during a discussion of improving procedures of the Secretariat and Politburo, it was noted that "for especially secret proposals and decisions the Politburo maintains a special Politburo protocol (separate from the normal protocols of the Politburo) which is not sent out to Central Committee members."⁶⁶

In practice the maintenance of special Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat protocols became standard only in 1923. The first known mention of the term "osobaia papka" occurs in a Politburo protocol of 13 August 1923.⁶⁷ Transfer to the osobaia papka became the norm for decrees dealing with the most important political, foreign policy, and military questions, questions on the activities of organs of internal security, and decisions affecting the work of the higher organs of Party and state power. The standard Politburo protocol record for such questions is "NKVD questions. Decision-osobaia papka."

RTsKhIDNI has so far received only the spravochnye or reference copies of the osobye papki. The format of the originals of osobye papki was probably the same as that of standard protocols. The decisions were entered on specially printed cards on the day of the meeting, and then retyped in spravochnye (reference) and kontrol'nye (control) examples. For obvious reasons there were no rassylochnye or mailing copies. Excerpts, consisting of a single decree or, more often, a few sentences from a decree, were sent exclusively to the person required to carry out a specific decision.

The osobye papki had a double numbering. Since they were part of a normal Politburo protocol they carried the number of that protocol. Since "osobaia papka" decisions were not adopted at each Politburo session, they also had their own number, e.g.: "Protocol No. 43 (Special protocol No. 30) of Politburo session of 3 January 1925."

The spravochnye or reference copies of osobye papki in RTsKhIDNI are clearly incomplete, since they do not include a number of decrees mentioned under the heading osobaia papka in the original Politburo protocols.[End Page 14]

As an example we can take the infamous Politburo decree on the execution of Polish officers in Katyn in 1940. In the RTsKhIDNI copy of the osobaia papka there is only the phrase: "Confirm proposals by NKVD." However, publication of documents on the Katyn affair⁶⁸ shows that the Politburo received a letter from the head of NKVD USSR, L. P. Beria, which outlined the questions to be discussed and proposed a draft decree.⁶⁹ Politburo members present at the meeting (Stalin, Voroshilov, Molotov, Mikoian) approved the draft decree by writing za--"for"--and putting their signatures directly on Beria's letter. Kalinin and Kaganovich voted "for" by opros, which was also noted on the letter. An excerpt from the protocol of the Politburo was prepared for Beria. After Stalin's death, all this documentation was taken out of the original protocols of the Politburo and enclosed in a special envelope. Each new General Secretary, up to and including Gorbachev, was shown such envelopes on entry into office.

The originals of the osobye papki of the Orgburo and Secretariat suggest that, as with the normal protocols of Orgburo and Secretariat, each decision of the osobaia papka is entered on a separate card. In addition to the card, the osobye papki contain appendixes with materialy.

Verbatim Records of Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat Meetings
The question of stenogrammy or verbatim shorthand records of the Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat proceedings is particularly interesting. We know that such records existed for some Orgburo and Secretariat meetings from the collections of materials for these bodies⁷⁰ and from the collection of the Bureau of the Secretariat.⁷¹ One interesting example of such a stenographic record of an Orgburo meeting has been recently published. The document records the proceedings which led to the infamous decree "On the journals Zvezda and Leningrad," well known to all historians of Soviet literature.⁷² Among other things, the document reveals that even when it was decided to stenograph the proceedings, they were not recorded in their entirety. Fortunately, many passages were provided in their original form, reproducing the awkwardness, repetitiveness, and bullying of Stalin's Russian in all its awfulness.

For the 1920s RTsKhIDNI also has copies of the verbatim records of specific decisions, which were sent out as instructions from the centre.⁷³ Such records were retained in the Central Committees of republican Communist Parties and in regional and territorial Party committees for "directing work." It can be expected, therefore, that copies will be found in archives of the former Republics and former regional Party archives.

The last RTsKhIDNI example of such an instruction is the verbatim record of the Orgburo session of 6 March 1930 on "the measures to be taken for improving the management of industry and the establishment of edinonachalie." This was printed as a brochure of large format and distributed on 12 May 1930 on the instructions of L. M. Kaganovich, Secretary of the Central Committee.

Similar large format brochures also exist for a few Politburo sessions recorded verbatim. These concern issues which the Party leadership wanted to make more widely known among the Party and state nomenclature. For example, during the inter-Party struggle of the 1920s, the investigation of the cases of highly placed opposition leaders was recorded and disseminated, indeed the leaders of the opposition often demanded that such verbatim reports were kept.⁷⁴ The same is true of the Politburo discussion of the Syrtsov and Lominadze and the Smirnov, Eismont, and Tolmachev cases.

It is not yet clear what proportion of Politburo minutes was recorded verbatim. According to the instructions on the work of the Politburo, confirmed on 14 June 1923,⁷⁵ a stenographer should record "key reports . . . joint reports of Commissions and the concluding words of the persons reporting."

Politburo members could also vote to record discussions in shorthand. Since a Politburo decree of 5 May 1927 states "that all [Central Committee] bodies and commissions should discuss top secret questions in closed sessions without secretaries and reporters, the protocol to be recorded by the chairman himself,"⁷⁶ it seems unlikely that the [End Page 15] labour-intensive process of shorthand note-keeping was used often. This inference would seem to be confirmed by the Politburo protocols in RTsKhIDNI. Protocols dating from the 1920s note which agenda questions were recorded in shorthand, and such indications are relatively rare.⁷⁷ But until the Protocol materials from the Presidential Archive become available it will not be possible to establish details of the practice of keeping verbatim records.

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Materials for Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat Protocols
As a rule, Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat resolutions in the majority of cases emerged only after long discussions between members who also had to reconcile the interests of various institutions. The Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat protocols are insufficient to convey the essence of these discussions. For example, they do not always tell us who initiated a question, what were the views of the different Politburo members, and what proposals were being made by particular state and Party institutions. To some extent such questions can be answered through reference to the materials to the protocols.

At present Orgburo and Secretariat materials are already available.⁷⁸ They include: various notes and reports that record the opinions of different leaders, memoranda about investigation by specialists into various questions, letters and appeals to the Central Committee on the basis of which questions were raised, detailed reports explaining the reasons for decisions, and, more importantly, proposals for resolutions--initial versions, reworked drafts, as well as final texts. Depending on the period, the materials to the protocols of Orgburo and Secretariat sessions are either attached to the protocols themselves or sewn separately into discrete file (delo) indicating to which protocol they refer.

If a meeting of the Orgburo or the Secretariat decided to refer an agenda point to the Politburo, the materials and the draft resolution on the question were also forwarded to the Politburo. If and when the Politburo took a decision on the matter, the relevant excerpt from the Politburo protocol was bound into the file with the original Orgburo or Secretariat protocol materials.

Though Politburo protocol materials remain in the Presidential Archive and, therefore, inaccessible, we have a good idea of what they contain from the resolutions of the Politburo on the preparation of materials for its sessions. The frequent revisiting of this matter suggests that it mattered to Politburo members. For example, on 14 May 1926 the Politburo decided that agenda points on planning should be accompanied by a short report, conclusions, and decisions by the relevant soviet organizations (STO, SNK), and a draft resolution, all this to be no more than 10 to 12 pages.⁷⁹ On 9 August 1928, after a report by Molotov, the Politburo adopted a new resolution, according to which every question investigated by the Politburo would be accompanied by an explanatory note of 5 to 10 pages, a draft Politburo resolution, and also, if necessary, conclusions made by qualified persons and institutions.⁸⁰ On 5 November 1931 the Politburo adopted a proposal of Voroshilov and Stalin that the materials accompanying agenda points should not exceed 4 to 5 pages, but only ten days later it also adopted a proposal by Stalin to limit materials to a maximum of 8 pages, consisting of an explanatory note and a draft resolution.⁸¹

The brevity of these materials required them to be no more than summaries of much more extensive discussions that had taken place in various Party and soviet institutions. Therefore in a sense one could treat as materials relating to the work of the top Party bodies all the documents of Departments in the Central Committee, People's Commissariats or ministries, trade unions, Komsomol, and other bodies--as long as they include references to their contacts with the Central Committee. The interaction between the Politburo and the USSR Sovnarkom (later Sovmin) presents a good example of the way in which information about Politburo discussions can be found on the basis of materials from these two most important organs.

According to existing rules the Politburo had to confirm all important resolutions of Sovnarkom and, in its turn, it often transferred to the Sovnarkom matters already discussed at the Politburo. The procedure for confirming government decrees in the 1930s was as follows. The Politburo [End Page 16] received, together with each draft decree, a short note with the signature of Molotov or one of his deputies, which explained why a given decision was necessary. Copies of such notes remained in the secret Department of the Administration of Affairs of Sovnarkom USSR,⁸² whose duties included correspondence with the Politburo. After the Politburo confirmed a draft resolution, it added to the file a note about the number and date of the corresponding Politburo decision. The originals of these notes and the related documents were then bound as materials to protocols of the Politburo. In a number of cases the Politburo refused to confirm a Sovnarkom decree. Sometimes Stalin himself did not allow a draft decree to reach Politburo sessions. For example, the original of the note from V. V. Kuibyshev attached to a draft resolution of the Sovnarkom on the financing of a number of Party educational institutions, dated 19 April 1934, was returned to the Sovnarkom with Stalin's comment written on top: "Cannot vote, the proposal is not sufficiently argued."⁸³ A Sovnarkom decree on the allocation of finances for the purchase of imported equipment, accompanied by a note from Molotov on 27 October 1936, was returned with Stalin's query: "Can't we produce this at home?"⁸⁴ The fond of the Secret Department of the Sovnarkom Administration of Affairs contains other Sovnarkom draft resolutions returned by Stalin.⁸⁵

In 1931, after Molotov's appointment as Chairman of Sovnarkom, the practice of adopting joint resolutions of the Central Committee (i.e., the Politburo) and the Sovnarkom became common. Many Politburo decrees were first discussed in Sovnarkom. The Chairman of the Sovnarkom, and certain of his deputies, were usually Politburo members. As a result, the collection (fond) of the Sovnarkom Secretariat in GARF contains many documents connected with the work of the Politburo, as do collections of papers originating from other state organizations headed by Politburo members.

The Politburo and Sovnarkom were also linked by joint working parties. One such was the so-called advisory board of the Chairman of Sovnarkom and his deputies (soveshchanie zamov) created by Rykov in January 1926.⁸⁶ The Politburo regularly sent questions to be discussed by this body and confirmed its decisions. The protocols of the advisory board (its zhurnaly) and their materials are in Rykov's personal fond in the State Archive of the Russian Federation.⁸⁷ In the 1930s there were a number of prominent commissions of the Politburo and Sovnarkom, among them the defence commission, the currency commission, and the railway commission.

The close connection between all agencies of the Party and state means that information about the work of various Central Committee bodies can be found in the collections of many different organizations, such as the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the People's Commissariats, as well as in the personal collections already mentioned.

Deloproizvodstvo Subdivisions of the Central Committee
Deloproizvodstvo, which included supervision of all the paperwork of the Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat and their secret correspondence, was initially carried out by the Bureau of the Secretariat as defined in an Orgburo decree of 12 September 1921.⁸⁸ It employed a total of 112 people and consisted of several departments:

Office of the Secretariat (also called Biuro sekretariata) staffed by the 12 assistants to the Secretaries of the Central Committee (5 for Stalin, 3 for Molotov, 2 for Andreev, and 2 for Kaganovich), 5 assistants to I. P. Tovstukha, Chief of the Bureau of the Secretariat, and 1 member of staff responsible for the priemnaia or reception office.
The Technical Secretariat (or apparat) of the Politburo employed 23 staff (chief secretary of the Politburo, duty secretaries and their assistants, chief archivist and his assistants, typists and stenographers).
The Technical Secretariat (or apparat) of the Orgburo, which employed 12 staff (secretary, duty secretaries and their assistants, chief archivist, filing clerks).[End Page 17]
The cypher department of the Secretariat employed 5 staff.
Technical staff department of the Bureau of the Secretariat (apparat Biuro) consisting of the secretary of the Bureau, information officers (referenty), translators, filing clerks, stenographers, the chief of registration of secret documents, journalists, chief archivist and his assistants, typists, telephonists, and couriers.

On 19 March 1926 the Orgburo formed the Secret Department of the Central Committee, which acquired the functions and staff of the Bureau of the Secretariat. Because no real information about the work of the Secret Department has been available, its name has given rise to some wild conjectures about its functions. One such was the hypothesis that the Secret Department (and the Special Sector which took over from it) were part of an independent network under the sole control of Stalin and responsible for control and security within the Party, information gathering, etc.⁸⁹ In reality the Secret Department was primarily responsible for servicing the day-to-day work of the Central Committee.

This can be seen most clearly from a note sent in May 1926 to the Secretaries of the Central Committee by Tovstukha, former Chief of the Bureau of the Secretariat and in 1926 Chief of the Secret Department.⁹⁰ Tovstukha was concerned about the confusion that could occur when someone met a "secretary" (a member of its staff) working in the apparat of the Politburo (as opposed to a Secretary of the Central Committee who was a member of the Politburo, i.e., a top official) and he therefore proposed the division of the Secret Department as follows:

Ist sector: Assistants to Secretaries of the Central Committee and their information officers and principal officers (poruchentsy)
IInd sector: Staff for processing Politburo papers
IIIrd sector: Staff for processing Orgburo papers
IVth Sector: Cypher department
Vth sector: Registration and checking of return of conspiratorial (konspirativnye) documents⁹¹
VIth sector: Secret archive of the Central Committee
VIIth sector: Office services (registration of documents, internal and external communications, shorthand and typing).

According to the staff list of Central Committee Departments, confirmed on 28 January 1930 by the Secretariat of the Central Committee, there were 375 people working in all the Departments of the Central Committee. The Secret Department, with 103 employees, was the second largest after the Administration of Affairs (123 staff), and it was proposed that it be reduced by transferring the transport of secret correspondence to the OGPU.⁹²

Most of the 123 employees were engaged purely in technical work. In addition to the senior staff (head of Secret department with 3 deputies, 4 sector heads with 2 deputies, head and deputy head of the typing pool, head of office services), there were 3 assistants to the Central Committee Secretaries, 12 reporting officers (referent-dokladchik), one department secretary, 8 duty secretaries with 14 assistants, 3 cypher officers, one editor, 8 information officers, 4 principal officers, 3 controllers, 3 archivists, 18 typists, 5 stenographers, 5 assistants to the head of office services, one translator, and one member of staff responsible for reception.⁹³

The Department had to maintain the protocols and verbatim reports of meetings of the highest organs of the Party, prepare and send out excerpts from the decrees, ensure that sufficient material would be provided for discussion of agendas, and ensure that decrees adopted reached the persons or bodies required to carry them out. As Stalin said in a report to the Orgburo, the Secret Department helped the Secretariat "prepare agenda questions from materials" and then "ensured that the relevant organizations implemented the Central Committee decisions."⁹⁴

One of the most time consuming jobs of the Bureau of the Secretariat (Secret Department) was the supervision of the distribution and return of "conspiratorial materials"⁹⁵--the secret protocols and verbatim reports of plenum, Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat meetings. Strict rules for the maintenance, sending out, and return of protocols were elaborated in the 1920s. They were printed on the covers of all protocols or, in the case of excerpts from protocols typed on the special [End Page 18] blanks designed for the purpose, the rules were printed on the obverse of the typed page.

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It is clear that in spite of their "conspiratorial nature" such protocols were made in a large number of copies. For example, in 1924, 125 copies of the protocols of the Orgburo and Secretariat of the Central Committee had to be sent out to members of the Central Committee, Presidium of the Central Control Commission, assistants to the Secretaries of the Central Committee, and Heads of Central Committee Departments. The breakdown was as follows:⁹⁶

podpisnoi #1
Andreev 2
Antipov 3
Bubnov 4
Bukharin 5
Voroshilov 6
Dzerzhinskii 7
Dogadov 8
Evdokimov 9
Zalutskii 10
Zelenskii 11
Zinoviev 12
Kaganovich 13
Kalinin 14
Kamenev 15
Kviring 16
Kirov 17
Kolotilov 18
Komarov 19
Kosior St. 20
Krasin 21
Krzhizhanovskii 22
Kubiak 23
Kuklin 24
Lashevich 25
Lepse 26
Liubov 27
Manuil'skii 28
Medvedev 29
Mikoian 30
Mikhailov 31
Molotov 32
Nikolaeva K.L. 33
Ordzhonikidze 34
Petrovskii 35
Piatakov 36
Rakovskii 37
Rudzutak 38
Rumiantsev I.V. 39
Rukhimovich 40
Rykov A.I. 41
Smirnov A.P. 42
Sokol'nikov 43
Stalin I. 44
Sulimov 45
Tomskii 46
Trotskii L.D. 47
Uglanov 48
Ukhanov 49
Frunze 50
Kharitonov 51
Tsiurupa 52
Chubar 53
Shvarts 54

Copies 55-109 were prepared for candidates for Central Committee Membership, members and candidate members of the Presidium of the Central Control Commission, for the assistants to Secretaries of the Central Committee as follows:
Poskrebyshev 110
Vasilevskii 111
Tovstukha 112
Klementiev 113
seven for Heads of Central Committee Departments (114-120), and five special copies of protocols as follows:
Reserve (zapasnoi) 121
Control (kontrol'nyi) 122
Reference (spravochnyi) 123, 124
For cutting out (dlia rezki), control and reference 125

A Politburo decree of 16 October 1938, which stipulated that Politburo protocols should be sent to "Central Committee members and candidate members, members of the Bureau of the Committee of Party Control and Committee of Soviet Control, First Secretaries of regional (territorial) Party [End Page 19] Committees of the VKP(b) of the RSFSR and UkSSR, First Secretaries of Central Committees of republican Communist Parties and to First Secretaries of Bashkir and Tatar regional Party Committees" shows that a similar number of Politburo protocols had to be prepared.⁹⁷ The number of people and local Party organizations who had the right to see was further enlarged by later decisions.⁹⁸

It was perhaps inevitable in view of the large number of recipients that the Bureau of the Secretariat (Secret Department) had great difficulty ensuring that the protocols were returned on time. According to rules adopted at the Orgburo in March 1925, all plenum, Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat documents marked "for return" were to be received back by the Head of the Bureau of the Secretariat personally within a period from 14 days (for Moscow) to 45 days (for Central Asia, Far East, and Transcaucasia).⁹⁹ By 1929 the period for the return of protocols was reduced first to seven and then to five days, while excerpts had to be returned within 24 hours.¹⁰⁰ Those who did not return the protocols were supposed to be punished severely.¹⁰¹ In 1933 A. I. Ikramov, candidate for Politburo membership and First Secretary of the Central Committee of Uzbekistan, left his Politburo protocols behind in his room at the hotel National, for which he was deprived of the right to receive protocols for three months.¹⁰²

While the restrictions might have seemed a blessing in disguise for Party cadres overwhelmed by paperwork, the threat of punishment had little impact, for the rules on return of sensitive materials were frequently broken. In the 1920s a special OGPU department had been set up under G. Bokii to check on the timely return of papers and ensure that loss or non-return was punished,¹⁰³ but the OGPU could not get the documents returned. In 1924, for example, Nesterov, Head of the Secret Mailroom (sekretnaia ekspeditsiia) of the Bureau of the Secretariat, wrote a report to Mekhlis, complaining that 773 copies of protocols had not been returned, and naming Ordzhonikidze, Kubiak, and Chudakov among the many culprits.¹⁰⁴ In 1933 a review of the work of the Vth sector of the Secret Department revealed that not more than 40% of excerpts from Politburo protocols had been returned as required, that some papers had been kept for more than two years, and that some recipients returned fewer than one in ten of the papers received. In keeping with the traditions of bureaucracy, the Vth sector blamed other sectors for the delays.¹⁰⁵ The casual attitude of Politburo members to the rules for the return of Central Committee papers is evident from Trotskii's papers,¹⁰⁶ as well as from the presence of such papers in their personal archival collections.

When returned to the Bureau of the Secretariat (Secret Department), most of the copies of the protocols were evidently burned. In exceptional cases recipients were instructed to destroy such documents themselves. For example, on 23 December 1927 the Secretariat instructed Secretaries of local Party organizations who had received verbatim reports of the July-August and October Plenums of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission to destroy these papers by 15 January 1928.¹⁰⁷

As we have mentioned above, the Bureau of the Secretariat (Secret Department) also maintained an archive. The archive held originals of verbatim records, with authorial corrections, of meetings at all Central Committee levels.¹⁰⁸ By late 1925 the Secret Archive became the repository of first copies of most Central Committee papers,¹⁰⁹ as can be seen from the frequent presence of the Secret Archive stamp on RTsKhIDNI documents.

On 13 November 1933 the Secretariat of the Central Committee adopted a resolution on the reorganization of the Secret Department, as a result of which it came to serve the Politburo alone, directly responsible to Stalin, or in Stalin's absence, to Kaganovich.¹¹⁰ According to the new Ustav of the VKP(b), adopted at the XVIIth Congress in 1934, the Secret Department became the Special Sector.¹¹¹ The new title seems to have confirmed the reorganization arising from the Secretariat decree of 13 November 1933. The Special Sector was headed by A. N. Poskrebyshev.¹¹²

After the separation of the Politburo administration the paperwork of the Orgburo and Secretariat was administered by the Technical Secretariat of the Orgburo, under the supervision of Ia. E. Brezanovskii, former deputy head of the Secret [End Page 20] Department and, from 1934 until 1945, Head of the Central Committee Administration of Affairs. The subordination of the Technical Secretariat of the Orgburo to the Head of the Administration of Affairs was to continue in subsequent years.

A list of staff in the Technical Secretariat in 1948 shows that 111 personnel were engaged in administration with 22 auxiliary staff. The Technical Secretariat had two subsections. The first was called the Protocol Section and employed 18 staff. The second section consisted of the following groups:

Control and archive group;
Group for the reception of secret correspondence;
Group for posting secret correspondence;
Group for preparation of correspondence;
Group for return of Orgburo and Secretariat decisions;
Two instructors for the control of the work of Special Sectors;
One member of staff for supervising the implementation of Secretariat and Orgburo decisions;
One member of staff for the making of stamps for regional and territorial Party committees and for Central Committees of republican Communist Parties;
The shorthand-typists' group;
Typing pool, couriers, cleaners, and canteen staff.¹¹³

In 1948 the control and archive group of the Technical Secretariat received, prepared, and sent out more than 108,000 documents, of which 75,000 had to be returned to the group after implementation.

SOME CONCLUSIONS

As any historian knows, the context of a document is as important as the text itself. The text of a Central Committee decree published in Pravda has a very different evidential value from the draft of the same decree recorded with amendments in the working papers of the Politburo. Yet the importance of context has been widely disregarded in many recent publications of documents from the former Soviet archives.

There are several reasons for this, all due to an understandable lack of familiarity with original documentation. Until 1989 the political history of the Soviet Union had to be studied almost entirely from secondary sources. The Communist Party was the state, but the archives of that Party were closed to all but a privileged few Soviet historians, whose views of Party history were considered to be reliably orthodox. Most such historians confined themselves to citing a few choice phrases as embellishment for statements based on published sources. The inclusion of quotations made little difference to the substance of the argument, yet they allowed authors to claim extra authenticity and exclusivity of knowledge. One example is a collection of essays published just two years before the demise of the Soviet state by a team of Party historians (among them D. Volkogonov, V. Afanasiev, and V. Naumov). The cover of the book emphasized the importance of new archival sources to the book's conception, but none of the references to sources carried an identifying footnote.¹¹⁴ This attitude to sources meant that Soviet students of modern history were not encouraged to treat textological evidence with the same care as their counterparts in the field of medieval history.

The few collections of Soviet archival documents published in the USSR before 1989 were not without interest,¹¹⁵ but while archives remained inaccessible, it was impossible to know how representative of the whole was the material selected for publication. It is not surprising that few trusted the picture presented by such publications, especially when they appeared under the imprimatur of the archival department of the Ministry of the Interior.¹¹⁶

Publications of primary documents in the West were even rarer, and source books on Soviet studies had to rely almost entirely on published documentation.¹¹⁷ Since everyone was aware that all traces of disagreement and uncertainty were normally excised from newspaper sources, Western scholars had to try and balance the public view of events by the equally unreliable private view obtainable from memoirs. Yet the excellent edition [End Page 21] of the papers brought by Trotskii to the West showed an awareness of the problems posed by the preselection of the 800 or so documents in the two volumes, as well as by the fact that it was impossible to establish the authenticity of each of the documents published. The importance of the context of each document was acknowledged by the inclusion of all the information present on each page of the document, such as the name of the person or body to which the document was addressed, the means of its transmission, the classification number of the document, and so on.

But the vast majority of Sovietologists outside the Soviet Union have had little experience with primary sources. This may be the reason why so few recent Western publications refer to published or unpublished sources from former Soviet archives.¹¹⁸ Moreover, in a recent round table discussion on the Soviet Archives at the International Congress of Slavists in Warsaw it became clear that the opening up of formerly closed archives and the availability of new documents through microform,¹¹⁹ book,¹²⁰ and journal publications¹²¹ is not seen as likely to bring about a major change in our view of Soviet history. Several speakers expressed doubt about the value of archival material to research students, citing the confused situation in the Russian archives, the fact that many archives remain accessible to only a few researchers, and the major differences in the interpretation of declassification and access policy in different archives. They pointed to the fact that some of the less scholarly publications based on "archival sensations"¹²² have done little to aid the development of a fruitful historical debate.

The view of these skeptics may prove to be overly harsh. A number of recent publications based on archival material show that archives can help historians provide a new view of old historiographical questions.¹²³ The difficulties in access experienced by researchers of Soviet political history can be frustrating, but they are not all that different from the difficulties experienced by students of, say, British political history. A new book about Joseph Chamberlain,¹²⁴ Liberal politician and father of Neville Chamberlain, refers to over one hundred and twenty manuscript collections held in some forty separate archives located in six countries. The author had to obtain permission to use the materials from the Queen, the archives of six universities, seven public libraries, and a large number of private owners of family archives, who can be as intransigent about access as any Party archive. By contrast, most sources for Soviet political history are concentrated in a few locations, an advantage that goes a long way toward compensating for the vagaries of legislation and interpretation.

Few of the leaders of modern governments were as certain as Soviet Party bosses that their right to rule would never be challenged. This proved fortunate, for few modern governments have left behind as complete and unedited a record of their operations as did the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.[End Page 22]

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NOTES

I. V. Stalin, "O nekotorykh voprosakh istorii bol'shevizma," Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 13 (Moscow, 1951), 84-102.
See the excellent study of the history of archives in Soviet Russia: T. Khorkhordina, Istoriia otechestva i arkhivy 1917-1980-e gg. (Moscow, 1994).
The then Central Party Archive.
Leonard Schapiro, The Government and Politics of the Soviet Union (London, 1977); Jerry Hough and Merle Fainsod, How the Soviet Union is Governed, rev ed. (London, 1979); T. H. Rigby, The Changing Soviet System: Mono-organizational Socialism from its Origins to Gorbachev's Restructuring (Aldershot, 1990); Niels E. Rosenfeldt, Stalin's Special Departments: A Comparative Analysis of Key Sources (Copenhagen, 1989); Mary McAuley, Soviet Politics 1917-1991 (Oxford, 1992); Richard Sakwa, Soviet Politics: An Introduction (London, 1994).
This is the second in a series of studies on the subject. See also Khlevniuk, et al., "Les sources archivistiques des organes dirigents du PC(b)," Communisme, No. 42-44 (1995): 15-35.
See pp. 9-10.
See also pp. 20-21.
Examples of these perechni can be seen in The Soviet Communist Party on Trial, published jointly by Rosarkhiv and the Hoover Institution, 1995. This is fond 89 from TsKhSD, the papers of the Constitutional Court which was convened in 1992 to consider the appeal of the Communist Party against Yeltsin's decree outlawing its existence. Perechen' 73, dokument 8 is an illustration of the principle of compilation in what is termed a vnutrennaia opis'.
On the history of the Presidential Archive see Istochnik, 1995, No. 1:115-116.
Istochnik, 1994, No. 1 (8): 3-4; Istochnik, 1994, No. 4 (11): 3-15.
See p. 12.
See, for example, Yoram Gorlizki, "Party Revivalism and the Death of Stalin," Slavic Review 54, No. 1 (1994): 1-23.
This is a typical example of the problems which arise from Central Committee terminology. Hough and Fainsod's How Russia is Governed described the Secretariat and the apparat as two separate and distinct bodies. That distinction is confirmed by the fact that TsKhSD has two separate fondy for the Apparat (No. 5) and the Secretariat (No. 4). Yet, as this example shows, in Central Committee usage the Secretariat is also a part of the apparat.
All references to sources from this archive are listed as RTsKhIDNI, followed by the number of the fond, opis', delo, and page.
On the history of RTsKhIDNI see Iu. N. Amiantiv, et al., eds., Kratkii putevoditel' RTsKhIDNI (Moscow, 1993), iii-xiii.
The situation is comparable to that in British archives. When the Bodleian Library in Oxford recently announced that it had received the papers of Harold Wilson, the former Prime Minister, scholars were informed that they would not be available for three years because of cataloguing.
All references to sources from this archive are listed as GARF, followed by the number of the fond, opis', delo, and page.
Primernaia skhema edinoi klassifikatsii dokumental'nykh materialov partiinykh arkhivov filialov IML, kraikomov i obkomov partii v sistematicheskom kataloge.
This observation is confirmed by the later materials available with the publication of fond 89 of TsKhSD. See above, note 8.
Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, Nos. 9-11.
See Martin Malia, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991 (New York, 1994), 311, for one explanation of their reasons.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 57, op. 2, d. 12.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 57, op. 2, d. 5.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 806: 8. Published in O. Khlevniuk, L. Kosheleva, A. Kvashonkin, and L. Rogovaia, eds., Stalinskoe Politbiuro v 30-e gody (Moscow, 1995).
See p. 12.
The Presidential Archive probably also holds the materials missing from RTsKhIDNI's plenum collection.
Voprosy istorii, 1995, No. 1: 3.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 665.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 112-113.
See XVII s"ezd VKP (b). Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1934), 652.
See pp. 16-17 for joint Politburo and Sovnarkom commissions.
V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 30, 413.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 113, d. 287: 45.
Secretary of the Central Committee, 1946-1949.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 127, d. 993: 7.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 216.
Khlevniuk, et al., eds., Stalinskoe Politburo, 112-113; 143; 171.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 120.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 129, d. 16: 2-9.
See Zinoviev's speech at the July 1926 plenum of the Central Committee (RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 2, d. 246, part iv).
O. Khlevniuk, L. Kosheleva, L. Rogovaia, et al., eds., Pis'ma I. V. Stalina V. M. Molotovu 1925-1936 (Moscow, 1994), 30-31, 55-56, 72-74, 78-79. English version, with introduction by L. T. Lih: Stalin's Letters to Molotov (New Haven, 1995), 1.
Chairman of Sovnarkom RSFSR and a candidate member of the Politburo.
Khlevniuk, et al., eds., Stalinskoe Politbiuro, 99-106.
Sto sorok besed s Molotovym. Iz dnevnika F. Chueva (Moscow, 1991), 424.
See the Russian edition of Khrushchev's memoirs in Voprosy istorii, 1995, No. 2: 76, 78.
Former archivist at the Central Party Archive, interviewed by the authors.
Khlevniuk, et al., eds., Pis'ma Stalina Molotovu, 166, 193.
Khlevniuk, et al., eds., Stalinskoe Politbiuro, 55.
The list included names of all Politburo members to whom agenda papers had been sent.
See p. 19.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, 3, d. 903: 2.
The telephone was called a vertushka because the instrument was not cranked by a handle at the side, but had a numerical dial.
See Khlevniuk, et al., eds., Pis'ma Stalina Molotovu, 30-31; 55-56; 72-74; 78-79.
APRF, f. 26, op. 1, d. 37: 49.
See p. 11.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 428: 7.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 617: 4.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 646: 7.
Khlevniuk, et al., eds., Stalinskoe Politbiuro, 180.
Ibid., 177.
See p. 12.
According to I. Kudriavtstev the s denotes decrees adopted at a meeting, while g or gs applies to decrees adopted v rabochem poriadke. See Arkhivy Kremlia i staroi ploshchadi, 1993 (1-2).
See the introduction by E. D. Orekhova to documents from the Central Committee Secretariat, Istoricheskii arkhiv, 1992, No. 1: 196.
For a selection of these resolutions as conspiratorial materials, see Khlevniuk, et al., eds., Stalinskoe Politburo, 73-82.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 37: 1-2.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 112, d. 283: 18.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 372: 1.
Voprosy istorii, 1993, No. 1: 17-22. The article is illustrated by photocopies of the original document.
This letter was among the materialy for the Politburo protocols which should have been transferred to RTsKhIDNI with the original protocols, but so far remain in the Presidential Archive.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 117-19.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 84.
This is published in D. Babichenko, Literaturnyi front: Istoriia politicheskoi tsenzury 1932-1946. Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow, 1994), 197-215.
See, for example, RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 113, d. 349: 350.
The documents referred to await cataloguing.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 360: 12.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 363: 13.
See, for example, RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 535: 2, 4.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 117-9.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 561: 1.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 699: 3-4.
Khlevniuk, et al., eds., Stalinskoe Politburo, 24.
GARF, f. 5446, op. 17 and 36.
GARF, f. 5446, op. 17, d. 262: 152.
GARF, f. 5446, op. 17, d. 326: 175.
GARF, f. 5446, op. 17, d. 328: 60, 98; GARF, f. 5446, op. 36, d. 103: 41.
Khlevniuk, et al., eds., Stalinskoe Politbiuro, 16-17.
GARF, f. 5446, op. 55.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 84, d. 696: 30-31.
Rosenfeldt, Stalin's Special Departments.
Istochnik, 1993, No. 5-6: 94.
This meant nothing more sinister than Politburo protocols, etc.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 113, d. 819: 23; RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op.113, d. 820: 112.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 113, d. 868: 119-120.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 113, d. 287: 38.
Khlevniuk, et al., eds., Stalinskoe Politbiuro, 73-74.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 84, d. 792: 30-32.
Text in Khlevniuk, et al., eds., Stalinskoe Politbiuro, 81-82; cf. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 112, d. 644: 272.
See, for example, RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 112, d. 713: 5.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 112, d. 644: 281.
Khlevniuk, et al., eds., Stalinskoe Politbiuro, 75-78.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 113, d. 588: 157.
Khlevniuk, et al., eds., Stalinskoe Politbiuro, 78.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 113, d. 596: 1-175.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 84, d. 792: 137.
Khlevniuk, et al., eds., Stalinskoe Politbiuro, 78-81.
J. M. Meijer, ed., The Trotsky Papers (The Hague-Paris), Vol. 1 (1968); Vol. 2 (1971).
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 113, d. 582: 5.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 112, d. 710: 13.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 112, d. 713: 191
Khlevniuk, et al., eds., Stalinskoe Politbiuro, 27-28.
KPSS v resoliutsiiakh, Vol. 6, 138.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 3, d. 941: 14.
RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 121, d. 731: 7-9.
V. G. Afanas'ev and G. L. Smirno, eds., Urok daet istoriia (Moscow, 1989).
See, for example, L. M. Gavrilov and L. Ia. Saet, eds., Voiskovye komitety deistvuiushchei armii, mart 1917 g.-mart 1918 g.(Moscow, 1982); S. D. Gusarevich, ed., V boiakh rozhdennaia, 1918-1920: boevoi put' 5 armii (Irkutsk, 1985); G. L. Smirnov, ed., Pervye dekrety Sovetskoi vlasti (Moscow, 1987); Iu. I. Korablev, et al., eds., Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v voennykh okrugakh, mart 1917 g.-mart 1918 g. (Moscow, 1988).
E. V. Kazanskaia and L. G. Shtilerman, eds., Oktiabr' na Amure: sbornik dokumentov, 1917-1922 (Blagoveshchensk, 1961). This was published by the Arkhivnyi otdel UVD Armurskogo oblispolkoma and the Party Archive of the Amursk Regional Committee of the CP. Most Soviet archives were under the jurisdiction of the NKVD/MVD from 1938 to 1962.
Meijer, ed., The Trotsky Papers; Merle Fainsod, The Smolensk Archive (London, 1958); M. S. Bernshtam, ed., Nezavisimoe rabochee dvizhenie v 1918 godu (Paris, 1981); M. S. Bernshtam, ed., Ural i Prikam'e noiabr' 1917-ianvar' 1919: dokumenty i materialy (Paris, 1982); Minuvshee: istoricheskii al'manakh, 12 vols. (Paris, 1986-1991).
Malia, The Soviet Tragedy; Richard Pipes, Russia under the Bolshevik Regime, 1919-1924 (London, 1994); C. Kennedy-Pipe, Stalin's Cold War: Soviet Strategies in Europe, 1943-1956 (Manchester and New York, 1995); John Keep, Last of the Empires: A History of the Soviet Union, 1945-1991 (Oxford, 1995).
Leaders of the Russian Revolution, published jointly by Rosarkhiv and Chadwyck-Healey, 1993; Archives of the Soviet Communist Party and Soviet State, published jointly by Rosarkhiv and the Hoover Institution, 1994-(in progress).
Iu. Fel'shtinskii, ed., Arkhiv Trotskogo: kommunisticheskaia oppozitsiia v SSSR 1923-1927 (Moscow, 1990); Golosa istorii: Redkie materialy v fondakh Muzeia revoliutsii (Moscow, 1992); V. I. Fomin, Polka [part of the series, Otechestvennoe kino v dokumentakh] (Moscow, 1992); T. Klokova and I. Prokhorova, eds., Tyl, okkupatsiia, soprotivlenie: sovetskaia strana v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 1941-1945 gg. (Moscow, 1993); V. I. Goldin, ed., Belyi Sever, 1918-1920 gg.: memuary i dokumenty (Arkhangel'sk, 1993); W. Waack, Camaradas. Nos arquivos de Moscou. A historia secreta de revolucao brasileira de 1935 (Sao Paolo, 1993); Nicholas Werth and Gael Moullec, eds., Rapports secrets soviétiques 1921-1991. La société russe dans les documents confidentiels (Paris, 1994); G. Adibekov, et al., eds., The Cominform: Minutes of Three Conferences, 1947, 1948, 1949 (Rome, 1994); V. I. Pasat, Trudnye stranitsy istorii Moldovy, 1940-1950-e gg. (Moscow, 1994); Babichenko, ed., Literaturnyi front; F. I. Firsov, et al., eds., The Secret World of American Communism (New Haven and London, 1995).
Otechestvennyi arkhiv, Rodina, Istochnik, Voennye arkhivy Rossii, as well as the series Neizvestnaia Rossiia XX vek published under the editorship of V. Kozlov, G. Bordiugov, and others since 1992.
V. Loupan, and P. Lorrain, L'argent de Moscou (Paris, 1992); V. Chentalinski, La parole resuscitée: Dans les archives littéraires du K.G.B. (Paris, 1993); A. Vaksberg, Hotel Lux: Les partis frères au service de l'Internationale communiste (Paris, 1993); Iu. G. Murin, ed., Iosif Stalin v ob"iatiakh sem'i: iz lichnogo arkhiva (Moscow, 1993).
See, for example, G. Kostyrchenko, V plenu u krasnogo faraona (Moscow, 1994); A. Iu. Vatlin, Komintern: pervye desiat' let (Moscow, 1993); D. Babichenko, Pisateli i tsenzory: Sovetskaia literatura 1940-kh godov pod politicheskim kontrolem TsK (Moscow, 1994); E. Zubkova, Obshchestvo i reformy 1945-1964 gg. (Moscow, 1994).
P. T. Marsh, Joseph Chamberlain, Entrepreneur in Politics (New Haven and London, 1994).

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THE CPSU'S TOP BODIES UNDER STALIN: THEIR OPERATIONAL RECORDS AND STRUCTURE OF COMMAND

CONTENTS

THE CPSU'S TOP BODIES UNDER STALIN:
THEIR OPERATIONAL RECORDS AND STRUCTURE OF COMMAND