Papers of the Archive of the Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History
| 25 April 2024
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Publication of archival documents
Nikonorova T.N., Moscow, Russian Federation
Papers of the Archive of the Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History
Abstract
The article analyzes arrangement and structure of the Party Control Commission Archive, one of the largest depositories of the Central Committee’s bodies’ records. The sources for this research are deposited in the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History and the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (Moscow). Most are introduced into scientific use for the first time. The Archive kept its status of a separate subdivision of the Control Committee untill 1991. Structurally the Control Commission Archive was divided into the Common Archive and the Secret (Special) Archive, where top secret documents were deposited. Papers concerning opposition members constituted the core of the Secret Archive. It also contained materials on defense, national security, data on key nomenklatura officials. The archiving management of the Control Commission Archive was far from ideal. The Archive was housed in the basement; material and staff supply was insufficient; no series were made; documents’ losses were quite usual. The description of the series of documents for 1934-1952 started up only from the end of the 1960s through the labours of Control Committee archivists. At that time the loss of several document collections, including a considerable part of the Commissions’ minutes and other materials from the period of the 17th convocation (from the year 1934 until 1939), came to light. At the time of the inspection some of the materials had been destroyed. Having examined the contents of the fond, the prefaces to the series and the memoirs of the Control Committee member Olga Shatunovskaja, the author concludes that papers on the political repressions have been only partially preserved. The article also reviews the post-1991 history of the Archive. As a part of the so-called ‘Hoover project’ the Control Commission fond had been microfilmed. At present the Commission materials are available most easily and completely at the Hoover institute as microfilms, while the original papers have ended up divided between two Russian federal archives and can only be used by researchers within severe limits dictated by the right of privacy. Consequently, the documents of the Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks) are studied and introduced into scientific use primarily in the English-language historiography. An imperative task is to synchronize the document’s availability in Russian archives and the Hoover institute.
Keywords
Archive, primary sources, Party Control Commission, bodies of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Party records management, Hoover institute.
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About the authors
Nikonorova Tatiana Nikolaevna, postgraduate student of the Source Study Department, Russian State University for the Humanities, 8-915-179-05-43, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it