Silent Conflict A Hidden History of Early Soviet-Western Relations - Original PDF
نویسندگان: Michael Jabara Carley
خلاصه: It is not easy to study the history of Soviet foreign policy or Soviet relations with the West. Until the beginning of the 1990s the Soviet archives were closed tight. After the collapse and dismemberment of the Soviet Union in 1991, the archives gradually opened, but only partially. Sometimes papers were opened only to be closed again. Russian archivists had tens of thou- sands of papki, or files, in their care and, not always knowing what was in them, were reluctant to open them to researchers. These include, inter alia, the important party archives for the inter-war years at Rossiiskii gosudarstven- nyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI) and the diplomatic papers of the Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii (AVPRF), the archives of the Russian foreign ministry. In AVPRF there were and are all sorts of dif- ficulties. Researchers have no access to inventories, so it’s like playing poker when asking archivists for files. Sometimes the files are rich, and you win, and sometimes not, and you lose. Computers were forbidden for a number of years, and photocopies were so costly as to make a new arrival gasp for air. You got used to the impediments and learned to function around them. The excitement of new discoveries and uncharted ground made you forget the numerous irritations