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The papers on foreign and international policy in the Russian archives

The Stalin years
Silvio Pons
p. 235-250

Abstracts

This article reports a research experience in the Russian archives on several aspects of Stalin’s foreign policy in the 1930s and 1940s. The opening of the Russian archives has been particularly selective in the field of foreign policy. Though an impressive process of declassification of archival materials has been undertaken, this not always results in the availability of documents and in the possibility to use finding aids. In particular, the Arkhiv Vneshnei Politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii, which is the main archive for the analysis of Soviet foreign policy, does not offer, on very relevant topics, the chance to carry out a complete research. The situation in the CPSU archives and the archives of Communist international organizations was more favourable for some time, but it has been increasingly worsening over the last two-three years. Quite probably, in the opening of archival documentation on Soviet Foreign Policy an extremely favourable cycle has developed and exhausted itself approximately in the years 1992-1996. However, the impact of archives on foreign policy history should not be underestimated. Though the documentation available does not always shed enough light onto the decision-making processes, the complexity and subtlety of our views become greater. The new materials greatly enrich our understanding of the connection between the Cold War and pre-war Soviet foreign policy, thus challenging the division traced by pre-1991 historical analysis. They also lead us to a more balanced picture of the external dimension of Stalinism in the post-war years. While the predominant image of Stalin’s firm control of the political process is by and large confirmed, a complex and even contradictory character of Soviet politics can be seen. For example, the archival documents on the Cominform provide us with evidence of a deceptive political process, which shows a significant degree of ambiguity in policy-making.

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Index terms

Keywords:

USSR
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References

Bibliographical reference

Silvio Pons, “The papers on foreign and international policy in the Russian archives”Cahiers du monde russe, 40/1-2 | 1999, 235-250.

Electronic reference

Silvio Pons, “The papers on foreign and international policy in the Russian archives”Cahiers du monde russe [Online], 40/1-2 | 1999, Online since 15 January 2007, connection on 28 March 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/monderusse/12; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/monderusse.12

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About the author

Silvio Pons

Fondazione Istituto Gramsci, Roma.
spons@gramsci.it

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Copyright

The text and other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.

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