The Smolensk Archive is the name given to the archives of

Smolensk Oblast Smolensk Oblast (russian: Смоле́нская о́бласть, ''Smolenskaya oblast''; informal name — ''Smolenschina'' (russian: Смоле́нщина)) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast). Its administrative centre is the city o ...

Communist Party of the Soviet Union " Hymn of the Bolshevik Party" , headquarters = 4 Staraya Square, Moscow , general_secretary = Vladimir Lenin (first) Mikhail Gorbachev (last) , founded = , banned = , founder = Vladimir Lenin , newspape ...

, which were captured intact by the army of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

when it conquered the city of

Smolensk Smolensk ( rus, Смоленск, p=smɐˈlʲensk, a=smolensk_ru.ogg) is a city and the administrative center of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Dnieper River, west-southwest of Moscow. First mentioned in 863, it is one of the oldest ...

in 1941. It also included the NKVD and the Smolensk State Oblast archives. The archive was then moved to Germany. In summer and autumn of 1941, and again in the summer of 1942 during the advance of German troops, local authorities tried to evacuate archives to the east, and the vast majority of the local archives were moved at great cost. German troops entered Smolensk on July 15, 1941 and as a result, the archive was seized by the Germans and they made propaganda out of it by publishing the documents about repression. In May 1943 the archive was taken by the Germans from

Vilnius Vilnius ( , ; see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the municipality of Vilnius). The population of Vilnius's functional urba ...

, then in Poland, where it was isolated from much other material taken to Germany. The remaining part of the documents in Poland were found by Soviet troops in February 1945 in the area of the railway station

Pszczyna Pszczyna (german: Pleß, cs, Pština) is a town in southern Poland with 25,823 inhabitants (2019), and a seat of a local gmina (commune). It is situated in the Silesian Voivodeship, and was a part of the Katowice Voivodeship from 1975 until ad ...

and returned to Smolensk. Soon the documents became known to the U.S.

Office of Strategic Services The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branc ...

, (the predecessor of the CIA). It was stored at the U.S. restitution center at Offenbach. After that, the documents were moved to an underground hangar. A group of American Sovietologists studied the inventory and some original documents and concluded that they contained valuable information. In 1958, the U.S. government offered to return archival materials to the Soviet Union, but in response the Soviet authorities claimed that it was a fake concocted by the CIA. Records of the archive, particularly the Communist Party documents, covered the years before 1917 to 1941. The archive documents were available for use by American and other Western scholars, who could not get access to party or KGB archives in the Soviet Union. The first historian to make use of the Smolensk materials was Harvard University professor

Merle Fainsod Merle Fainsod (May 2, 1907 – February 11, 1972) was an American political scientist best known for his work on public administration and as a scholar of the Soviet Union. His books ''Smolensk under Soviet Rule'', based on documents captured by t ...

, who published ''Smolensk under Soviet Rule'' in 1958 based on the archive. The archival documents were also used in the writings of

Richard Pipes Richard Edgar Pipes ( yi, ריכארד פּיִפּעץ ''Rikhard Pipets'', the surname literally means 'beak'; pl, Ryszard Pipes; July 11, 1923 – May 17, 2018) was an American academic who specialized in Russian and Soviet history. He publi ...

on early Soviet history and Robert Conquest in his book ''The Great Terror''. Since 1963, the Soviet authorities began to attempt to acquire the archive, but nevertheless a public acknowledgement of its authenticity was not made. An account revealed that the acceptance of the offer was viewed by the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs as impractical because such a move was tantamount to an official recognition of the authenticity of the documents. Only in 1991 did the Russian authorities acknowledge and publicly announce that the U.S. has in its possession a genuine archive, and that Russia intends to seek its return. Negotiations regarding possible transfer began in 1992. However, U.S. authorities linked the return of the archive with the return of the

Chabad-Lubavitch Chabad, also known as Lubavitch, Habad and Chabad-Lubavitch (), is an Orthodox Jewish Hasidic dynasty. Chabad is one of the world's best-known Hasidic movements, particularly for its outreach activities. It is one of the largest Hasidic groups ...

Hasidic movement Hasidism, sometimes spelled Chassidism, and also known as Hasidic Judaism (Ashkenazi Hebrew: חסידות ''Ḥăsīdus'', ; originally, "piety"), is a Jewish religious group that arose as a spiritual revival movement in the territory of conte ...

's " Schneerson library". As a result, the archive was returned to Russia only at the end of 2002.

References

Further reading