Detective work : Researching Soviet World War II policy on Poland in Russian archives, (Moscow, 1994)*

Abstract

Anna M.Cienciala. Detective work: Researching Soviet World War II policy on Poland in Russian archives (Moscow, 1994). After providing a background on information available before the opening of Russian archives, as well as published documents available before 1991 and up to spring 1994. the author describes her research on the topic (for the period Jan. 1939-Dec. 1941 ) in the following archives: ( 1 ) The Russian Center for Preservation and Study of Records of Modern History, formerly the Central Party Archives; (2) The Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation; ( 3 ) The Center for Preservation of Contemporary Documentation, which contains the Archives of the President of the Russian Federation. Although documents dealing with foreign policy are still absent from the files of the Po1itbiuro and Central Committee, the author found much interesting material in the Comintern/Dimitrov collections in the first archive mentioned above. Again, though most of the declassified documents in the second archive are of secondary importance, she found some interesting materials there as well. The third archive yielded few documents of interest. In conclusion, historians still await the declassification of key Soviet documents dealing with Soviet foreign policy not only for the World War II period, but also for the interwar period.