Archival History Research Articles

Creating an Oral History Archive of Government Work: The Women in Public Service in Pakistan Project

ABSTRACT The Women in Public Service in Pakistan (WPSP) oral history project records the professional life histories of women employed in public sector institutions. Our aim in this article is twofold. First, we discuss the nature of public sector employment (sarkari nokri) and review the data and literature on women’s participation in public sector work in Pakistan. These sources reveal that the trajectory of women’s employment in the public sector has been shaped by “gender mainstreaming,” which, in turn, is driven by global treaties and goals. Then, after describing the project design, we explore our narrators’ assertions of status, ability, and achievements as they navigate patriarchy. We argue that women public sector employees have collectively forged a social identity and modified the terms of patriarchy as it applies to them. This article presents women’s public sector employment as a coherent subject of study across a range of sectors of work from education to the civil service. This article also demonstrates that oral history methods enable a substantial intervention in the study of government employment in Pakistan. As such, this rich archive of women’s experiences serves public, scholarly, and institutional interests; is comparable to oral history projects on government in other parts of the world; and intervenes in ongoing debates about digital oral history. At the same time, the WPSP oral history project is unique in its use of an oral history method to study government employment in Pakistan. Our methods, approaches, and conclusions are instructive both for scholars of near-contemporary history in Pakistan and for oral historians seeking to establish their own projects on women in public life.

Towards the creation of the Anti-Imperialist League: World Congress in Brussels (1927)

The article presents a study on the organization of the World Anti-Imperialist Congress in Brussels in 1927, one of the results of which was the creation of an international organization – the League against Imperialism and Colonial Oppression. Drawing on materials from the activities of the league in 1927–1937, stored in the funds of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, the author reconstructs the progress of preparations for the congress. The circle of people who responded to the initiative to convene a world congress to discuss the problems of colonial peoples has been identified. The author revealed that the place of the Comintern in the preparation for this event was leading, since the entire process of organizing the event, selecting delegates, as well as the agenda of the meetings completely depended on the directives of this organization. The reasons for the disagreements that arose between the organizers of the world congress about the place and date of the event, as well as about the people who were supposed to be involved in the congress, were identified. The author concludes that the World Anti-Imperialist Congress in Brussels was a successful attempt to gather delegations from colonial countries around the world, which made it possible to actualize the problem of oppression of the peoples of Asia and Africa. According to the author, the main result of the event is that an international organization with an anti-imperialist orientation was created, which would become the forerunner of the decolonization process after World War II.

Диалог с «вождем»: письма и записки Г. Е. Зиновьеву как средство коммуникации граждан и власти. 1918–1921 гг.

The article examines the practice of communication between the population and G. E. Zinoviev, the first chairman of the Petrograd Soviet after the October Revolution, during the Civil War (1918-1921). Based on the material of written appeals to the leader ("letters to the authorities") the problematic components of the public image of the head of the local government and their solutions within the framework of Zinoviev's campaigning activities. Researchers had previously used this type of source mainly to reconstruct public sentiment in subsequent eras of New Economic Policy and Industrialization, without focusing on the importance of this form of dialogue with the population for the authorities themselves during the period of war communism, especially at the regional level. The article describes three types of written appeals: letters and notes received at meetings. Analyses of both type based on the peculiarities of the communicative situation in which the appeals were written: the possibility of establishing authorship, the proximity of the authors to the addressee at the time of creation, the format of the appeal and its goals. The study analyzed 349 records (142 letters and 207 notes) from G. E. Zinoviev's personal funds stored in the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) and the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI); in the funds of the departments headed by him during the specified period, in the Central State Archive of St. Petersburg (CGA SPb). For letters, the most common motives for their appearance are identified: the plight of the author and his family; dissatisfaction with the work of Soviet, party and military bodies; the desire to acquire a certain position in society (a place in the service, in the Red Army); the reaction to Zinoviev's speech or publication of employees–intellectuals. As an important underlying motive, the desire of the authors of the letters to establish personal contact with the leader through a meeting or to emphasize a previous acquaintance was revealed, which may illustrate a crisis of trust in society to the authorities or the lack of a culture of written appeal. The popular aspects of criticism of the head of the Petrograd Soviet contained in letters and notes are highlighted: privileges in the supply of food, the use of personal vehicles, Jewish origin and the discrepancy of statements with policy. In the final part of the article, Zinoviev's self-presentation techniques are analyzed in the context of the above-mentioned criticism. Such a characteristic feature is noted as the use of the letters received by the leader to demonstrate solidarity with the population, as well as the consonance of the claims made to him with his own criticism of the "attached" communists.

«Все же не получилось великого содружества Ленина со Сталиным»: стенограмма совещания при дирекции Института Маркса-Энгельса-Ленина (ИМЭЛ) по обсуждению научной биографии В. И. Ленина 20 ноября 1940 г.

The purpose of this publication is to introduce into scientific circulation the transcript of the meeting of the Directorate of the Marx Engels Lenin Institute (IMEL) dated November 20, 1940. The published source belongs to the problematic field of the history of historical science at the turn of the 1930s-1940s. The meeting reflected in the document became one of the few known to us "exchanges of views" within the institute on the development of the author's team of the biography of V.I. Lenin. The document complements the plots related to the functioning of the cult of personality of I.V. Stalin and its limits in Soviet historical science; gives an understanding of how the image of a professional revolutionary should appear; reflects the technical nuances that imposed objective restrictions on the author's team during the writing of the biography of V.I. Lenin. The creators of the text found themselves in a certain ideological framework: they were obliged to build the reviewed Lenin's works, focusing on the "Short Course of the history of the CPSU (b)". Separate text inserts and quotations of V.I. Lenin in the text of the biography were subject to the same kind of adjustments. The construction of the image of the leader from the point of view of his human qualities posed a large number of questions to the team of authors concerning the image of a professional revolutionary. How should one comprehend the theoretical heritage of the leader and how to combine it with practice? How should the portrait of V.I. Lenin be given? Is it worth showing the personality through everyday details (through a description of his rest, attitude to nature, etc.) or is it quite possible to limit yourself to showing high culture in the work and modesty of the leader? And is it necessary to set such a goal at all? Ultimately, during the discussion that unfolded during the meeting of the IMEL directorate, the team of authors decided to focus mainly on the political activities of V.I. Lenin, limiting themselves to only rare references to the personal life of a professional revolutionary. The source was identified in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) in f. 71. The document is a typewritten original and is published in accordance with modern rules of spelling and punctuation. Obvious shortcomings and a few errors have been corrected in the text. Information about the persons and scientific works mentioned in the source is given in the footnote. An important pre-publication comment updating this source is important. The source is published with banknotes: plots that are insignificant from the point of view of the issues discussed are cut out.

‘I Invoke You to Understand My Despair Due to the Disruption of the Production Plan.’ Yuri Shaporin, Elena Malinovskaya and the Bolshoi Theater in the First Half of the 1930s

The article is devoted to the history of the interactions between the important Soviet composer Yuri Shaporin with the State Academic Bolshoi Theater in the first half of the 1930s. The research is based on archival materials to a considerable degree brought into scholarly use for the first time. A special role for disclosing the theme was played by the documents of the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (preserved in the personal archives of Yuri Shaporin, director of the Bolshoi Theater Elena Malinovskaya and, of course, the archive of the Bolshoi Theater) and the Russian State Archive of Social-Political History. In the early 1930s the directory of the Bolshoi Theater, which was headed by Malinovskaya, was actively looking for works pertaining to a new, “Soviet” repertoire; the necessity of the theater’s “renewal” was also constantly reminded both by the press and the country’s leadership. In these conditions serous hopes were set on the collaboration with Leningrad-based composer Yuri Shaporin, who committed himself to presenting a symphony and an opera. The latter, which was supposed to have written on the plotline of the insurrection of the Decembrists, was more crucial for the theater. Malinovskaya expected this composition to open with itself a grandiose musical cycle devoted to the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia: the two following operas which Shaporin was expected to write were supposed to be devoted to the members of the Narodnaya Volya [People’s Will] revolutionary movement and to the Marxists. However, the work on The Decembrists began to be delayed unacceptably, which was the result both of the irresponsible behavior of the composer, who worked only from time to time on the composition entrusted to him, as well as his disagreements with the writer Alexei Nikolayevich Tolstoy, who was working on the libretto based on his own novelette written by him earlier. As the result, prior to 1935 (the year Malinovskaya resigned and there was a change of the directory of the Bolshoi Theater) The Decembrists were not completed (this happened much later, in 1953, already in different historical conditions).

Аншлюс Австрии 1938 г. и позиция «великих держав»: путь к катастрофе. На основе новых архивных документов

The annexation of the Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938 is an important element in the crisis of the Versailles system of international relations, which ended with the outbreak of World War II in Europe. The particular historical and political importance of this event consisted in the fact, that it was the first aggressive action of the Third Reich that led to the disappearance of a sovereign state from the map of Europe. However, despite the significance of this tragedy, it seems to be insufficiently studied in scientific literature. It should be pointed out that the First Austrian republic is often regarded in the Russian as well as foreign historiography as a subject of international relations completely dependent on Germany, fully following in the wake of the foreign policy of its large German-speaking neighbor. It should be pointed out that, with regard to the Soviet foreign policy, many foreign and Russian historians draw the conclusion that Austria played an insignificant role in the foreign policy planning of the Soviet Union. The little-known documents derived from the Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Military Archive, Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, as well as the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation suggest otherwise. Special attention is paid to the economic side of the Anschluss, which is rarely touched upon in modern historiography. The methodological basis of the research presented below constitute historical-genetic and historical-systemic methods that are used to trace the evolution of the European system of international relations of that period. In this way, a multidimensional approach to the issues considered in the article allows us to recreate a holistic picture of the events of that time, as well as to restore the true cause-and-effect relationships between them. This circumstance is of particular importance in the context of the increasingly frequent attempts to rewrite the history of the Second World War and belittle the efforts of the Soviet Union to prevent it. The authors conclude that based on the new archival documents, it is possible to draw an unambiguous conclusion that the Anschluss became one of the key moments in European history, which made the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe inevitable. It consolidated the main foreign policy line of Western democracies to appease the aggressors, eliminated the last serious obstacles to the union of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy and demonstrated the impossibility of implementing in practice a collective security strategy based on the proposals of the Soviet Union on a united anti-German front.

Assesments by modern english-speaking historians of the policy of the comintern in Asia

The article analyzes the modern English-language historiography on the policies of the Communist International in Asia. English-speaking countries have been chosen because a significant number of studies devoted both directly to the tactics of the Comintern in relation to Asia and the activities of its sections in this region are published in the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and India. This topic has been infused with fresh relevance thanks to the opening of funds in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) that concern, among other things, the activities of Asian communist parties. These newly available documents present an opportunity for scholars to rethink some issues, such as the policies of Asian communist parties: what was the influence of the Comintern on their tactics? What was the nature of this influence? What role did national and colonial questions play in the policy of the Comintern, and what were the results of their implementation? This article demonstrates that the traditionalist approach to the analysis of the activities of the Comintern and its policies toward specific nations, which took shape before and during the Cold War, is still significantly represented in English-language historiography. However, the final approval of a new approach (“revisionist”) contributed to a certain correction of existing trends: the article contains assessments of both the negative and positive influence of the Comintern on individual communist parties and on the political situation in the given country or region.

Внутрипартийная дискуссия по четвертому проекту IV Программы КПСС в 1991 г. По материалам заседания постоянной идеологической комиссии и комиссии по науке, образованию и культуре от 12 июля 1991 г.

The study analyses the intra-party discussion on the fourth draft programme of the CPSU in 1991. The following methods were used to study the problem: narrative and historical-typological. The source base of the article was the "Transcript of the joint meeting of the ideological commission and the commission on science, education and culture of 12 July 1991" from the fund "The Commission of the CPSU Central Committee (1989-1991)" of the Russian state archive of modern history. By the early 1990s, the CPSU had lost its former unity as it entered a period of destructive factional fighting. M. S. Gorbachev realised that if the cause of the conflict was not addressed, the party would inevitably split. As a solution to the problem, he considered updating the CPSU programme, as the old concept did not meet the changed political situation and became the most important factor of confrontation between warring factions. At the XXVIII congress, a programme commission was elected. Its main purpose was to develop a draft document. By 12 July 1991, the programme commission presented the fourth version of the draft to a joint meeting of the standing ideological commission and the commission on science, education and culture for a final revision before the July plenum. In the course of analysing the discussion, it was possible to group the participants of the polemic according to their political views. The speakers were divided into conservatives, reformers and centrists. Participants of each faction had different views on the future of the CPSU programme. Thus, representatives of conservatives spoke quite harshly about the weakness and imperfection of the project. In their opinion, it did not provide for such essential elements of communist ideology as orientation towards the proletarian strata, reliance on a social state with a managed economy, and the strengthening of party structures to retain power. The conservatives were opposed by reformers with a liberal agenda. This included full acceptance of the spirit of the programme, insistence on radicalising market reforms and measures leading to a weakening of party hegemony. The last faction of centrists tried to reconcile the warring factions by creating a consolidating version of the programme. Their proposals contained compromise theses that could, in theory, satisfy each of the platforms. Nevertheless, it was not possible to reach an agreement, as the centrists did not find support from other factions and found themselves in the minority. Based on the sentiments of the speakers, most of them held an orthodox position. The conservatives were confident of their victory and did not consider it necessary to concede, and neither did the reformers. Thus, the revealed irreconcilability and fierceness of the discussion showed that factions within the CPSU were unable to coexist constructively. The party was inevitably approaching a political split.

Николай Минский — исследователь и переводчик Гомера: история советского издания «Илиады» (ГИХЛ, 1935 г.) и сопроводительные материалы к нему

The information for this publication comes from archival documents from the fund of A.V. Lunacharsky (Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, Moscow). These documents were prepared by N.M. Minsky (1855/1856–1937) as accompanying materials for the publication of his own (fifth) translation of the Iliad in the Soviet State Publishing House (Gosizdat). Minsky had sent these materials to Lunacharsky in 1929. The materials comprise four parts: 1) the history of the “Homeric question”; 2) the idea of the Iliad; 3) the translation of the Iliad; and 4) the latest foreign literature on the Homeric question. However, due to ideological reasons, Gosizdat banned the publication of these materials. In the “Literary Fact,” they are published and commented on for the first time. Minsky’s materials lack a strictly historical understanding of the Iliad. He searches for meanings relevant to man fin de siècle in Homer’s poem. In his early article “The Idea of the Iliad” (1896), Minsky interprets the image of Achilles in the spirit of the cult of the “superman” by F. Nietzsche. However, the horrors of the First World War convinced Minsky of the insolvency of this cult, which was reflected in the “modern mystery” “Faces of War” (1815). In the accompanying materials of 1929, Minsky emphasizes the Iliad’s humanistic pathos. He appreciates the ability of Homer’s characters to be compassionate and merciful. By 1929, Minsky’s understanding of the idea of the Iliad had changed significantly. In his opinion, the Iliad is a poem in which “Greece forever dissociated itself from barbarism and took the first step towards the future union of all mankind.”

«Только анархия может дать нам возможность победить советскую власть»: докладная записка генерала М. К. Дитерихса руководству РОВС (1930)

The article analyzes a memo from the head of the Shanghai branch of the General Military Union, General M. K. Dieterichs, to the leadership of the ROVS, which is practically unknown to domestic researchers. The document is kept in the collections of the Bakhmetyev Archive of Russian and Eastern European History and Culture at Columbia University. The text of the memo shows the discrepancy between the author’s realistic assessment of the international situation in the Far East, the situation in the Far Eastern regions of the USSR, where there was an increase in discontent with the activities of the Soviet government, as well as the state of White emigration in China and the presentation of the prospects of the anti-Soviet movement based on Dieterichs’ belief in the exclusively repressive and spiritually alien Russian people essence of Soviet power and readiness a significant part of the ordinary military emigration to sacrifice in the overthrow of the «Bolshevik yoke». In the end, this discrepancy had a negative impact on the course of the anti-Soviet struggle.

Mustafa Barzani’s Soviet exile: popular myths vs. evidence in Russian archives (Part I)

The article examines the case file of the Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani, preserved in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI). The dossier was opened in 1953, when Barzani began studying at the Higher Party School (HPS) under the Central Committee (CC) of the CPSU and was compiled by the International Department of the CC of the CPSU. In addition to a large collection of press materials, primary sources such as Soviet internal reports, transcripts of conversations, surveillance records, and personal correspondence bring to light previously unknown episodes in the biography of the renowned Kurdish leader, including detailed information about his residence in Moscow in 1953-1958, training at the HPS, meetings with friends and associates, and maneuvering to maintain his leadership while in exile from Kurdistan. The dossier materials are also critically compared with information presented in already published literature about this period of Barzani’s life. The article also provides information about employees of the International Department who were involved in relations with the Kurdish leader. Archive materials allow us to reassess elements of the Barzani legend, such as his purported rank as an officer in the Soviet Army, and to better understand Soviet policymakers, who did not view Barzani as ideological ally and yet chose to continue supporting him. Although Barzani was driven by nationalist rather than Marxist goals, he was neither anti-communist nor anti-Soviet. The documents demonstrate time and again Barzani’s unwavering adherence to the national idea and his resolve to return to Kurdistan to continue the struggle.

Роль российского правительства в организации мероприятий по обеспечению помощи населению вследствие землетрясений в Центральной Азии в конце XIX - начале XX в

In the article on the basis of archival materials, deposited in the Russian State Military History Archive, information about Verny 1887 and Andijan 1902 earthquakes, similar in destructive power, when Verny and Andijan were completely destroyed, is given. The paper analyzes the activities of the Russian government during the Verny and Andijan earthquakes and assesses the measures taken to eliminate the causes of the disaster and restore the city's infrastructure. In particular, on the basis of documents preserved in the Russian State Archive of the Russian Federation, for the first time the issue of relocation of the regional center of the Semirechensk region from the city of Verny to the proposed towns of Kopal, Lepsinsk, Iliysk and the village of Gavrilovka in the Semirechensk region in 1887-1888 is considered. Including consideration of the reconstruction of the city of Andijan in 1902-1903 and preparation of the draft "Rules for guidance in the construction of buildings in Andijan, Verny and Pishpek districts of the Turkestan region" 1906. The author concludes that the Vernenskoye and Andijan earthquakes initiated a serious study of geology and seismology of Central Asia by engineers and researchers, including the Russian government, which raised the issue of technical strengthening of residential, administrative and economic buildings.

“Now, What’s One Story I Wanted to Tell You?”: Oral History Exhibition Archives at the Chicago History Museum at the Turn of the 21st Century

Starting in the 1970s, American history museums have undergone a shift away from seeing themselves collections-focused historical societies acting as “temples to the past.” In the face of broader political challenges—civil rights, increasingly multicultural urban audiences, and the “culture wars” of the 1980s, public historians have sought to reclaim their institutions’ relevance by seeking to share their authority and mission with those “publics” they serve. While secondary literature on public history has generally agreed that museums pulled off this shift—and museums themselves have touted successful exhibits and outreach—this essay uses a specific case study to complicate the narrative. The Chicago History Museum, a metropolitan history museum founded in 1856 as the Chicago Historical Society, turned to oral history as both a collecting and a community engagement practice in the 1990s and early 2000s. At a moment of museological transition, the museum sought to match its city’s transition towards multiculturalism. This essay reads oral history archives created by the museum in a new light: within their material history as collections. I argue that the oral history archives of CHS’s exhibition projects are valuable sources not just of the urban history the museum intended to capture but also the institutional history of public museums themselves. This method suggests new paths forward for understanding public history strategies and community history.

Ilektra Apostolou: A Greek female resistance fighter and a heroine of the left

The Greek resistance fighter Ilektra Apostolou was executed on 26 July 1944, by the collaborationist security forces in Greece during the Second World War. Apostolou was a member of Kommounistiko Komma Ellados (KKE, Communist Party of Greece) and of Eniaia Panneladiki Organosi Newn (EPON, United Panhellenic Organisation of Youth), and was involved in pre-war antifascist action. During the resistance, she tried to pass on the mentality she had developed from this early involvement to young women in EPON and Lefteri Nea (LT, Free Young Woman): that women would be liberated only by actively participating in social struggles. Her biography is examined with a critical eye, taking into consideration that it was largely written after the war. This means that it not only provides a factual representation of Apostolou: it also functions as a lieu de memoire, a site of memory. The politics of memory influences how her biography is constructed. The second part focuses on the memorialisation of Apostolou, examining it through the lens of intersectionality. Identity criteria – such as gender, race, age and political identification – and the changing relative significance attributed to them are important both for shaping and understanding, memorialisa- tion processes. An intersectional approach seeks to reveal the hidden dimensions behind the memorialisation process. The last part focuses on Apostolou's post-war legacy and explores how her memorialisation was intertwined with political developments from 1944 to the present, with a particular focus on the contestation over Apostolou's memory between the right and the left at various points in modern Greek history. The article draws on a combination of secondary and primary sources, the main primary sources being those found in the Educational Centre of Charilaos Florakis (Archive of the Greek Communist Party) and the Contemporary Social History Archives (ASKI).

«Я выслан навечно…»: к 80-летию депортации калмыцкого народа (по материалам архивов Казахстана)

Introduction. Ethnic deportations were a form of political repression in the USSR. Official Soviet directives clearly proclaimed mass relocations with exact indications of ethnic identities the would-be deportees should belong to. Goals. The study attempts a historical reconstruction of how Kalmyks from the abolished Kalmyk ASSR survived the exile, reviews their legal status, and outlines a social portrait. Materials and methods. The work employs a variety of research methods, such as the source study, information, mathematic/statistical, factual/historic ones and that of computer content analyses for sufficient insights into earlier classified and thus unclaimed sources. The study is the first to examine personal files declassified since November 2021 by the Government Commission for Complete Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repressions (est. by the order of President K.-Zh. Tokayev), as well as some related documents from departmental archives of Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Committee of National Security transmitted in 2021–2023 to the Archive of the President of Kazakhstan. Files dealing with special settlers are also housed at the Archive of the Committee for Legal Statistics and Special Records (Prosecutor General’s Office of the Republic of Kazakhstan) and its departments in Turkistan, Kyzylorda, Akmola, Karaganda and Zhetysu regions, at the State Archive of Kyzylorda Region (its branch — Archive of Sociopolitical History). Results. The Kalmyk deportees started arriving in the Kazakh SSR since January 1944. Despite the Republic was not designated as a region to host the repressed people, the war decided differently. The ethnic Kalmyks — though a minority in the host society to face hard life conditions — never assimilated culturally and showed sustainable social, professional and psycho-physical adaptation skills to the changed circumstances and environments.

Environmental Imaginaries of the Arctic in the 21st Century Travel Writing

Contemporary travel accounts engage with the ecocritical agenda, examining the global environmental crisis caused by human actions. In contrast to earlier narratives that presented the Arctic as a territory to be “claimed,” today’s travelers predominantly view it as a territory to be preserved. Amid the dialectic of destruction and preservation, new environmental imaginaries emphasize the interconnectedness of nature and human history, employing literary techniques to convey this interdependence. William E. Glassley in his book A Wilder Time: Notes From a Geologist at the Edge of the Greenland Ice (2018) adopts a “trans-scalar” perspective for narrating his Arctic journeys, seamlessly shifting between microscopic and macroscopic views of the planet, its elements and inhabitants. Glassley’s imaginary of the Arctic as an “indivisible whole” draws from geological and biological sciences. As a geologist, he underscores the unity of Earth’s substances, highlighting the entanglement of geo- and lifecycles. The Arctic, devoid of history during travelers’ presence, reveals its story through geological analysis of collected specimens. Ice, as an archive of planetary history, surpasses human records. Travel literature thus contributes to crafting an environmental imaginary rooted in substantial temporal interconnectedness, addressing the Anthropocene’s challenges.

Archives of Discrimination

Abstract The present article traces the history of multiple private and state archives in Daghestan. Such collections bear imprints of competition between particular individuals and factions. As we shall see, various parties exploited the cultural resources available to them in order to project their subjectivities onto the textual and material evidence. Shifts in cultural values and fashions, together with transformations in language use and an ongoing struggle for personal and communal representation, contributed jointly to the formation of multi-layered discourses on the past. If we are to make sense of our sources, therefore, we must engage with a multitude of competing discourses that have privileged one type of historical view over others, thereby shaping the contours of the body of available material, and rendering information lacunae not just unavoidable, but themselves reflective of past events. Colonialism and coloniality are not alone in having helped configure the power structures that we find manifested in state archives. In fact, much of the competition, marginalization, and careful selection took place even before the transfer of documents to imperial institutions.

Hungarian Volunteer Anti-Fascist Armed Groups during the Great Patriotic War

Using the example of the history of Hungarian volunteer anti-fascist groups created during the Great Patriotic War, the author identifies the factors that became decisive in the formation of a “foreign” military unit. The source base used in the research includes both published and unpublished documents from three federal archives - the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, the Russian State Military Archive, and the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. The creation of Hungarian military units was complicated by the lack of an organized anti-fascist movement among prisoners of war, who for the most part remained loyal to the regime of Miklós Horthy. The changes in the domestic and foreign political situation of Hungary in 1944 contributed to the development of the volunteer movement and the beginning of the process of forming Hungarian volunteer anti-fascist groups. The author comes to the conclusion that the decisive factors that influenced the formation of the Hungarian volunteer units were the external ones. They contributed to the growth of anti-fascist and anti-German sentiment among prisoners of war, which led to a change in the attitude of the Hungarians to the idea of creating volunteer units; it allowed the Soviet command to begin their deployment at the final stage of the Great Patriotic War.

Czechoslovak and Yugoslav Military Units Created in the USSR during the Great Patriotic War: Effectiveness Analysis

Based on the example of the history of the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps and the 1st Yugoslav Infantry Brigade created on the territory of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War, there are revealed the peculiarities of the effectiveness of “foreign” military units on the territory of a third country. To date, these issues have not been sufficiently studied in historical science. The source base used in the research includes both published and unpublished documents from the funds of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, the Russian State Military Archive and Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. It is shown that despite similar conditions of the formation and assistance from the USSR, the destinies of the Czechoslovak army corps and the Yugoslav brigade were different. The former became a symbol of Czechoslovakia’s struggle against Nazism and the basis of the new Czechoslovak army, whereas the Yugoslav brigade underwent “reformatting”, “dissolved” in the People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia; it did not become the basis of the new Yugoslav army and then practically passed into oblivion. The author concludes that with regard to the effectiveness of the Czechoslovak army corps and the Yugoslav brigade, the decisive role was played by the relationship of their command with the main political participant in the process of creating these military units, on whose will both the achievement of the goals set and their very existence depended; the other factors were indirect.

Labor Mobilization in North Ossetian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic during Great Patriotic War

The article discusses a range of issues related to labor mobilization during the emergency conditions of wartime in the North Ossetian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. One of the main objectives of this article is the publication of sources in a scholarly manner. The materials from the Central State Archive of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania and the State Archive of Recent History of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania on the topic are introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. The materials containing decisions on implementing defense measures, creating a system of defensive fortifications, and mobilizing citizens through labor duty are analyzed. Attention is paid to the activities of the Ordzhonikidzevsk (Vladikavkaz) Defense Committee and local authorities in organizing work in these areas. The relevance of the study lies in shedding light on historical experience in taking defense measures with active support from the population in the rear. The authors emphasize that rear work helped the army to accomplish its tasks. The authors conclude that during the Great Patriotic War, heavy physical labor became a norm of life for women, children, and adolescents who replaced able-bodied men who had gone to the front. Labor mobilization allowed for the quick organization of work by a large number of people and brought victory closer.