Party Archives Research Articles

Treatment organization of disabled veterans with mental illnesses in the post-war years (1945–1950) (based on the materials of the Tambov Psychiatric Hospital)

Importance. Studying the treatment features of participants and disabled veterans of the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945, who were in regional psychiatric hospitals, allows not only to clarify the levels of medical care for such military veterans, but also to evaluate the results of public health organization in the postwar years through the prism of Soviet psychiatry development in the 20th century, as well as the results of medical care for war veterans. A detailed study of the situation of disabled veterans in psychiatric clinics in the post-war period is very useful, which will clarify many little-studied aspects not only of the history of medicine, but also of the development of interpersonal, group, and regional relations in socialist society.Research Methods. The methodological features of the study of the stated problems are based on the author’s concept of involving the works of contemporaries, primarily specialists in the field of psychiatry, practitioners of the Tambov region, as well as the actual case histories and anamnesis of mental illness. Materials from state and party archives of the Tambov region and memoirs of contemporaries were used, many of which were introduced into scientific circulation for the first time.Results and Discussion. In fact, patients of psychiatric hospitals in the post-war period received almost the entire necessary complex of therapeutic and preventive procedures and rehabilitation measures. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that the post-war devastation, lack of food, clothing, and a number of medicines seriously complicated the capabilities of medical organizations, which often did not have the necessary resources to fully organize the treatment of war veterans suffering from mental illness. In addition, there are often problems with heating, the supply of necessary equipment and supplies for the psychiatric hospital, which left an imprint on practical health care at the regional level. Nevertheless, Tambov psychiatrists used the full range of medical procedures and medicines available to them, both traditional and new, which gave a tangible therapeutic effect. It is important to note that in the post-war years there is a complete rejection of the elements of “punitive” psychiatry due to the cessation of placing patients in isolation, as well as wet wraps. In addition, the use of intensive treatment methods required coordination with the chief physician.Conclusion. The results of the study of the problem made it possible to assess these processes, viewed through the prism of the development of regional health care, to identify trends in the development of Soviet psychiatry in the first post-war decade. The development of an outpatient network for the provision of medical care to war invalids suffering from mental disorders and diseases is clarified. The assessment of the placement of military veterans in labor unions, enterprises and homes for the disabled is given. It is concluded that, in general, regional psychiatry has shown its capacity and effectiveness in terms of treatment and rehabilitation of military invalids who had mental illnesses.

Features of cultural work and ideological education of disabled people of the Great Patriotic War in 1945–1955 (based on materials from the Tambov Psychiatric Hospital)

Importance. The study of certain aspects of cultural work among disabled people of the Great Patriotic War who are being treated in psychiatric hospitals allows not only to clarify the features of the treatment process in medical organizations, but also to carry out a systematic detail of the socialization and rehabilitation of military veterans in the 40–50s of the twentieth century.Materials and Methods. The methodological features of the study of the stated problems are based on the author’s concept of involving the works of contemporaries, primarily specialists in the field of psychiatry, practitioners of the Tambov region, as well as the actual case histories and anamnesis of mental illness. Materials from state and party archives of the Tambov region and memoirs of contemporaries were used, many of which were introduced into scientific circulation for the first time.Results and Discussion. In fact, patients in psychiatric hospitals, to one degree or another, were involved in mass cultural events, ideologically verified political and cultural activities, which reflected the mentality of not only the party elite and nomenklatura, but also completely coexisted in the perception and understanding of the overwhelming majority of the population of the Soviet Union. The results of studying the problem made it possible to assess these processes, viewed through the prism of the development of regional healthcare, to identify not only the vectors and trends in the formation of Soviet psychiatry in the first post-war decade, but also to clarify the features of the relationship between government and society, the individual and the state, individual consciousness and the collective Soviet (“communist”) worldview.Conclusion. The results of the study allow us to draw a very obvious conclusion that cultural work, as well as political education in general, was not only an integral part of the ideological concept of the era of socialism, which lowered the entire structure of Soviet society, but also an important component of the treatment and preventive work of medical institutions of various profiles. These medical and social work activities were carried out very successfully in the Tambov region. However, in general, it should be noted that the lack of trained personnel and resources, including logistics, musical instruments, etc., often contributed to the formation of a superficial approach in organizing cultural work in psychiatric clinics. It is important to note that these shortcomings are fully preserved in the modern healthcare system in the Russian Federation. In fact, the traditions of budgetary residual financing of medical institutions are stable in the worldview of officials from different historical eras. But it is still worth noting that the general messages of ideological education consistently covered the entire population of the country, including patients in psychiatric hospitals. For these war veterans, political information, reading newspapers, and watching movies were quite common, which inevitably helped their rapid socialization, inclusion in normal communication, and ensured stable remissions during mental disorders.

Information potential of documents of the former Party archives. "The Rusangloles Case” in 1920s

Information potential of documents of the former Party archives. "The Rusangloles Case” in 1920s

Od archiwum do archiwum. Uwagi na temat ewolucji funkcjonalno-organizacyjnej komórek archiwalnych w komitetach wojewódzkich PPR/PZPR

The subject matter of the activities of the PPR and PZPR archives is certainly not a research tabula rasa, but many facts relating to it are quite poorly known. In particular, this applies to the organizational and functional evolution of the provincial segment in the archival division taking place between the fifth and seventh decade of the 20th century. This article aims to bring to light a lot of unknown or inaccurate information on this subject. This applies to e.g., to knowledge about the nature of the KW PPR archives – historical archives par excellence, collecting only documents recognized as valuable historical sources and intended to store them perpetually. A problem as significant as it is elusive in scientific circulation is the functioning of the voivodeship current records repositories of PZPR in the years 1949–1953, about which there is usually false information that they were created only in 1953, along with information about their different and lower grade than the archives of the KW PPR. the rank of current (transitional) archives, obliged to successively transfer the collected archives to the „central party archive” (Department, and later the Establishment of Party History of the Central Committee of PZPR). One of the most interesting, and at the same time completely unknown, facts about this matter is the failure to implement in 1956 the resolution of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the PZPR on the transformation of the current records repositories of the Voivodeship Committees of the Polish United Workers' Party into archives – contrary to the information disseminated on this subject, it did not take place until 1962. In this context, it should be clearly noted that in this case it was not only about a cosmetic change of names, but also about transforming them into administrative and historical archives, entitled to a professional elaboration of their resource, which was to be their resource stored perpetually, more widely than previously made available to historians, primarily party historians. This article, which presents many new facts, including, among others, the internal party context of delays in transforming the KW PZPR current records repositories into their archives, was primarily aimed at showing the process of the organizational and functional transformation of the „party archive service” lasting several years.

The Archives of Saddam Hussein's Baʿth Party and the Politics of Remembering and Forgetting the Baʿthist Era in Iraq

On August 31, 2020, a US military plane returned the archive of the Baʿth Party Regional Command, more commonly known as the Baʿth Party Archive, to Iraq from California, where it had been held by Stanford University's Hoover Institution Library and Archives since 2008. A leftover issue from the 2003 Iraq War, it had been static as a policy matter for years, but appeared on the agenda of the US–Iraq Strategic Dialogue in summer 2020. Mustafa al-Kadhimi's emergence as the compromise choice for prime minister by Iraq's competing factions that May facilitated this development. Kadhimi, a journalist and human rights activist by background, was one of the cofounders with Kanan Makiya of the Iraq Memory Foundation (IMF), a nongovernmental organization that followed in the wake of the US-led invasion in 2003 as a US Department of Defense contractor. The origins of this relationship dated to the aftermath of the 1990–91 Gulf War. Shortly after arriving in Iraq in 2003, and responding to the rumor that looters were headed toward the mausoleum and museum of Baʿth Party founder Michel ʿAflaq, Kadhimi and Makiya by chance discovered the Baʿth Party Archive underneath the structure, which was adjacent to the Baʿth Party's headquarters in Baghdad.

PARTY DOCUMENTS OF THE LUBLIN VOIVODSHIP PARTY COMMITTEE OF THE PZPR: FEATURES OF STORAGE AND USE

The article describes the creation, activities and composition of documents kept in the voivodship archives of the PZPR party, which became the ruling party in Poland after World War II with the support of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Among them, the historical value of the documents of the religious section of the party committee, which was aimed at combating the activities of the Catholic Church, which at that time received great public authority in Poland, is described. The assessment of the value of documents of the Lublin Voivodship Party Archive, types of confidential documents, measures aimed at preserving state and party secrets are considered. The assessment of the value of documents, types of confidential documents, measures aimed at preserving the state and party secrets of the Lublin Voivodeship Party Archive are considered. At the same time, information is provided on the level of access of researchers to archival documents, the number and composition of researchers who worked in the party archives of voivodships in different periods. The normative organizational base regulating the work of the archives of the party committees of the voivodeship is described. The issue of protection of state and party secrets in the work of voivodeship party committees is considered. It describes the difficulties in the process of transferring party documents to state storage after the PZPP was terminated in 1990 and the facts of the destruction of party documents of historical significance. A comparative analysis of secret documents of special importance with documents of "special folders" stored in the fund of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan of the Archive of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan was carried out.

An Introduction to Dr. Husam Khalaf’s “The Cultural Genocide of the Iraqi Archives and Iraqi Jewish Archive and International Responsibility” The Cultural Genocide of the Iraqi Archives and Iraqi Jewish Archive and International Responsibility

of the Introduction This is an introduction to the following article, “The Cultural Genocide of the Iraqi Archives and Iraqi Jewish Archive and International Responsibility.” It was written by Dr. Husam Abdul Ameer Khalaf in 2017, and I translated it from Arabic to English in 2021. Khalaf contends that the loss of Iraqi archives after Saddam Hussein’s fall and subsequent US occupation in 2003 was cultural genocide. The first part of the article focuses on the losses suffered by official archives, national archives, the Ba’ath Party archives, and the Iraqi Jewish Archive. The second part examines the international laws governing the protection of cultural heritage and the extent to which the US-led Multinational Force was responsible for the loss of Iraqi archives.

Bulgarians in the GULAG: The Cases of Political Exiles Nediu Sakov and Petar Marinov

The article examines Stalin's confrontation with the Bulgarian communist exiles in the USSR by the example of two political émigrés – Nediu Sakov and Petar Marinov, who were arrested during the mass purges in 1936 – 1938 and sentenced to five and three years in labor camps. For reconstruction of the experienced repressions and imprisonment in the Gulag are used published documents from the Bulgarian archives, electronic databases of the victims of political terror in the Soviet Union of the international human rights organization “Memorial”, as well as the unpublished memoirs of the two Bulgarians, stored for many years in the former Central Party Archive of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party. The comparison of documents and memoir testimonies, which contain a wide range of personal experience, helps to more completely reconstruct the repressive policy towards the Bulgarian communist emigration in the USSR during the “Great Terror” and to expand the scientific knowledge about the Bulgarians in the GULAG.

Issues of declassification of documents of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan of the Soviet period in the Archive of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan

During the Soviet period, the documents of the Archival Fund of the CPSU, which directly supervised the work of state and public institutions of the country, occupied a special place in the study of the history of the country. Party documents that were not included in the state archival fund and stored in the party archives in secrecy mode 80 percent of them had secrecy stamps. The main issues of the introduction into scientific circulation of party documents that became part of the National Archival Fund after the collapse of the USSR were: their integration, systematization and declassification. The purpose of the study: to describe the process and level of declassification of CPSU documents in post-Soviet states, to reveal the principles that guided declassification. The article discusses the issues of declassification of documents of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, stored in the Archive of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, which have different labels of secrecy for political and ideological reasons of Soviet totalitarianism, with the aim of widespread introduction into scientific circulation. The author notes that in Soviet period, the party apparatus strictly controlled the use of archival information and access to party documents as a tool for ideologizing society. The author analyzes the works of scientists and archivists on legal, methodical, organizational and technical issues of declassification of archival documents of the CPSU in the post-Soviet states

The repatriation of Iraqi Ba‘th Party archives: Ethical and practical considerations

The displacement of millions of Iraqi archival records to the United States in the 1990s and early 2000s generated considerable controversy about the legality and ethics of moving a country’s archival records to another country, especially during wartime. Since 2020, however, most of these records have been returned to Iraq, though digital copies remain accessible in the United States in many cases. How does the repatriation of Iraqi archival documents impact the ethical arguments for and against researchers using the digitized copies of previously displaced archives? And now that records have been returned to Iraq, how can researchers continue to safeguard the identities of individuals named within these papers? This article summarizes the history of the legal and ethical controversies surrounding displaced Iraqi archives and proposes ethical considerations for researchers of Iraq to keep in mind while engaging in scholarship.

Peculiarities of pension coverage for disabled war veteran and their employment in Tambov Region in 40s and 50s of the 20th century

The study of certain aspects of social adaptation and support, pension coverage and employment of disabled veterans of the Great Patriotic War allows us to clarify the peculiarities of post-war society development, development trajectories of the socialization of the military generation in the 40–50s of the 20th century. During this period, the efforts of the Soviet and party bodies to organize assistance to disabled war veterans, a significant part of whom had mental injuries and illnesses, were especially significant. Military everyday life and traumatization of combatants led to an increase in morbidity, which required a serious transformation not only of public health, but also of the system of social protection and pension legislation. The most intensive study of this problem was carried out during the war years and the first post-war decades, also in the 20s of the 21s century. The methodological peculiarities of the study of the stated problems are based on the author’s concept of attracting the works of contemporaries, primarily specialists in the field of psychiatry, practitioners of the Tambov Region, as well as the actual case histories and anamnesis of mental illness. We use materials from the state and party archives of the Tambov region, many of which are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. The results of the study allow us to draw a quite obvious conclusion that the central and local Soviet and party bodies made certain efforts to organize social support and employment for disabled war veterans. Highly successful, these events on medical and social work were carried out in the Tambov Region. However, in general, the lack of material resources and hardships of the post-war period did not allow for decent pension coverage and social adaptation of disabled war veterans.

Численность, состав и зарплаты работников партийных органов Свердловской области в 1954-1966 годах: от Н. С. Хрущева к Л. И. Брежневу

The article aims to study the structure and number of the staff in the party leadership bodies of Sverdlovsk regional organisation of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and salaries of their employees during the specified historical period. Scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that the article attempts to analyse and introduce into scientific use new, never before published archival materials from the Center for Documentation of Social Organisations of Sverdlovsk Oblast, which is a former regional party archive. It is proved that the number composition of the party management apparatus did not undergo significant changes and salaries of its employees in themselves were not excessively large during the considered period.

An exit without strategy: learning from the Soviet Bloc’s retreat from the Horn of Africa and Central America

This article investigates the closing years of East–West Cold War rivalry by focussing on the inconsistent implementation of Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of de-escalating decade-long regional conflicts across the globe. It closely examines Moscow and its Eastern European ally’s disengagement from two of the hottest war zones at the end of the Cold War, the Horn of Africa and Central America, consulting a wide range of Soviet and Eastern European party, diplomatic and security services archives. The paper argues that there was more to an economic interest that justified the Soviet Bloc’s continuing military deliveries as its leaders publicly pleaded for disarmament. As the military and intelligence services maintained their policy influence until late 1980, some of their analyses suggest that lingering security imperatives concerning the progressive regimes in the developing nations continued to play a notable role behind the scenes in motivating the Bloc’s contradictive withdrawal. This argument provides a plausible correlational explanation for the lingering inertia of ‘old thinking’ in the Kremlin’s relations with today’s Global South, precipitating a less orderly exit from regional hotbeds of conflict.

Defining Asian Socialism: The Asian Socialist Conference, Asian Socialists, and the Limits of a Global Socialist Movement in 1953

AbstractThe article examines the debates at the Asian Socialist Conference's (ASC) inaugural gathering in Rangoon in January 1953, using a variety of sources, including the minutes of the conference meetings found in the Swedish Social Democratic Party archives. The focus is on the efforts of Asian socialists to define Asian socialism in terms of three broad subjects: international politics; domestic politics; and economic politics. Throughout, particular attention is accorded to the role played by understandings of European socialism. The argument is threefold: that socialism was central to the ASC project, prompting efforts to define Asian socialism; that these efforts invariably raised the fraught question of Asian socialism's relationship with European socialism; and that the stakes involved in Rangoon were not limited to Asian socialism, but also involved socialism's potential as a global movement.

MUSIC ON THE SOCIALIST BULGARIAN RADIO AS A TOOL FOR ESTABLISHING THE NATIONAL (SOCIALIST) IDENTITY

The text deals with the problems related to the Bulgarian state radio strivings during the socialism period to assist in the establishment of the national identity through the prism of the particular issue of music broadcasts. The analysis is based on archival documents consisting of minutes of the meetings of radio management, as well as relevant documents from the Bulgarian Communist Party archives. The question about the ratio of Bulgarian to foreign music on the radio not only as an element of media cultural significance but also as a national state policy arises. The presence of Western music on the radio program is studied as a result of the pressure exerted from public and state power.

The State and the Bulgarians Temporarily Working in Libya in the 1970s

The publication examines the policy of the Bulgarian state towards the Bulgarian specialists working in Libya and the reactions of the employees to the regulatory norms and circumstances. The increase in the number of Bulgarians aspiring to work in Libya is analyzed in the context of the legal and socio-economic conditions in Bulgaria, the contract clauses for hiring, and their application in practice in addition to the growing needs and possibilities of the Libyan state to hire qualified personnel. The forms of control of the Bulgarian state towards the Bulgarians working abroad, and the attempts to protect their interests, and to create a propitious living environment are studied. The behavior of Bulgarians in Libya is presented in the context of the general conditions for residence and work in Libya. The research is based on archival sources of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of Bulgaria for the Cold War period and on an unprocessed file of the Bulgarian Communist Party archive.

Actors, Ruptures, and Continuity : New Socialist Order or Legacy of the War Economy: The Hungarian Vehicle Industry around 1950

This article investigates the formation of a Hungarian socialist enterprise in the vehicle industry. After giving an overview of the legacy of World War II in a (nationalized) vehicle industry plant, it explores political, production, and wage conflicts on the basis of company and party archives and considers the kinds of resources which workers and engineers could use in their efforts to assert their interests. It also considers how these efforts limited the abilities of the central economic authorities to exert influence. It arrives at the conclusion that the main features of the early socialist enterprises, such as technology, the structure of the skilled workforce, the attitudes of this workforce, etc., were shaped by the industrial boost which had come with the war. Furthermore, the relationship between workers and firms was itself shaped by the shortage of consumer goods during and after the war, because the supply of consumer goods (above all, food) was considered the responsibility of the enterprises. These circumstances set narrow limits within which the central economic administration had to operate in is efforts to create so-called socialist enterprises. So, the early socialist enterprise seems to have had few genuinely socialist elements. It was shaped far more by the prevailing conditions in the postwar context, networks among engineers, and a sense of solidarity among skilled workers which had been inherited from the pre-socialist era.

“PURGING THE ELITE” IN TYUMEN IN 1937-1938

The political repressions of the 1930s in the USSR have repeatedly been the subject of interest of historians. Nevertheless, there are practically no studies of political repressions of the 1930s in relation to nomenklatura workers at the level of the provincial Siberian city of Tyumen. This article aims to reveal the cause-and-effect relationship in the issue of physical liquidation of the thinnest layer of the party-economic nomenklatura, using the case of the city party organization of the CPSU(b) of Tyumen in 1937-1938. We have restricted ourselves to one of the components of the “Great Terror”, namely to “purging the elite”. The research was conducted using the documents from two regional departments of the USSR Federal Security Service (FSB), former party archives of the Tyumen and Omsk regions, and periodicals. This required employing prosopographic, comparative-historical, problem-chronological, and system-structural methods. Such approach allowed clarifying the biographical data of the leaders of the city in 1936-1938 and classifying the criminal acts, incriminated to the accused. The results of a comprehensive analysis of the sources show that the cause of the personnel purge should be considered a violation of the imbalance between the limited collective leadership and the still limited one-man dictatorship of I. V. Stalin’s dictatorship. The limited collective leadership was no longer in line with the reality of one man’s increasing power. Rotation of undesirable workers as an alternative to personnel cleansing proved to be unsuccessful. The motive for repressions against workers who had never participated in the opposition was their casual contacts and acquaintances with former opposition figures described as “spies and terrorists” in 1937-1938. The party, Soviet, and Komsomol workers who had no such contacts, though subjected to repression, were rehabilitated. Finally, in terms of their educational and professional level, the new generation of city party workers did not differ from the previous one.

СОЗДАНИЕ И ОРГАНИЗАЦИЯ РАБОТЫ ПАРТИЙНОГО АРХИВА ОБКОМА КПСС КАЛМЫЦКОЙ АССР: 1920–1991

In the article, the author examines the history of the creation of the Party Archives and its activities, carries out research on the impact of the changes in the socio-political, national and state structures of the country on the development of the Party Archives. The chronological framework covers the period from December 12, 1920, the date of the joint meeting of the Communists of the Kalmyk region, which elected the district committee of the RCP (b), up to the liquidation of the Party Archives of the reskom of the KASSR, associated with the adoption of Presidential Decree no. 169 of November 6, 1991 “On the activities of the CPSU and the CP of the RSFSR”, which announced the termination of the activities of the CPSU and the CP of the RSFSR on the territory of the country. The activities of the Party Archives since December 1943, a tragic date in the fate of the Kalmyk people – the liquidation of the Kalmyk ASSR and the deportation of the Kalmyk people to the eastern regions of the country until 1957, a significant date – the restoration of the autonomy of the Kalmyk people, have not been touched upon because on the territory of the liquidated republic, the regional committees of the CPSU and the Komsomol and a number of district committees have ceased to exist.

Documents of the Moscow Central State Archive as a Source on the History of Party and Military Institutions of Soviet Russia During the Civil War

The article analyzes the valuable corpus of sources of party and military institutions of Soviet Russia during the Civil War. During the Soviet period, documents of the (then) Moscow Party Archive were actively introduced into scholarly circulation, revealing mainly the activities of the Moscow Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on communist mobilizations, and primarily regarding the Eastern front in 1918 and the Petrograd front in 1919. At the same time, a whole layer of materials from the archive’s collections remained mostly unclaimed. The Moscow Party Archive retains documents on the organization and activities of the Communist faction of the People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs, which together with the documents of Russian State Military Archive allow a comprehensive study of the process of “communization” of the military apparatus in 1917 and subsequent years. The specified sources, in particular, make it possible to answer the question about the reasons for the establishment in 1919 of the Red Army Political Department as a department of the Central Committee of the RCP(b). Reports of old Bolsheviks to the Moscow Committee of the RCP(b) and the Mossoviet of 1918 contain valuable information about the use of military specialists by the Bolshevik regime, the contribution to the Soviet military construction of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, the liquidation of the rebellion of the Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Front M. A. Murav’yov, the causes of loss of the nascent Red Army of Kazan, and other issues.