Archival Sources for Soviet History at Harvard Libraries & Depositories

Compiled by Matthew Lenoe, PhD
Davis Center Associate
Assistant Professor of History, Assumption College, Worcester, MA

* indicates English language sources

When comparing the size of different archival collections, keep in mind that one microfilm reel is very approximately equal to four dela of documents or fifteen microfiche cards.

Archives of the Communist Party of the Soviet State (O'Neill archive)
Largest single collection at Harvard. Documents from three central Moscow archives covering huge range of topics including the Gulag, prosecution of party members for infractions of discipline (Central Control Commission), the Russo-Polish War, the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, the social and ethnic composition of the Communist Party in the 1920s and 1930s, and etc. and etc.

Comintern Archive, 1917-1940
Mostly documents from the congresses of the Third Communist International, headed by Moscow and devoted to the ultimate goal of world Communist revolution.

Leaders of the Russian Revolution
Archives of nine prominent Russian revolutionary leaders.

Everyday Stalinism
Statistics on household budgets, recreation and other aspects of daily life in the 1920s and 1930s.

The Intercepted Letters of the Russian Revolutionaries, 1883-1917

Central Committee Department for Relations with Foreign Communist Parties, 1953-1957

Military Papers of Leon Trotsky, 1918-1924

General Department of the Central Committee, 1953-1966
Draft party policy documents from the Khrushchev era.

Papers of the Red Army, 1918-1923

Papers of the White Army, 1917-1921

All-Union Population Census, 1939

Plenums of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1941-1990

Congresses of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1955-1986

Smolensk Oblast Party Archive, 1917-1938

Leon Trotsky - Soviet Papers and Related Collections, 1904-1941

Leon Trotsky - Exile Papers, 1929-1940

Materials from Harvard Project on Cold War Studies, including Volkogonov Archive

British Foreign Office - Russia Correspondence, 1883-1945*

Confidential US State Department Central Files on Russia and the Soviet Union, 1914-1966*

The Soviet Estimate: US Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1947-1991*

Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System (Harvard Interview Project, 1949-1953)*