Revelations from the Russian Archives: Documents in English Translation. by Diane P. Koenker; Ronald D. Bachman Review by: Stephen Kotkin Slavic Review, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), pp. 455-456 Published by: Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2501884 . Accessed: 09/12/2011 19:34

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http://www.jstor.org Book Reviews 455 hope thatthose who question the interpretationsof this skilled and thoughtfulyoung historianwill do so in a serious and scholarlymanner.

REGINALI1) E. Z}'lNIK Universityof California, Berkeley

Revelations from the Russian Archives: Documents in English Translation. Ed. Diane P. Koenker and Ronald D. Bachman. Washington,D.C.: Libraryof Congress, 1997. xxv,808 pages. Bibliography.Glossary. Index. Photographs.$59.00, hard bound..

This weightyvolume contains declassifiedSoviet documents thatwere exhibitedat the Libraryof Congress fromJune to July1992, an event thatJamesBillington, Librarian of Congress,calls "one of the most importantexhibits in the [Library's]history" (ix). Billington and other Americans who assisted in the selection of materials were ap- proached by representativesof the Russian republic, officialswhom the volume's ed- itors call "a group of democrats led by Rudolf Pikhoia," then head of Russian State Archives(xv). The editorsneglect to mention thatthe exhibit,also facilitatedby Dmi- triiVolkogonov, was connected withBoris Yeltsin'sfirst state visit to the United States. Some documentswere hand-carriedto Washingtonin the original. Part 1 focuses on Soviet domestic issues. The opening section,entitled "The Ap- paratus of Repression and Terror," contains almost one-thirdof the 343 documents published.Among the itemsare inconclusivedepositions relatingto the assassination of Sergei Kirov, the prostrationsof the various party"oppositions," the early estab- lishmentof forcedlabor camps, the Katyn massacre,censorship, and the deportation of nationalities.The editors note that there are no "smoking guns" on Kirov or the onset of the Great Terror.The second section,"Intellectuals and the State," continues manyof these same themes,from which the textmoves on to more of the same under the rubrics"The CommunistParty Apparatus" and "Economic Development" (mean- ing, instead,the horrorsof dekulakizationand collectivization,plus the questionable characterof industrialsuccesses). Brief sections on "Religion," "Chernobyl," "Pere- stroikaand Glasnost" round out an unremittinglygrim, not to say familiar,story. Part 2 is devoted to American and Soviet relations,beginning with the vast famine reliefof the American Relief Administration(the U.S. militaryintervention is passed over) and culminatingwith the debacle of Afghanistan."The documents released here," writethe editors,"shed littlelight on the inner workingsof the Soviet foreign policy process" (731). By contrast,Soviet internalacknowledgments of the magnitude of Lend-Lease are revealed. We are also served the menu of an apparentlysumptuous Kremlindinner in 1943 hosted by losif Stalin forJosephDavies, PresidentRoosevelt's personal representative,as well as the full text of a fawningletter Davies wrote to Stalin (with the preamble, calling Stalin a "Great of the Earth," that was left out of the versionpublished in the already universallycondemned Missionto Moscow [1941]). To introduce the documents,Diane Koenker has supplied abundant and even- handed explanatorynotes, but her diligence is overshadowed by the structureof the exhibition,which parrots a certain notorious interpretationof the USSR and corre- sponding American mission thatevents after 1989 ostensiblyratified (particularly the obsequious behavior in 1990-92 of Russian republic officials).Occasionally the exhibit and resultingbook happen upon a world of incomparable sufferingmade poignant by unshakable hopes for social justice and advancement.But these momentsare lost in the book's grind towardAmerica's extractionof unconditional surrender.So much for Lev Trotskii's 1922 lament that "we still do not know what the Great Republic across the ocean wants fromus" (555). Handsomely assembled in coffee-tableformat with rare Gulag and other photo- graphs,this collection speaks to American identityand the oversized place thereinof Soviet communism.In that sense Billington's assessmentof the exhibit's importance cannot be dismissed as self-promotion."Revelations" from the Soviet archives con- 456 SlavicReview tinue to divulge at least as much about American preoccupations as supposed Soviet secrets.

STEPHI-N KOTKIN Princeton University

The UnknownLenin: From the Secret Archive. Ed. Richard Pipes, with the assistance of David Brandenberger.Trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick.Annals of Communism. New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1996. xx, 204 pp. Index. Photograplhs.$27.50, hard bound.

This volume contains 122 documentsfrom the formerSoviet archives,the overwhelm- ing majorityof whichwere authored byVladimir Lenin. Because theywere considered sensitive,these documentswere not included in the voluminous collections of Lenin's workspublished in the Soviet era. In general their "sensitivity"consisted in the fact that the documents mightthreaten Lenin's reputation (or that of the regime),but in some cases concern over diplomatic secrets or even, for example, referencesto the use of codes seem to have resulted in documents finding themselvesin the secret Lenin file. Though some of these documents are very interesting,many others are mere snippets of informationthat will baffle anyone uninitiated in the details of their specific context.In many cases too, it is difficultto see what is so very sensitive or frightfulabout Lenin's comments.It is, of course, necessary to remember that the audience fromwhich these documents were being hidden was not so much western historiansas the Soviet public to whom the regime considered it essential thatLenin be portrayedin saint-liketerms. This made some sense given Russian traditionalpo- litical culture,the relative newness of the Soviet regime,the huge sufferinginflicted on its subjects in the regime's firstdecades, and the fact that de-Stalinizationhad ruined many of Soviet communism'spotential legitimizingmyths. Thus, for instance,a document establishingLenin's noble origins finds itselfin the archive, as do his comments on the Roman Malinovskii case (Doc. 17). In my opinion Lenin was quite rightto argue thatpolice agent or not, Malinovskiidid great harm to the tsaristregime, especially fromthe Duma podium. Lenin was also rightto insistthat in 1917-18 Bolshevik and German intereststemporarily coincided and "we would be idiots not to take advantage of this" (Doc. 27), however much hysteriathis mightcause among certain of the party faithful.No doubt the authoritiesfelt that such Realpolitik mightbe too much for the narodto swallow, particularlyin an era when the old internationalistclass-consciousness had long since been buried by Soviet patriotismand memories of the second anti-Germanwar. In 1987 I spent a number of days driving around London alone with Dmitrii Volkogonov. Of the many documentshe had mined fromthe archives,it was the ones revealing Lenin's ruthlessseverity toward the peasantry (such as Doc. 24 in Pipes's collection) which most appalled him. On closer acquaintance, the friend,father, and protectorof the people seemed to embody opinions and methods very reminiscent of losif Stalin. Given Volkogonov's own origins and biography(a typicalone for the postwarSoviet elite), and given the sentimentallypopulist nationalism at the core of the Soviet patriotic worldview,it is not difficultto see why he was so shaken or, therefore,why the Kremlin took care to keep records such as document 24 out of the public eye. Westernhistorians should not be surprised by such materials.Ample evi- dence has long existed in the west about Bolshevik perspectivesand policies vis-a-vis the peasantryin 1918-21. Among the longest and most interestingdocuments in this collection are a Sep- tember 1920 speech by Lenin on the war with Poland and the prospects of world revolution(Doc. 59) and a March 1922 (Doc. 94) demand thatthe faminebe exploited as an opportunityto smash the Orthodox Church. The latter is accompanied by a typicallyLeninist call to shoot as many priests and bourgeois as possible in order to