The Novosti Press Agency Photograph Collection 21 Mirror Images: The Novosti Press Agency Photograph Collection* JENNIFER ANDERSON RÉSUMÉ La collection de photographies de la Novosti Press Agency, conservée aux Special Collections and Archives de l’Université Carleton, est une ressource rare et fascinante. Les 70 000 photographies et les textes d’accompagnement, qui datent de 1917 à 1991, appartenaient autrefois au Bureau de la Soviet Novosti Press Agency (APN), situé sur la rue Charlotte à Ottawa, mais le personnel de la bibliothèque Carleton a dû récupérer ce matériel rapidement vers la fin de l’année 1991 avec la dissolution de l’Union soviétique et la fermeture du Bureau à Ottawa. Fondé en partie pour encourager les Occidentaux, en particulier les Canadiens, à voir l’URSS d’un meilleur œil, l’APN d’Ottawa distribuait ces photographies et ces communiqués de presse aux médias, aux or ganisations et aux individus à travers le Canada. La collec- tion offre aux historiens un aperçu de la construction de l’image que se donnait l’Union soviétique, les points de vues soviétiques of ficiels sur les relations interna- tionales pendant la Guerre froide et les ef forts pour adoucir les opinions anti-sovié- tiques au Canada. Dans son texte « Mirror Images », Jennifer Anderson soutient que la collection mérite d’être mieux connue des historiens de la Guerre froide au Canada et des historiens qui s’intéressent aux relations internationales et que le grand public pourrait aussi être intéressé par une exposition conçue autour de l’idéologie, de la perception et de la construction de l’identité pendant la Guerre froide. ABSTRACT The Novosti Press Agency Photograph Collection, held at Carleton University in its Special Collections and Archives, is a rare and fascinating resource. The seventy thousand photographs and accompanying text, dating from 1917 to 1991, originally belonged to the Soviet Novosti Press Agency (APN) bureau located on Charlotte Street in Ottawa, but were hurriedly gathered up by Carleton library staf f in late 1991 as the Soviet Union collapsed, and the press bureau closed up shop. Part of a campaign to persuade Westerners, and particularly Canadians, to view the USSR in a * Carleton University Library, Special Collections and Archives, Novosti Press Agency Photograph Collection [hereafter Novosti Collection]. I would like to thank Rita Richard, Jeremy Palin, Valentina Mintchev, and Trevor Smith, all of whom have worked with this collection in Special Collections and Archives at Carleton University . Apart from acquiring, organizing, writing the finding aid, and facilitating research on the collection, they also took time to offer suggestions and answer my questions. Thanks also to my supervisors, J.L. Black and Duncan McDowall, History Department, Carleton University , and Janice Cavell and Greg Donaghy at Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada. ARCHIVARIA 65 (Spring 2008): 21–38 Archivaria, The Journal of the Association of Canadian Archivists – All rights reserved 22 Archivaria 65 more positive light, the Ottawa APN distributed these photos and press releases to media outlets, or ganizations, and individuals across Canada. The collection of fers historians a glimpse of the constructed nature of the Soviet self-image, of ficial Soviet views on international relations during the Cold War, and attempts to soften anti- Soviet opinions in Canada. In “Mirror Images,” Jennifer Anderson argues that the collection deserves to be better known amongst historians of Cold War Canada and international relations, and that the general public would also be intrigued by an exhi- bition, built around ideology, perception, and image-construction in the Cold War. On a cold day in December 1991, staf f from the Carleton University Library scooped up thousands of photographs and their accompanying text of f the floor of the Novosti Press Agency office in Ottawa. The Soviet Union was crumbling, and the embassy staf f was clearing out. Files and drawers in the Press Office were emptied, as individuals contemplated the sudden change of plans. Carleton University Archivist Jeremy Palin, and two others, carefully stacked seventy-thousand images into boxes to transport them to the campus, where they would be sorted and preserved for posterity . The five hundred dollars Carleton paid for the copyright, and the considerable ef fort it took to reestablish order in the files, were deemed a small price in comparison to the value the collection represented for future study. Novosti, which means literally “news” in Russian, was a press agency with bureaus in most Western capitals. It was set up in 1961 by Soviet semi-official groups, including the Writers’ Union, Journalists’ Union, the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, and the Znaniye (Knowledge) Society. It has been compared to the United States Information Agency (USIA), acting on behalf of the government to publish official news and information about the country , but with a dif ference: Novosti had both a domestic and a foreign audience, so it also gathered infor- mation from abroad to be used at home. 1 It combined the Marxist-Leninist notion that the press should serve the interests of the (Soviet) state, with a modern journalistic style that included colourful writing and photographs aimed at making this message more attractive to foreigners.2 This is not to say that the photographs were more important than the press releases, but that they were an integral part of the message. Novosti (also called by its Russian acronym, APN) produced millions of books, periodicals, photographic exhibi- tions, press releases, and even films for foreign consumption. Its Ottawa office was located next to the Soviet embassy on Charlotte Street. The decade immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was an exhilarating moment for historians of international relations. 1 Mark W. Hopkins called Novosti “The Soviet USIA.” See especially the chapter “News of the World: TASS and Novosti,” in Mass Media in the Soviet Union (New York, 1970), pp. 265-95. TASS stands for Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union. 2 Ibid., pp. 294-95. Archivaria, The Journal of the Association of Canadian Archivists – All rights reserved The Novosti Press Agency Photograph Collection 23 Archives, which had never before been so accessible, especially to foreign historians, were suddenly opening up. Since glasnost had begun under Gorbachev, increasingly free exchanges of ideas, resources, and research between Soviet and Western academics had been possible. The general spirit of the times allowed a leading Cold War American historian to proclaim “We Now Know.” From newly-opened archives, we know, for instance, how ideol- ogy affected Soviet foreign policy.3 The importance of ideas, and their ef fects on Cold War leaders, “average” citizens, and historians of the period have been the focus of much recent debate. 4 Archives have been at the centre of these conversations, and yet the Novosti Press Agency collection, illustrating graphically the ideological focus of Soviet image-spinning, has been lar gely ignored. Coinciding with an increased interest in archival theory in the West, and followed in recent years by the apparent closing of some Russian archives, 5 historians continue to be excited about what the archives reveal. They are also cautious about declaring what we “know .” Issues of who has access to the collections, and the ordering and selection of archives all play a role in histo- ry-making.6 This is particularly true when the archive collections include photographs. The way the photographs are arranged, the captions applied to them, and text chosen to accompany the images can tell us much about their purpose. Indeed, even the decision about which images are initially captured and which are ignored is central. Viewing the Soviet photographs in the Novosti Collection with an awareness of these theoretical discussions can add much to our understanding of Cold War culture. The Novosti collection of fers us a great story . It covers the entire Soviet period (1917-1991), but most of the photographs date from the 1960s, 1970s, and the Gorbachev era (1985-1991). A few portraits of V.I. Lenin date from the 3 From the perspective of the ef fect of ideology on Canadian-Soviet relations, J.L. Black has made an important contribution. See especially his Canada in the Soviet Mirr or: Ideology and Perception in Soviet Foreign Affairs, 1917-1991 (Ottawa, 1998). 4 John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford, 1997); Melvyn P. Leffler, “The Cold War: What Do ‘We Now Know’?” The American Historical Review, vol. 104, no. 2 (April 1999), p. 523. Consider also John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, In Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage (San Francisco, 2003) and Ellen Schrecker , ed., Cold War Triumphalism: The Misuse of History After the Fall of Communism (New York, 2004). 5 See the essay by Rachel Donadio, “The Iron Archives,” Sunday Book Review, The New York Times (22 April 2007). 6 On this, see for example, Carolyn Steedman, Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (New Brunswick, NJ, 2002); Antoinette Burton, ed., Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History (Durham and London, 2005). In the latter volume, Jeff Sahadeo’s contribu- tion, entitled “‘W ithout the Past there is No Future’: Archives, History and Authority in Uzbekistan” (pp. 45-67), has particular relevance to the discussion of Soviet and post-Soviet archives. Archivaria,