INCS - Vol. X - The International Newsletter of Communist Studies ...

10 The International Newsletter of Communist Studies
quarter of a century (1919 -1943) and deeply influenced the political life of many
countries worldwide. Consequently, a new initiative was devoted to the publication of the
files of National Communist Parties on analogue carriers (microfiche/microfilm). These
communist parties have always been secretive organizations. While occasional
government raids, subpoenas, search warrants, and congressional investigations made
some documentation part of the public record, the quantity was never large because of
the party's practice of hiding or destroying records. Many documents in these collections
are unique. In addition to records produced by national communist parties, these files
also contain documents created or gathered in Moscow by parties' representatives to the
Comintern. The files contain the original incoming mail, carbons of outgoing
correspondence, reports from regional and local organizers, internal memoranda
produced by officials and offices of the national headquarters, paper clippings and rare
collections of journals and newspapers. This extensive project started in 2002 when
RGASPI granted IDC Publishers the exclusive right to distribute the microfilm collection of
the Communist Party of the USA (fond 515). It includes 4,313 files (326 reels), largely the
original headquarters records of the CPUSA shipped to Moscow many decades ago. Dr.
John Haynes, Library of Congress, prepared the guide to this collection.
In early 2004 the material of the Communist Party of Japan (616 files from fond 495) was
released on 132 reels. These files cover the period 1919-1941 and include extensive
documentation on the relations between the Soviet Communist Party and its counterparts
in Japan, the Far East, Europe, and America. Collections on the Communist Party of
Mexico (fond 495) and other Asian and Latin American countries are currently being
prepared. In the near future, there is no intention to scan the National Party Archives
and make them available through the online service mentioned above. Relevant data of
the analog publications (such as fiche and reel numbers) will be added to the inventory of
the complete Comintern Archive and will thus be available to all scholars worldwide.
Online and analog publications from the Comintern archives are available for research -
Apart from the original records held in Moscow in RGASPI, the following sections of the
Comintern archives are available (or will be available in a few months) for researchers
throughout the world. A free online database with the complete inventory of the
Comintern archives (the 55,000,000 pages of ‘the trackless forest of documents’ written
in more than 90 languages) will provide researchers access to a user-friendly electronic
finding aid, searchable in both Cyrillic-alphabet Russian and Latin-alphabet English.
Besides an electronic inventory, scholars will be able to revert to the uncensored records
of the Comintern which are of exceptional value for understanding the history of the 20th
century. As a result of the INCOMKA project, about 1,000,000 scanned pages will become
available as part of the Comintern Archives Online project. About 700,000 pages of other
sections of the Comintern archives are already available on microform carriers through
IDC Publishers. This offering will grow by means of international cooperation. Rosarkhiv,
former INCOMKA partners and the International Council of Archives are represented in the
Supervisory Board of RusAR Publishers and consider new projects on opening up the
Comintern archives using both online and analogue publications. If you are interested in
these initiatives and need more information or if you have any comments or suggestions,
please get in touch with us through our website (www.idc.nl) or by e-mail (info@idc.nl).
10