The International Newsletter of Communist Studies Online IX

The International Newsletter of Communist Studies Online 16/2003 17
Using the thesaurus, one can find, for example, all the meetings regarding the various strikes. Of course, if the
word »strike« matches different meetings, it does not say anything about the importance of the debate about
the strike.
Finally, the proper names are not only indexed but also specified in different categories relying on the function
assumed by the respective person, as author, speaker, simply quoted or present in the meeting. This makes it
possible to search only for the corpus of meetings where the specific person intervenes, or meetings where he
is simply present or quoted. For example, one can find Maurice Thorez as a speaker at the sessions of the
Politburo or the Secretariat. One may then become interested about Maurice Thorez quoted rather than
speaker. One can also make a research about the perception of international leaders of the communist (as
Stalin) or the worker’s movement (as Léon Blum).
New perspectives
As this kind of an innovative inventory permits larger reflections, it simplifies a more comparative approach.
The systematic text treatment opens new perspectives. Without modifying the classification, the
computerization enables the user to make inquiries which are beyond the possibilities offered by classical
inventories. This database allows a more transversal and thematic approach. Without pretending here to
outline a multidisciplinary research program, we can however suggest a few methods of reflections. For
example we can imagine major contributions for a social history that would follow social categories as for
example the railway employees in order to study their number, their influence and their force.
This database could also support oral history. For example, the Secretariat’s appended documents from 1944
on are rich in authorizations to travel abroad, that makes it possible to study individual travellers in Eastern
Europe, for example. All kinds of useful data for biographical research may be obtained via this database.
Facing the number of documents (more than 75000 pages microfilmed), this database may be a useful tool,
introducing at the same time a new way of working: we do not have to systematically read the entire meetings
reports.
This database enables us to digitise the whole of the original document of these leadership archives. Finally, a
link between the thesaurus and the digitised document will then be possible. In this way, the project follows
the program defined by Georges Haupt: »To forge working tools, inventory sources, to write biographies, to
publish documents, to elaborate monographies« 8 .
The Records of the Communist Party of the USA in the Comintern Archives
8 Haupt, Georges: L’historien et le mouvement social, Paris, Maspero, 1980, p.18.