The Odyssey of the Smolensk Archive: Plundered Communist Records for the Service Anti- Communism

Abstract

Issues of restitution that now so dramatically affect the fate of the "Smolensk Archive" were discussed in the Grimsted article , "Archival Rossica/Sovietica Abroad: Provenance or Pertinence, Bibliographic and Descriptive Needs," Cahiers du Monde Russe et Sovietique XXXIV , no. 3 (juillet-septembre 1993): 431-19, which first appeared in a Russian version , "Zarubezhnaia arkhivnaia Rossika i Sovetika: Proiskhozhdenie dokumentov ili ikh otnoshenie k istorii Rossii (SSSR), potrebnost ' v opisanii i bibliografii," Otechestvennye arkhivy, 1993, no . 1, pp . 20-53. A short report on the fate of the Smolensk Archive was presented at a conference on "Archival Rossica Abroad" in Moscow in December 1993, sponsored by the State Archival Service of Russia (Rosarkhiv) , but it was only subsequently that more of the American documentation presented here was uncovered.