The Yale University Press has received a $1.3 million grant from the Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation to develop a digital documentary edition of Stalin’s
Personal Archive.
The digitization of Stalin’s Personal Archive is a new initiative of
Yale Press’ critically acclaimed “Annals of Communism” series,
begun in 1992.
The digitized documents from this archive will become the basis for future
scholarly research, while expediting traditional book publications on topics
of great importance in understanding Soviet and 20th-century world history.
Scholars worldwide will be able to investigate the rare primary source materials
and documents contained in this archive without having to travel to Moscow,
where the archive is held, and will be able to communicate their findings instantaneously
online.
The archive contains important new materials relating to Stalin’s political
life and death: documents concerning foreign policy with Germany before World
War II; Stalin’s communications with Nikolai Yezhov, head of the NKVD
during the Great Purges; Stalin’s directives to the Politburo after World
War II; material illuminating his relations with Western intellectuals and
political leaders, including Franklin D. Roosevelt; and his private notations
concerning Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin and other Soviet leaders. It also contains
important materials from Stalin’s library.
The Yale Press also intends to enable transcription, translation and scholarly
annotation of these materials to be done online by its authors and researchers
using a specially designed publishing platform. To ensure the continued high
scholarly credibility of the project, the approval process for the Digital
Stalin Archive will be as rigorous as for volumes published in the “Annals
of Communism” series and will be conducted in the same manner. Once approved,
the fully transcribed, translated and annotated documents will be published
online.
The Yale Press expects that online availability will occur gradually over the
period of the project. A fully digitized version of all documents contained
within this archive should be available to scholars via the World Wide Web
by 2012.
“Taken together, these materials will provide the last great missing piece
in understanding the engine of Soviet influence in the 20th century — Stalin
and his legacy,” said John Donatich, director of the Yale University Press. “The
digitization of Stalin’s Personal Archive will facilitate important new
research in Soviet studies as well as the creation of a living, growing and continually
evolving body of scholarship that will take advantage of new innovation and technologies.”
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