Soviet Union

Overview

Despite the Iron Curtain’s dampening effect on collecting and preserving materials from the USSR, the Hoover Archives holds a number of significant collections relating to Soviet dissidents and defectors, such as Andrei Siniavskii and Aleksandr Ginzburg and Yuri Yarim-Agaev; while the NTS Samizdat collection is one of the most extensive such collections in the world. A series of joint microfilming and digitization projects from the early 1990s until today have expanded Hoover’s holdings on the Soviet state and Communist Party apparatus and on the workings of the KGB in the USSR and its national republics to enable researchers to study both sides of the equation. In addition, a number of collections deal with US-Soviet relations, including citizen diplomacy and friendship organizations that tried to defuse international tensions during the Cold War. For the Cold War itself – as a battleground of ideologies – the RFE/RL Broadcast and Corporate Records are an unparalleled resource.

Archives Of The Soviet Communist Party And Soviet State Microfilm

Copies of documents from three major Russian archives

Narodno-trudovoĭ Soiuz Samizdat Collection

Russian émigré organization

Aleksandr Il'ich Ginzburg Papers

Soviet writer and dissident

Rfe/rl Broadcast Records

US radio broadcasting organization

Rfe/rl Corporate Records

US radio broadcasting organization

A. Siniavskiĭ Papers

Soviet literary critic and dissident

Boris Andreevich Grushin Papers

Soviet sociologist and pollster

Vitaliĭ Leonidovich Kataev Papers

Soviet defense industry official

Explore

Date (field_news_date)
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To Choose Freedom: Soviet Dissidents and Their Supporters

This exhibition of documents, photographs, posters, books, and audiovisual materials from the collections of the Hoover Institution Library and Archives illustrates the various aspects of the struggle for human rights in the Soviet Union from the 1960s onward.

September 15, 2008
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Hoover Archives Summer Workshop 2011

Hoover's Workshop on Totalitarian Regimes studies the history and development of totalitarian regimes in order to understand why they came into being, how they work, and the sources of their durability. By bringing scholars together who study the different regimes, the workshop promotes the comparative study of modes of personal dictatorship, of institutions of coercion and repression, and of the economic and social consequences of totalitarian rule. The workshop's principal resources are the unique and fast- growing holdings of the Hoover Archives on totalitarian regimes in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

July 24, 2011
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Hoover Archives Summer Workshop 2012

The Hoover Institution Archives is proud to announce its tenth annual Workshop on China and Russia, which will run from July 22 to August 3.

July 22, 2012
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Hoover Archives Summer Workshop 2013

Hoover's Workshop on Totalitarian Regimes studies the history and development of totalitarian regimes in order to understand why they came into being, how they work, and the sources of their durability. By bringing scholars together who study the different regimes, the workshop promotes the comparative study of modes of personal dictatorship, of institutions of coercion and repression, and of the economic and social consequences of totalitarian rule. The workshop's principal resources are the unique and fast- growing holdings of the Hoover Archives on totalitarian regimes in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

July 21, 2013
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Hoover Archives Summer Workshop 2014

Hoover's Workshop on Totalitarian Regimes studies the history and development of totalitarian regimes in order to understand why they came into being, how they work, and the sources of their durability. By bringing scholars together who study the different regimes, the workshop promotes the comparative study of modes of personal dictatorship, of institutions of coercion and repression, and of the economic and social consequences of totalitarian rule. The workshop's principal resources are the unique and fast- growing holdings of the Hoover Archives on totalitarian regimes in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

July 20, 2014
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A Soviet Vignette of the Hoover Institution

During a recent archival reconnaissance expedition to Latvia, in advance of yet another Hoover digitization project in the countries of the former USSR, Stanford history professor Amir Weiner came across an account of a 1967 visit to Stanford by Aleksandrs Drizulis, a high Soviet Communist Party official and historian. The following text is from Drizulis’s presentation to party activists on April 18, 1968.

May 25, 2012
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A Screening of Age of Delirium: The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union

The Hoover Institution and the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies presented a screening of Age of Delirium: The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union on May 16, 2012, at 6:30 pm at the Fisher Conference Center in the Arrillaga Alumni Association Building on the Stanford campus.

May 14, 2012
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Documenting Soviet Crimes in Estonia

The Hoover Institution and the National Archives of Estonia have signed an agreement of cooperation for digitizing and sharing records pertaining to Estonia. The first project will be Hoover Archives’ acquiring copies of selected groups of records of the NKVD and of its successor, the KGB of the former Estonian SSSR.

April 17, 2012
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Former Soviet dissident Yuri Yarim-Agaev’s papers at the Hoover Archives

Yuri Yarim-Agaev is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, as well as a scientist and human rights activist. After receiving his degree in 1972 from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, he worked at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He joined the Moscow Helsinki Group (founded in 1976) and became a leader of the human rights movement in Russia, working closely with Andrei Sakharov and other dissidents. As a consequence of his dissident activities, he was forced into exile in the summer of 1980.

July 25, 2011
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