ABSTRACT
At the beginning of this year, Moscow News carried excerpts from the speech which Professor lurii Afanas 'ev, rector of the Moscow State Institute of Historian-Archivists, made at the Academic Council. Almost immediately, MN editors received a telephone call from Professor F. Vaganov, head of the USSR Chief Archives, who said that he considered the publication of these excerpts to be a mistake. Professor Vaganov was invited to express his own views in our weekly. Three months later, however, Professor A. Nosov came to the MN office, bringing with him a letter signed by four Soviet historians. The letter, he said, had been agreed upon with Professor Vaganov. Frankly, we don't quite understand why the four scholars took such a cumbersome path. Surely, the editors would have in any case treated their letter in all seriousness, even if there were no reference to the head of the USSR Chief Archives. Below we publish the letter in full, with nothing changed in it. Since many of the questions raised in the letter are addressed to Professor lurii Afanas 'ev, we deemed it necessary to acquaint him with the letter so that he would have an opportunity to reply.
