ABSTRACT
In 1935 the journal Krasny arkhiv (Red Archive) published a lead article titled ‘Revolutionary Vigilance’. The article quoted Stalin who had castigated ‘archival rats’ who ‘dig out accidentally selected documents’. Stalin stated that ‘The archival institutions must exercise special vigilance…in utilizing the historical documents… We know that wicked double dealers and contrabandists do not shrink from committing fraud and falsification…’. Stalin’s subordinates echoed his concern in their statements. Politburo member P.P.Postyshev declared:
Archival work, after all, is the sector of the sharpest class struggle. A Trotskyite or a Nationalist, no doubt, will try to use and to interpret this or that archival material not in the interests of, but to harm the cause of socialism.1
