Documents relating to political conditions in the Soviet Union from 1903 to 1992 are available on 11,676 microfilm reels at the Hoover Archives. Each reel contains approximately 850 pages of documents. The original documents are housed at three Russian archives: the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii - RGANI), the Russian State Archives of Social and Political History (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsialno-politicheskoi istorii - RGASPI), and the State Archives of the Russian Federation (Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii - GARF).

Three guides to the microfilm collection are available, with a separate guide for each source repository in Russia. The links above connect to the guides on the Online Archive of California.

To use the guides, it is helpful to understand that archival documents in the former Soviet Union, and later in the Russian Federation, are arranged into record groups according to the institution by which they were issued or received. These major groups, which sometimes include thousands of documents, are called in Russian fond (plural fondy). Within each fond the documents are generally divided into smaller groups called opisi (singular opis). Opisi are generally organized according to the internal structure of the corresponding institution, but sometimes opisi consist of documents relating to one subject. The Russian word opis has two meanings: (1) "a series of documents"; (2) "finding aid." Each opis "series of documents" is provided with a descriptive opis "finding aid." Out of a total of 11,676 reels, 11,210 contain documents and 469 contain finding aids to the fondy available at the Hoover Institution, as well as to some fondy available only in Russia.

List of Fondy Included in the Microfilm Collection

RGANI

-Finding Aids to Fondy 4, 5, 6, 8, and 89 at RGANI (15 reels)

-Fond 6, Committee for Party Control records, 1934-1966 (972 reels)
Opisi 1-6 are available.

-Fond 89, Communist Party of the Soviet Union on Trial records, 1918-1992 (24 reels)
Opisi 1-76 are available. A detailed, document-level guide to this fond in English was published in November 2001 by the Hoover Press; it is out of print, but its contents are available as part of the guide to the collection.

Fond 89 is the designation for the three thousand documents (10,000 pages) submitted to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation for the trial of the Communist Party. This unique collection came into being as a result of President Yeltsin's decision to outlaw the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. For the trial, government prosecutors drew on a wide range of documents emanating from the highest organs of the Communist Party and the Soviet state. Covering the period 1919-1992, the documents were selected to prove that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union showed a complete disregard for human rights and international law. They constitute the most revealing collection of documents of the Soviet Union to have emerged since its collapse.

Fond 89 covers a wide range of subjects, including Stalin's purges, the creation and operation of forced labor camps, the financing of foreign communist parties, the activities of organs of internal security, such as the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) and the Committee for National Security (KGB), relations with ethnic minorities in the former USSR, espionage and subversion of other governments, the USSR's role in postwar Eastern Europe, and many other topics. The documents were drawn from a variety of sources; brought together in a single collection, Fond 89 is now a distinct record group in the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History.

RGASPI

-Finding Aids to All Fondy at RGASPI (55 reels)

-Fond 17, Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union records, 1903-1965, 1971 (2,457 reels)
Opisi 1, 2, 7-9, 75-77, 79, 86, 109, and 139 are available.

-Fond 34, II Congress of the RSDRP records, 1903-1904 (4 reels)

-Fond 35, III Congress of the RSDRP records, 1905 (4 reels)

-Fond 36, V Conference of the RSDRP records, 1908 (1 reel)

-Fond 37, VI (Prague) Conference of the RSDRP records, 1912 (1 reel)

-Fond 38, VI Congress of the RSDRP records, 1917 (1 reel)

-Fond 39, VII (April) All-Russian Conference of the RSDRP records, 1917-1924 (2 reels)

-Fond 40, VII Congress of the RKP(b) records, 1918 (1 reel)

-Fond 41, VIII Congress of the RKP(b) records, 1919 (4 reels)

-Fond 42, VIII All-Russian Conference of the RKP(b) records, 1919 (1 reel)

-Fond 43, IX Congress of the RKP(b) records, 1920 (2 reels)

-Fond 44, IX (April) All-Russian Conference of the RKP(b) records, 1920 (2 reels)

-Fond 45, X Congress of the RKP(b) records, 1920-1922 (7 reels)

-Fond 46, X All-Russian Conference of the RKP(b) records, 1921 (1 reel)

-Fond 47, XI All-Russian Conference of the RKP(b) records, 1921-1922 (2 reels)

-Fond 48, XI Congress of the RKP(b) records, 1921-1922 (4 reels)

-Fond 49, XII Conference of the RKP(b) records, 1922 (1 reel)

-Fond 50, XII Congress of the RKP(b) records, 1922-1923 (12 reels)

-Fond 51, XIII Conference of the RKP(b) records, 1923-1924 (3 reels)

-Fond 52, XIII Congress of the RKP(b) records, 1924 (13 reels)

-Fond 53, XIV Conference of the VKP(b) records, 1924-1925 (5 reels)

-Fond 54, XIV Congress of the VKP(b) records, 1925 (20 reels)

-Fond 55, XV Conference of the VKP(b) records, 1926-1929 (15 reels)

-Fond 56, XV Congress of the VKP(b) records, 1925-1929 (15 reels)

-Fond 57, XVI Conference of the VKP(b) records, 1928-1929 (6 reels)

-Fond 58, XVI Congress of the VKP(b) records, 1930 (20 reels)

-Fond 59, XVII Congress of the VKP(b) records, 1934 (19 reels)

-Fond 337, V Congress of the RSDRP records, 1907 (3 reels)

-Fond 447, IV (Unifying) Congress of the RSDRP records, 1906 (2 reels)

-Fond 477, XVIII Congress of the VKP(b) records, 1933-1939 (26 reels)

-Fond 572, Central Revision Commission of RKP(b)-KPSS records, 1921-1925, 1944-1950 (4 reels)

-Fond 582, XXIV Congress of VKP(b) records, 1971 (2 reels)

-Fond 586, Preparatory materials for III programme of the CPSU, 1958-1961 (33 reels)

-Fond 592, XIX Congress of the CPSU records, 1952 (13 reels)

-Fond 593, XXIII Congress of the CPSU records, 1966 (1 reel)

-Fond 604, XXV Congress of the CPSU records, 1976 (4 reels)

-Fond 620, XXVI Congress of the CPSU records, 1981 (3 reels)

-Fond 628, XXVII Congress of the CPSU records, 1976 (1 reel)

-Fond 646, XXVIII Congress of the CPSU records, 1990 (2 reels)

GARF

-Finding Aids to All Fondy at GARF (395 reels)

-Fond R-393, People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs of the RSFSR records, 1917-1930 (4,157 reels)
Opisi 1, 1A, 2-18, 18A, 19-23, 23A, 24-43, 43A, 44-84, and 87-91 are available.

-Fond R-1005, Supreme Tribunal under the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) records; Supreme Court of the RSFSR records, 1918-1967 (288 reels)
Opisi 1, 1A, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, and 67 are available.

-Fond R-4042, Main Administration of the Places of Confinement of the Peoples Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the RSFSR (NKVD RSFSR) records, 1922-1930 (325 reels)
Opisi 1, 1A, 2-7, 9-11, and 13 are available.

-Fond R-5446, Council of People's Commissar (Sovnarkom) of the USSR records, 1922-1958 (75 reels)
Opisi 5, 5A, 6, 7, 7A, 8, 8A, 9, 9A, 10, 10A, 11, 11A, 12A, 13, 13A, 14, 14A, 15, 15A, 16, 16A, 17, 18, 18A, 20, 22A, 23, 23A, 24, 24A, 25, 43, 44, 46-51, 80, 81, 81A, and 86 are available.

-Fond R-7521, Presidium of the USSR Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) records, 1925-1937 (43 reels)
Opis 1, Materials of the Presidium's Commission for Private Amnesty, 1925-1937, is available.

-Fond R-7863, USSR Supreme Soviet records (38 reels)
Opisi 1-2 are available.

-Fond R-8131, USSR Public Prosecutor's Office records, 1924-1980 (371 reels)
Opisi 1-29 are available.

-Fond R-8409, Peshkova E.L.: Committee for Aid to Political Prisoners records, 1928-1938 (465 reels)
Opis 1 is available.

-Fond R-8419, Political Red Cross (Moscow) records, 1927-1939 (58 reels)
Opis 1 is available.

-Fond R-9412 (274 reels)
Opisi 1-2 are available.

-Fond R-9414, Main Administration of the Places of Confinement of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs records, 1930-1960 (991 reels)
Opisi 1, 1A, 2, 3, 3A, and 4 are available.

-Fond R-9474, USSR Supreme Court records, 1923-1991 (41 reels)
Opis 16 is available.

-Fond R-9479, Fourth Special Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR records, 1930-1959 (123 reels)
Opis 1, relating to special (forced) migrants (spetsposelentsy), is available.

-Fond R-9492, USSR Ministry of Justice records, 1936-1992 (412 reels)
Opisi 1A and 2-5 are available.

For additional information please contact Lora Soroka, assistant archivist for Russian projects.