![]() ![]() When Gorbachev declared in 1985 that “glasnost,” or openness, would be a vital component of his professed attempts to deepen, accelerate and humanize socialism, a small but significant number of new documents about party history started to appear, under the watchful eye of the Communist Party. ![]() Writings on Soviet history have always been politically charged, and they often suffer from the ravages of Stalinism, the ideological battles of the Cold War, the institutional demands of academia (usually negative), and, almost always, from the lack of access to archival material. ![]() Nor does access to new archival documents say much about a historian’s ability to create a new synthesis of material that genuinely contributes to a deeper understanding of an historical epoch, event, movement, or individual figure. In recent years, the covers and inside flaps of most books on Soviet history have contained the inescapable blurb: “based on new material from recently opened Soviet archives.” It would be wonderful if these words guaranteed a certain degree of historical accuracy. The second and concluding part will be posted Friday, June 3. The following is the first part of a two-part article. ![]()
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