Reference Library
Imre Nagy and the Kremlin: the Moscow talks of June 1953 and the Presidium's criticism of January 1955
Two Hungarian records of meetings in the Kremlin. On 13 and 16 June 1953 Malenkov, Beria, Molotov and others condemned Rákosi's one-man rule, over-rapid industrialisation and mass prosecutions, and named Imre Nagy chairman of the Council of Ministers. On 8 January 1955 the same Presidium condemned Nagy's article of 20 October 1954 and his 'new stage' line as anti-party and backed Rákosi again: 'either with the party or against it'. Korean translation from the Hungarian.
Read the full text → Party & government documentsThe Pospelov Commission Report (1956)
The seventy-page investigation submitted to the Presidium a fortnight before Khrushchev's secret speech: the first tally of 1,920,635 arrests and 688,503 executions for 'anti-Soviet activity' in 1935–1940, the quotas of the 'kulak operation' and the nationality statistics of the 'national operations', the extrajudicial 'album' procedure and the troikas, Stalin's 1939 telegram sanctioning torture, and the cases of Postyshev, Kosior, Eikhe, Rudzutak, Chubar and other Central Committee members of the Seventeenth Congress, opened one by one through interrogation records and letters. The raw material the secret speech drew on almost verbatim.
Read the full text → Party & government documents'On Overcoming the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences': the CPSU Central Committee resolution (1956)
The Central Committee's first public statement four months after Khrushchev's secret speech, and the official de-Stalinisation text that Soviet citizens and foreign communists could actually read until the speech was published in 1989. It explains the cult as a product of Stalin's personal traits and objective conditions while insisting that 'the nature of the social system' was untouched, rebuts Togliatti and the 'bourgeois ideologues', and draws the permitted limits of criticism of Stalin.
Read the full text → Party & government documentsHungary 1956: Seven Documents of the CPSU Presidium
Mikoyan's telegram from Budapest of 14 July, reporting Rákosi's removal and describing the party leadership as 'in a state of prostration', and five of Malin's pencilled working notes of Presidium sessions from 23 October, the day the rising began, to 3 November, the eve of the intervention, with the resolution of 31 October. Khrushchev's proposal to send in troops on the 23rd, the tilt towards withdrawal on the 30th, the reversal of the 31st — 'reconsider the assessment; do not withdraw the troops' — and the forming of a new government with Kádár on 2–3 November, all in one man's handwriting.
Read the full text → Party & government documentsThe Berlin Wall 1961 — East German Documents: Ulbricht's Press Conference and Politburo Protocol 39/61
The stenographic excerpt of Walter Ulbricht's international press conference of 15 June 1961, with Annemarie Doherr's question and the answer 'Nobody has the intention of building a wall', and Protocol 39/61 of the SED Politburo's extraordinary session of 7 August 1961, which, days after Khrushchev's consent, set the 'planned control measures' to begin 'in the night from Saturday to Sunday'. The document that fixed the date of the border closure never uses the word 'wall'.
Read the full text → Party & government documentsThe Berlin Wall 1961 — Four US Diplomatic Telegrams: the Berlin Mission's Report of 13 August and the Friedrichstrasse Crisis of 27 October
Telegram 185, the Berlin Mission's report of the Commandants' meeting with Mayor Brandt on the evening of 13 August 1961, and three telegrams from 27 October, the day Soviet and American tanks faced each other at Checkpoint Charlie: Thompson's 1378 from Moscow, where Gromyko told him that GDR sovereignty was not negotiable; Clay's assessment to Rusk (856); and the Department's instruction (620) suspending armed civilian probes. From FRUS 1961–1963, vol. XIV.
Read the full text → Party & government documentsThe Nine Commentaries on the Open Letter of the CPSU Central Committee
The nine commentaries the Chinese party published between September 1963 and July 1964, answering the Soviet open letter: from the assessment of Stalin and peaceful coexistence to the class character of Soviet society itself.
Read the full text → Party & government documentsThree Documents of the Afghan War: the intervention decision (1979), the Geneva Accords (1988), the condemnation (1989)
The Politburo decision of 12 December 1979 that hid the country's name behind the letter 'A'; the Geneva Accords of 14 April 1988 (four instruments and the two guarantors' statements) that fixed the phased Soviet withdrawal from 15 May within nine months; and the Congress of People's Deputies resolution of 24 December 1989 declaring, ten months after the withdrawal, that the decision 'deserves moral and political condemnation'. The beginning, the exit and the end of the war.
Read the full text → Party & government documentsPolitburo working record — the third day of Sumgait (29 February 1988)
The verbatim working record of the Politburo on the third day of the Sumgait pogrom: Gorbachev asks whether the appeal has worked, the KGB and the interior ministry report casualties and the state of the city, and Yazov's request for a curfew is settled by 'Members of the Politburo: agreed'. The lag of information (casualty figures only on day three), leaders who had 'not read' the Karabakh letters, Gorbachev calling the killers 'extremists' while urging a rethink of nationality policy — the inside record of perestroika's first great nationalities crisis.
Read the full text → Party & government documents'Basic Directions for the Stabilisation of the National Economy and the Transition to a Market Economy' (1990)
The compromise Gorbachev drew between the 500-Day Plan and the government programme, approved by the Supreme Soviet on 19 October 1990: four stages (emergency measures, financial austerity, market formation, completed stabilisation), diversified ownership, the sequence of price liberalisation, deficit reduction, social protection, opening to foreign trade, structural reform. The radical timetable and republic-led principle of the 500 days were dropped; the Union centre's coordinating powers stayed. The last official document of the Soviet economic-reform debate.
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