Editor’s Note:
Our Books, Articles, and Items of Academic Interest feature is at present being written by guest authors. The perspectives and opinions presented are those of the authors and will of necessity vary from issue to issue.
Wooden Words
It is often said that the “archival revolution” of the last twenty years—the publication of Soviet party, governmental, and secret police archives both in Russia and the West—has fundamentally transformed our understanding of what the Soviets used to call “really existing socialism.” The volumes in the Yale University Press “Annals of Communism” series (twenty-seven in all) give ample support to this thesis. That series includes indispensable volumes of Lenin’s secret writings, along with the key documentation surrounding the Katyn Forest massacre of 1940 (in which over 20,000 Polish nationals were murdered on the order of Stalin and the Soviet
Get access to this article, plus the entire archive, by subscribing.