Secret Soviet archives?

by Дмитрий Шеин

I've mentioned already the incredulous question: if Russian archives are so open and the documents are declassified where is the plenty of deep and comprehensive historical studies? Something is unclear here!

First and the main. When many people imagine themselves the historical work, they imagine the hot and dusty excavation site, and historian/archaelogist wearing cork helmet, who is looking at his tent on two found fragments of crock, the rusty needle, one bead, driving his finger over misty and obscure short phrase of print publication of an oooooold chronicle - and voila, in ten years local tourist agencies will establish the constant sightseeing route to local Troy or modern Pompeii. It could be right for ancient and early medieval history, but the main problem of modern history is quite opposite: there are too many sources to study all of them, to match all of them and to compile all of them. The supreme deity of history of new age and modern history is document, so the main source of deep historical knowledge is the archive. Not the archaelogical excavation site but quiet reading room of archive.

At first sight the task looks simple enough: just spend a week or two to read relevant documents, compile them into article or entire monography and historical scientific society will warmly greet the new agile member... but actually process is far not so simple.

The first obstacle on the way of wet-behind-the-ears-researcher is the fact that there are no archival files like "Bloodthirsty Stalin's plans in a nutshell", or "Soviet plans on conquer of defenceless Europe for dummies", or "My 5-minute journal. The history of T-34" and so on. The files like "The true history of my heroic deeds. To beloved grandson by loving grandpa" are absent too. At this stage many hot-headed enthusiasts leave the archives accusing the personnel in cloaking of Holy Truth, concealment of uncountable crimes of evil Commies and so on.

Indeed why such an archival files are absent? It will be so convenient!.. Okey, please try to answer yourself the simple question: how do the documents arise in the archive? Yeah, quite right, when the document become inactual, outdated and obsolete it is transferred from the daily business to dusty archive.

Hardly anybody of readers somewhen participate the process of transferring the real paper documents in archive but all of them are possessing the e-mail boxes. So there is the clear analogy: from time to time on regular basis the computer suggesting user to move the old letters and notifications from the mailbox to archive. Please remember this moment very attentively: may be that 1-year-old invitation to the business meeting was actually the start point of your current bright and shining career of successful businessman... but this old message is called "Meeting with customer at 4:00PM on Monday at meeting room at 3rd floor! Do not be late as usual!" so it is being archived just as ordinary meeting invitation, moreover supplied with insulting title. May be that 1-year-old your letter to your colleague is the start point of deepest love of all your life... but it is archived rather as your - sysAdmin - "Quarter report on top 10 business clients traffic" sent to Zoe from billing department than "To our future children by loving parents. How I've met your mother", and so on.

As a general rule, documents are archived in "sets" (archival files, the sets of documents in unified envelope), and these sets are created rather by "business owner" of the documents than by later researcher or archive authorities. The criteria of streamlining of documents is defined by "business logic" of "business owner". For instance, after some period of time such as 1 or 2 years the daily combat reports of subordinate units are no longer needed by some HQ and being transferred to archive, and HQ sends to archive it's pack of reports regularized by time of receive - the bunch of morning reports than the bunch of evening report than tomorrow's morning reports than tomorrow's evening reports etc. Yeah, it is quite possible that one of subordinating units participated the hot and hard battle this time (may be the decisive battle of entire campaign) while two other subordinating units were just moved by railroad carts without any significant events... but due to "time reason" of HQ their reports are alternating in current files of HQ and so will alternating in future archive file. Just the same manner as your computer archives incoming letters in "Inbox" archive folder, outgoing letters in "Sent" archive folder and so on, despite the fact that that letter is invitation to your girlfriend to have a memorable joint dinner while this letter is just the semi-automatic confirmation of daily business meeting, and so on.

As one more aspect of the same problem, the combat report on assault on Reichstag in Berlin and the combat report on march by feet in deep rear of own troops are called in the same manner, "Combat report on some time of some date" as well as your very first incoming message on topic of your main hobby for your entire life - the interest toward military history - is the automatic FB notification on your like of some historical research community posting

What does it mean for researcher? It means that for fruitful archival search one has to be acknowledged with system of military office work - which documents in which cases are to be compiled, to whom they are to be sent and so on. Further, researcher need to know the effectives of the unit he researching - which unit was subordinated to whom, when it arrived to the upper-level unit and when it was detached to compose the set of military instances to look for whose documents.

Okey, this step is over and our imaginary researcher is ready now for archival search, he knows that he is interesting in the history of 1st Guard Rifle Corps for 1941 October. He is studying the list of archival files, select some files regarding to his topic, ask for them and at last obtain the shabby folders filled with originals of documents written on 1941 October. He read the documents carefully and he is ready now to compile his own article... is it correct?

Actually it is not quite right. Not quite right because the duty of historian is not just compilation of old texts. Two of basic philosophy principles are "the human is the universal measure of everything" and "errare humanum est". Everyone has just the sole life so events surrounding him are the most important things in the entire Universe. On the other hand all the people are different, some of them are gifted with writer's talent while some are deprived of it. So in some cases the really main battles of war are mentioned in one or two short official phrases while in other case officer spent the tons of paper to paint "the thirty-ninth epic battle for newsstand"

. So the tasks of historian besides of description of historical events are also the determination of correct place of described events in huge common flow of historical events: may be, despite the fact that battle is described by three to five official formal phrases, it is quite important event so it could be useful to repeat the deep search for circumstances and details of event, while it also possible that, despite the fact that three pages are dedicated only to description of the "battle", actually the "battle" is no more than "epic battle for newsstand", the infinitesimal episode of great historical event - World War.

Further the duty of historian is to distinguish the "general" and the "particular" - which events, decisions, deeds, descriptions, designations and so on are common/typical so worthy to just be mentioned while which content worthy the detailed description. This task has got more complicated and sophisticated since the "general" is not the Holy Gog-given thing and in case the pile of "details" could cause the dramatic change of "general". For instance for a long decades Soviet researches repeated the victorous messages that T-34 was completely invulnerable to projectiles of German 37-mm anti-tank cannon PaK.36 while the question "... so by which reason more than 1800 of T-34 were lost on 1941 campaign? It is impossible completely that such a plenty of tanks was destroyed by a few 88-mm AA guns!" was just ignored. So many cases of successful duels of PaK.36 with T-34 as well as reports on testing of captured German guns and projectiles forced the historians to decide that "door knocker" was capable to fight T-34.

But let us continue. The only way to carry out such a duties in correct manner is a spacious mind of researcher and his large experience in handling of historical documents, these requirements making the task or historical reserach more complicated.

Meanwhile this stage is over too, our hypothetical wet-behind-the-ears-researcher had got aknowledged with content of documents and had placed out the object of research correctly in general flow of historical events: at first ten days of October 1941 the troops of 1st Guards Rifle Corps prevents rapid advance of Huderian's panzergruppe towards Tula... at last does he collect enough material for real scientific publication? And again rather no than yes. What is missing finally? See above, "errare humanum est" plus "the human is universal measure of everything". Nobody likes to admit his own mistakes. Everybody likes to paint his epic heroical deeds. So the researcher need to study the documents of neighbors to verify the correctness of narration containing in documents he is studying. The researcher need to get acknowledged with the documents of superior instances to know their vision of events, their intentions, their plan and how the actions of object of his research corresponds the plan of superior commander. The researcher need to study the documents of subordinating instances to get some valuable and interesting details, to check the correctness of superior documents and to match one to another to obtain the whole picture of historical events. The researcher need to study the documents of supply/repair/medical units to clarify the questions of suppliement, reinforcement, repair and so on. If researcher is studying the document of ordinary "ground forces" he need to study the data of air forces to check, match and compile the consideration of aerial impact on operations. The researcher need to check the documents of highest instances for files of "generalization of combat experience" and the same theoretical studies. The researcher need to get acknowledged with documents of "direct" opponent (which losses does he suffer, which condition he had after the battle) and the opponent's next superior commander to get acknowledged which impact on his plans was inflicted by the object of his research. Only after collecting, studying, matching and compiling all of these materials the researcher is ready to compile his own study and it will be not the shallow schematic description of chronology of events - "... they clashed near N-town on YYYY.MM.DD, A-side had N forces, B-side had M forces, next day A under heavy aerial and artillery bombardment has retreated in full order towards M-town and reported loss of Q men and T tanks".

I hope that now anybody realizing that historical researches could not be carried out in couple of weeks of easy and tranquil reading.

Let us consider for example my debut book about history of 3rd --> 3rd Guards Tank Army in Great Patriotic War. I had processed the documents of HQ catalogues of 3rd and 3rd Guards Tank Armies, it is about nine hundreds of archival files. About one third of them was never requested by researchers and never left archival storages. There were quite a different archival files in sense of their volumes, from 5 to 600+ sheets but 50 sheets per file is good average value.

So now let us take the sheet of paper, open "The calculator" application at phone or notebook and start to calculate the price of the research.

First variance, the researcher is the military history enthusiast like me. I can't spend all the worktime for the researches so I have to copy almost all the materials to handle them on evenings, weekends and vacation. 900 files, about half of them were copied, 450 files * 50 pages per file means 22500 pages of documents. One could evaluate the price of copy at Russian archive in approximately US$1 per sheet so I need US$22500.

Let us see above. My research was not comprehensive. I have almost ignored the Front documents except the copies between the files of Army HQ. I've ignored the archival sets of subordinating units. I've ignored totally the archival sets of neighbors. I've ignored the files of Air Forces. I've almost ignored the files on supply and repair. I've ignored completely the opposite's documents - German and Hungarian. If we'll evaluate total volume of missing materials for copying in one and a half of mentioned processed volume I need totally US$56250 just to obtain the copies of documents. Guys I like military history very much but I'm unable to spend about thirty thousands of dollars in a moment or even during one year for my hobby in addition to US$22500 spent earlier.

"Wow!" - one saying, - "the root of problem is just the fact that you wish to copy all the materials. It is too expensive. Let us consider another scheme of research by professional historian who is receiving salary for his work!" Okey let us consider such a variance. Let us consider that researcher is able and agile so he is able to process 100 sheets of documents per workday - it is really many enough. By word "process" I mean to read, to match with another corresponding data, to place new data correctly in general data scheme and so on. 100 pages per day means that just repeat of my work costs 225 workdays i.e. slightly more than 1 workyear (please take in mind that archive is closed for 1 workday per month for cleaning and repair and often has summer holiday for a month or two or winter closure for document rearrangement). So all the document processing means 562 workdays or about 2.5 work years. Please take in mind that I've omit the business trips in Germany and Hungary, all the bothers of foreign visa obtaining and so on. We are just evaluating the result. If one suggesting the salary of archival researcher at mere US$500 per month he'll get the final price of almost US$13000 for this work. More probable US$1000 per month means the final price at US$27000.

I think it is not necessary to spend the time of reader to fix the clear fact: it is impossible to get a profit enough to cover the costs of such a research by selling of the resulting study. It hasn't a wide market since it's the special literature for specialists. So such a literature, and such researches, could be carried out only due to to external source of financing. There are two possibilities for such sponsorship in Russia - the state power and some kind of rich individuals. The state power actually does not need so comprehensive researches "by the specialists to the specialists"; on other hand able researchers have the salaries high above US$1000 so the final price would be close to first variance. So the last hope are rich individuals but there is another problem of satisfying of wishes of the only rich customer - he who is paying he is ordering the music, if the sponsor/customer is interested just in examples of clashes between Panthers and SU-152s researcher has to leave aside all the above and search the documents for the examples of duels between Panther and SU-152s...