Researching nationality policy in the archives (Soviet experience)

Insofar as Soviet party and state archives are organized primarily on the institutional principle, the researcher working on questions which did not fall under the purview of a particular institution or group of institutions encounters difficulties. One such area is nationality policy. The article discusses the problems of researching Soviet nationality policy from the 1930s to 1950s, detailing specific collections and genres of documents in six central archives located in Moscow. The author describes two general kinds of sources: routinized communications between center and periphery, and irregular batches of documents focused on particularly sensational events. Emphasis is placed as much on the kinds of information that is not available, as on what is available in central archives. In concluding, the author cautions that reliance on either routinized or sensational sources alone will skew understanding of nationality policy in the Stalin period.