>Soviet Archives
Reminder: There is no monolithic Soviet archives. It's an umbrella term usually to refer to the over a dozen central state archives in Moscow, which over the course of several mergers, acquisitions, and Renamings got the main previously classified government records and communist party records. Certain collections are open to the public. Other archives might be invitation only or by request of scholars. There are certain records that to this day are still classified, especially retaining to some of the operations of the Cheka, NKVD, and KGB are deemed to still be relevant to Russian national security and are usually within the FSB archives. The term could also include regional and local archives across the country and in other former Soviet countries. In the broadest sense it could even refer to archives completely outside the former Soviet Union, which have a Soviet documentary focus.
So just keep that in mind any time anyone refers to "the soviet archives" in a casual conversation. Maybe interrogate what they mean by that, regardless of whose "side" they appear to be on.
True
So were there gulags and what happened to the millions of germans captured?
>>2816548you can always tell a low literacy anon when he ignores the text and responds to the meme. filtered.
there's also the possibility that some purported documents from the archives are fakes, such as those from Beria's mythical second typewriter
>>2816658gee beria, how come the politburo lets you have two typewriters?
>>2816658Damn, I can't believe the Soviets would deliberately fill their archives with false documents to mislead western researchers 50 years later. What a bunch of dumbasses.
That's almost as bad as every old Bolshevik being a secret Trotskyist wrecker and Nazi collaborator and no one finding out until Stalin did in the 1930s. Was the USSR always this incompetent?
>>2816692there's no need for snark
the implication is that there's people working in the archives, who have access to blank letterheads, producing documents that push whatever narrative the Russian Federation wants the world to see. there was a thread on this board a couple of years ago looking at the forensics of this, the conclusion of which is that either Beria used a second typewriter only for things like execution orders that put the USSR in a bad light, or someone is or was producing fakes
>That's almost as bad as every old Bolshevik being a secret Trotskyist wrecker and Nazi collaborator and no one finding out until Stalin did in the 1930sdo you have evidence to the contrary?
All of the "Soviet Archives" released during Yeltsin's term are fake.