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The Dimitrii Volkogonov Papers are held by and available for research at
the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. Attached is a
description of the papers and Volkogonov's career.
John E. Haynes, 20th Century Political Historian
Manuscript Div., Library of Congress
Washington, DC 20540-4689
Ph: 202-707-1089, fax: 202-707-6336 e-mail jhay@loc.gov
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Dmitrii Antonovich Volkogonov
Dmitrii Volkogonov (1928-1995) was a pioneering figure among Russian
historians of the Soviet period. He spend most of his career as a serving
army officer, joining the army in 1946. He joined the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1946 and much of his military career was in the
Soviet army's political directorate, which supervised the political and
ideological education of Soviet soldiers under the guidance of the CPSU.
Volkogonov also undertook advanced training in historical studies and
earned the Soviet equivalent of a PhD in 1966. By 1973 he had risen to the
rank of Colonel-General and became a major figure in the Soviet military
history program. In 1985 became the director of the Institute of Military
History of the Ministry of Defense and the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Volkogonov's interest in history, however, ranged well beyond the usual
borders of military history. His archival studies the Soviet military led
him to question the received political history of the Soviet state and
undermined his Communist loyalties. As Soviet society drifted into
systemic crisis in the 1980s he joined those urging drastic reforms.
Within the military, for example, he proposed the dissolution of its
political units and, there by, an end to Communist party supervision of
soldiers' ideological education, an act that resulted his removal from his
position as assistant to the director of the Main Political Directorate of
the Soviet Army by incensed party loyalists in the military's leadership.
Meanwhile, however, Volkogonov had become acquainted with Boris Yeltsin
and active in the increasingly open politics of the late 1980s. In 1990 he
was elected to the Russian parliament. However, a volume of his history or
World War II that had appeared describing the unpreparedness of the Soviet
Army on the eve of the Nazi attack led to his removal from the Institute of
Military History by infuriated traditionalists. Late that year Volkogonov
supported Yeltsin when he turned back the hard-line coup that attempted to
halt Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. After the dissolution of the USSR,
Volkogonov became a adviser on defense matters to Yeltsin and in 1993 won
election to the first post-Soviet Russian parliament on the reform ticket
led by Yegor Gaidar. He also served as Russian co-chairman of the
U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on Prisoners of Wars and Missing in Action.
In died in 1995 of cancer.
Volkogonov's historical studies produced more than two dozen book
including three which, in the Russian context, were pioneering works of
Russian history. The three were archival-based biographies of the three
towering figures of the early Soviet period: Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin.
Volkogonov, as a leading Soviet army military historian, had access to many
archival collections that were then and in some cases still are closed to
research. His biographies of Stalin (published in 1989), Trotsky
(published in 1992) and Lenin (published in 1994) quoted and cited many
documents that had never before been seen.
During his research Volkogonov accumulated photocopies of many of these
hitherto unknown documents. Before he died he arranged for a set these
copies to be placed with the Library of Congress. The originals, of
course, remain in Russian archives.
The Volkogonov papers total approximately 10,000 items (31 boxes, 20
microfilm reels) organized by the archive in which the originals are located.
Archive of the Foreign Policy of Russia (AVPR): Vokogonov kept copies
of
a variety of diplomatic documents, ranking from papers on Soviet relations
with Germany, Poland, and Finland on the eve of World War II to
correspondence between Nikita Khrushchev and President John Kennedy during
the Cuban missile crisis.
Archive of the Institute of Military History
of the Ministry of Defense and the Russian Academy of Sciences (AIVI MO
RAN): Volkogonov kept a small collection of miscellaneous documents
touching on World War II diplomacy, the Soviet Finnish War, Leon Trotsky,
and World War II military operations.
Center for the Preservation of Contemporary Documentation (TsKhSD):
Volkogonov copied a set of official protocols of the CPSU's Central
Committee and correspondence by various Soviet head of state on internal
issues, 1954-1991.
Center for the Preservation of Historical Documentary Collections
(TsKhIDK): Volkogonov's collection from this archive consists chiefly of
surveys of archival documents from 1917-1920 on Lenin, Trotsky, Inessa
Armand, Nikolai Bukharin, and other Bolshevik leaders.
Central Archive of the Border Troops (TsAPV): From the arvhice
Volkogonov
kept copies of documents on violations of Soviet airspace near Vladivostok
in the 1950s.
Central Archives of the Federal Security Service of the Russian
Federation
(TsAFSB RF): This archive houses the records of the internal operations of
the Soviet-era KGB and its predecessors. Volkogonov's collection includes
documents from investigative files on Rafail Abromovich, Angelica
Balabonoff, IAkov Bliumkin, Nikolai Bukharin, Fedor Dan, Lev Kamenev,
Aleksandr Kerenskii, Evgennii Miller, Karl Radek, Aleksei Rydov, Lev Sedov,
Richard Sorge, Grigory Zinovyev, Mark Zborovskii, emigre Cossack
organizations, emigre Socialist Revolutionary organizations, the "United
Trotskyite-Zinovyev Center," various exile Trotskyist groups, the Kronstadt
uprising, and other matters.
Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense (TsAMO): Volkogonov's
documents copied from this archives are essentially a World War II
collection. Documents deal with Soviet military activity in the Baltic
states in 1940-1941, the Soviet-Finnish war, files of orders and telegrams
issued by various headquarters, files on the World War II activities of
such figures as Stalin, Georgii Zhukov, and Nikita Khrushchev, military
field reports, and reports on the occupation of Germany. A post-war
collection contains documents on Lavrentii Bariia'a arrest, on various
military tribunals, on Soviet military activity in Cuba during 1961-1962,
and a variety of other matters.
Central Archive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (TsA MVD):
Volkogonov
kept copies of two documents from this archive, one on the development of
prison labor camps and a second on the exclusionary practices of CPSU bodies.
Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Recent Historical
Documents (RTsKhIDNI): From this archive Volkogonov copied and kept mostly
documents dealing with Lenin's personal and political life, including
material touching on Inessa Armand, Nikolai Bukharin, Feliks Dzerzhinskii,
Stalin, Trotsky, Grigory Zinovyev, the labor camps, the grain
requisitioning campaign, and religious policies. Also includes accounts by
witnesses of the murder of Nicholas II and his family in 1918.
Russian State Archive of the Economy (RGAE): Here Volkogonov kept a
small
selection of documents on Soviet-American economic relations in the 1920s
and 1930s.
Russian State Military Archive (RGVA): Volkogonov's copies from this
archive are largely devoted to the activities of Lev Trotsky when he was
chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the new Bolshevik
government and effectively commander of the Red Army in the Russian civil
war that followed the Bolshevik revolution. Also include material on the
Baltic state in the late 1930s, the Soviet-Finnish war, and Soviet policy
toward Europe in 1939-1940.
State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF): Here Volkogonov fond
and
copied material on the Doctors' Plot and the related correspondence of
Lidiia F. Tomoshchuk, material on the assassination of Nicholas II and the
imperial family, a transcript of the interrogation of Aleksandr Kerenskii,
forced labor camps in 1919-1920, famine and shortages in 1944-1947,
nationalities policies, Lev Kamenev's petition for clemency in 1936, and
the "Rightist Trotsky Bloc" affair.
In addition to the copies from various archive, one series of
this
collection is devoted to Vokogonov's personal papers. This series includes
correspondence, copies of published and unpublished essays, speeches,
discussions of Russian archival policies, files on the U.S.-Russia
Commission on Prisoners of Wars and Missing in Action, a file on Pavel
Sudoplatov, and miscellaneous research notes. Access to seven boxes and
five microfilm reels is restricted until January 1, 2000. The register
(finding aid) to the papers is on-line at the web page of the Manuscript
Division of the Library of Congress
(http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/ead/eadhome.html).
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
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