Smolensk Archives

Period  1934-1936
Total size   0.1 m.
Consultation Not restricted

History

After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, authorities in Smolensk were able to evacuate only a small part of the archive of the Smolensk (later Western) Oblast of the VKP(b), later Kommunističeskaja partija Sovetskogo Sojuza (KPSS); in 1943 the remaining part was transported to Vilnius under command of the so-called Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), for utilization by Nazi ideologists for anti-Communist purposes; the larger portion hereof was recovered in Silesia by Soviet authorities in March 1945; the five hundred files now in Washington were removed by American intelligence officers from the US Army American restitution center near Frankfurt am Main in 1946; five to ten percent of the so-called `Smolensk archive' consists of scattered files not originally from Smolensk, but probably seized by the ERR in Kiev and other places.

Content

Reports 1934-1936.

Related material

Originals in the National Archives USA; Ukrainian language documents from the part of the Smolensk Oblast Committee of the All-Union Communist Party archive handed over to the Ukraine in 2002.