September 3, 2021 The complex was replenished with more than 3.5 thousand documents, photographs and newsreels of the period September 1, 1939 – June 22, 1941 from 8 federal archives (RGVA, RGASPI, RGANI, GA RF, RGAE, RGAKFD, RGAVMF, RGA in Samara), departmental archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, the FSB, the SVR of Russia, as well as the state archives of Belarus.
Archival documents, incl. recently declassified and for the first time introduced into scientific circulation, reflect the growing aggression of Nazi Germany and its satellites and the events that led to the German attack on the USSR and the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.
The Complex contains documents from the Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia (AWP RF) – cipher telegrams of the plenipotentiary representatives of the USSR in Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy, the Baltic countries, Finland, the Balkans, Turkey, China, the United States covering the internal political situation in the host countries and their foreign policy, recordings of conversations between the USSR people’s commissars of foreign affairs and their deputies with ambassadors and foreign representatives, reference materials of the USSR People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. A special place is occupied by international legal acts: treaties of mutual assistance between the USSR and Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, a peace treaty with Finland, which actually formalized the modern border between the two states, the Soviet-German treaty on friendship and the border of September 28, 1939 with secret and additional protocols, a treaty of friendship and non-aggression with Yugoslavia,
The Complex includes documents of the General Staff of the Red Army and the People’s Commissariat of Defense of the USSR from the funds of the RGVA: orders, brief overviews of the international situation drawn up by Soviet military attachés, intelligence and intelligence materials of the 5th Directorate of the Red Army, reports, reports and memos of the leadership of the Red Army, political reports and much other. The documents tell about the collapse of the Polish state, the reunification of Western Ukraine with the Ukrainian SSR and Western Belarus with the Byelorussian SSR, the incorporation of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia into the USSR, Soviet-Finnish negotiations and Soviet proposals for territorial exchange, the course and results of the “Winter War”, changes in the Red Army and preparing for a possible war with Germany. Documents of foreign origin from the RGVA funds reveal Anglo-French plans to attack the USSR,
A significant place in the Complex is occupied by documents on the preparation of the Red Army to repel possible aggression: memoranda of the leadership of the USSR People’s Commissariat of Defense and the General Staff of the Red Army in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks with proposals for plans for the strategic deployment of armed forces in case of war with Germany and its allies, directives of the People’s Commissariat of Defense USSR commander of the military districts. The minutes of the meetings of the Main Military Council of the Red Army in April-June 1941 are fully posted. surprise attack by Germany. All these documents, as well as a large cartographic material, were submitted by the Ministry of Defense of Russia from the Central Archive in Podolsk (Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation).
For the first time on one resource, you can see in the original language and in translation the documents on the preparation of the war against the USSR by Nazi Germany, which are permanently stored in different archives – in the Federal Archives of Germany, the State Archives of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Archives of the Russian Federation, the RGVA, the RGANI and the Central Administration of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation – the minutes of the meeting with A. Hitler on the planned operation in the East, directive No. 21 on the war with the USSR (plan “Barbarossa”) of December 18, 1940, the map “Plan” Barbarossa “, the Wehrmacht directives on the establishment of an occupation regime on the territory of the USSR to be seized and other documents of the German command …
The Complex includes various archival materials of the RGASPI: documents from the personal funds of I.V. Stalin, V.M. Molotov, K.E. Voroshilov, A.I. Mikoyan: records of conversations with the leaders and diplomatic representatives of Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Turkey and China on the most important issues of foreign policy and economic cooperation, cipher telegrams of the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs V.M. Molotov from Berlin in November 1940 and Soviet plenipotentiaries to the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the USSR, entries from the register of visitors I.V. Stalin in his Kremlin office on the eve and on the day of the German attack on the USSR.
For the first time, a significant set of resolutions of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the development of the Soviet military-industrial complex, strengthening the defense capability of the USSR and on foreign policy issues is presented from the funds of the RGASPI.
The thematic files of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), kept in the RGANI, contain materials on the conduct of a “strange war” in the West, the situation in the Baltic countries in 1939-1940, trade and economic cooperation between the USSR and Germany, as well as the most important document of June 21, 1941 – a draft of the last pre-war resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on the creation of the Southern Front, new appointments and armies of the second line of defense, adopted at an evening meeting in the office of I.V. Stalin on June 21, 1941 and recorded by the hand of G.M. Malenkov.
Especially for the Complex, a large array of documents was digitized from the funds of the State Civil Aviation of the Russian Federation – decisions of the Defense Committee under the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR, as well as correspondence, reports of the Defense Committee on the development of the defense-industrial complex of the USSR in 1939-1941.
The Complex includes RGAE documents containing statistical indicators and information on the trade and economic activities of the USSR on the eve of the war, indicating that during this period the main trading partner of the Soviet Union was the United States, which successfully replaced Great Britain, which declared a trade blockade of Germany.
For the first time, the information resource offers to get acquainted with a significant amount of Soviet intelligence documents submitted for the Complex by the archives of the FSB and the SVR of Russia. Visitors to the Complex will see intelligence reports from R. Sorge (“Ramsay”), N.D. Skornyakov (“Meteora”), members of the “Cambridge Five”, German anti-fascists from the “Red Chapel” and others, whose names are still unknown to the general public. Soviet intelligence was able to obtain a significant amount of important information about the preparation of the Third Reich and its allies for a war against the USSR.
The Belarusian state archives provided for publication the documents of the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus (NARB), the Belarusian State Archive of Film and Photographic Documents (BGAKFFD), the Belarusian State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art (BGAMLI). Among them are the resolutions of the CP (b) B Central Committee on the improvement of the regional centers of the western regions of the Byelorussian SSR, the creation of a network of health and educational institutions, documents on the ongoing defense measures, as well as special messages, intelligence reports of the NKVD-NKGB BSSR on the actions of German troops in the border territories of the Byelorussian SSR and etc.
The complex was supplemented by new revealed documents of the period before September 1, 1939 – memoranda to the Defense Committee under the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR, documents of the USSR People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs on the progress of negotiations on the conclusion of a Soviet-Turkish agreement in April-August 1939, official diplomatic correspondence with the USSR plenipotentiary mission in Italy , records of conversations of the plenipotentiary of the USSR in Italy B.E. Stein, who was in Helsinki, with representatives of the Finnish government on a possible exchange of territories and the conclusion of a trade agreement between the USSR and Finland in March 1939 and documents on the further development of the issue in July-August 1939. The Complex includes documents of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service on the work Soviet resident in Finland “Kina” in 1938, as well as recently declassified in the RGVA agent materials of the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army of the period 1935-1937. – more than 150 documents in total.
In 2020, the Complex housed about 1800 archival documents, photographs, newsreel fragments representing the prehistory of World War II from January 1933 to August 31, 1939. Thus, today the Complex contains about 5.5 thousand digitized archival documents. documents, photographs and newsreels. The work on the identification and declassification of archival documents, their digitization and placement as part of the Complex will continue in 2022.
Responsible person: Federal Archival Agency (Rosarkhiv)
Operator: Presidential Library named after B.N. Yeltsin of the Administrative Department of the President of the Russian Federation
Participants:
Archive of the foreign policy of the Russian Federation MFA of Russia (WUA RF)
Russian State Military Archives (RGVA)
Russian State Archives of the Navy (RGAVMF)
Russian State Archives of Social and Political History (RGASPI)
State Archives of the Russian Federation (GA RF)
Russian State Archives of Contemporary History (RGANI)
Russian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents (RGAKFD)
Russian State Archives of Economics (RGAE)
Russian State Archives in Samara (RSA in Samara)
Central archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation)
Archive of the SVR of Russia
Archive of the FSB of Russia
Federal Archives of Germany (Bundesarchiv)
National Archives of the Republic of Belarus (NARB)
Belarusian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents (BGAKFFD)
Belarusian State Archives-Museum of Literature and Art (BGAMLI)