Bourgeois Specialists and Red Professionals in 1920s Soviet Archival Development

Abstract

Immediately after the 1917 October Revolution the Bolsheviks began developing the most centralized archival system in the world, along with a new profession of “red archivists.” However, the development of archives and the archival profession in the 1920s Soviet Union was not simply the top-down implementation of Bolshevik political ambitions portrayed in official Soviet accounts and Cold War–era Western literature but an unexpectedly open negotiation of ideas and customs among actors with diverse professional and ideological backgrounds, including non-Marxist archival professionals, workers from other cultural professions, and young communists.

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