The Archival Revolution and Contested Memory: Changing Views of Stalin’s Rule in the Light of New Evidence

Abstract

The article discusses the impact on Western scholarship of the opening of secret police archives in Ukraine since the 1990s. The extent of the phenomenon known as the "archival revolution" is surveyed, with special attention to the Stalin period. The archives have answered some old questions concerning the way Stalin exercised power, organized show trials, and forced people to admit to crimes they did not commit. Archival revelations have also stimulated Western researchers to consider new ways of interpreting the Soviet period as a whole.