N A R R A T I V E    I N D E X
(continued)

At the present time the Institution continues to build the collection on Russia, the Soviet Union and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Of special interest are several areas of recent acquisitions.

The first is the Russian Archives Preservation Project. Between 1992 and 1996 the Hoover Institution and the State Archival service of the Russian Federation carried out a cooperative project to microfilm selected documents of the Soviet Communist Party and the Soviet State. The project produced more than 7,000 reels of microfilm, or more than 8.5 million frames.

The second is the Russian/Soviet Oral History Collection. This consists of audio taped interviews of political figures of the former Soviet Union (such as old Bolsheviks and former members of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party) and prominent players in today's Russia (for example personages from the "Perestroika" period and leaders of current political parties and movements). More than one hundred such interviews have been completed and the work continues.

The third area is the Russian/Soviet Opposition Press Collection. From 1987 to the present the Russian/CIS Collection has been amassing the political opposition press from Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and other parts of the former Soviet Union. From 1987 to 1991 the opposition consisted of the "democrats"; since 1991 it has consisted of the communists and others on the left as well as the national patriotic groups and fascists on the right. Today the political opposition press collection is comprised of nearly 3,000 serial titles (some 20,000 individual issues) and is probably the largest such collection in North America, filling approximately 300 manuscript boxes. Bibliographic data on the holdings is available online at Hoover Institution's Web site.

For several years Hoover has been building an archival collection of political party documents from postcommunist Russia and other former Soviet republics. More than one hundred political parties and social action groups are represented in the collection by such materials as programs, platforms, by-laws, constitutions, minutes of meetings and congresses, leaflets and posters. The most outstanding part of this collection is a copy of the archives of the Democratic Russia Movement, an umbrella political organization of Russian democratic parties and groups. The Democratic Russia Movement was a moving force behind Boris N. Yeltsin's campaign for the Russian presidency in 1991.

Since 1989 Hoover has made a major effort to collect all possible materials (official publications, books, pamphlets, brochures, photos, leaflets, posters, candidates' ephemera, buttons,and artifacts) dealing with national elections in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, as well as selected local elections, such as Crimea, Vologda Oblast, Komi Republic and Altai Krai. Hoover is a prime location for anyone wishing to study such elections.

Finally, Hoover is collecting documentary materials on the so-called "hot spots" in the former Soviet Union: Transdnestria, Crimea, Abkhazia, Southern Ossetia, Chechnia and Karabakh. For example, for Transdnestria there are materials from Igor Mikhailov, the former representative of Transdnestria to Moscow; for Abkhazia, materials from Taras Shamba, president of the World Congress of Abkhaz and Abaza Peoples; and for Karabakh, the Vahan Emin Collection on Armenians in Azerbaijan.

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