The Lost Politburo Transcripts: From Collective Rule to Stalin's
Dictatorship, edited by Hoover fellows Paul R. Gregory and Norman Naimark
Last update: 3:55 p.m. EST Dec. 2, 2008 STANFORD, Calif., Dec 02, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- In the groundbreaking book Lost Politburo Transcripts: From Collective Rule to Stalin's Dictatorship (Yale University Press and Hoover Press, 2008), prominent Western and Russian scholars examine the "lost" transcripts of the Soviet Politburo, a set of verbatim accounts of meetings that took place from the 1920s to 1938 but remained hidden in secret archives until the late 1990s. Never intended for publication or distribution beyond a narrow circle, these records reveal the actual process of decision making at the highest levels of the Soviet Communist Party. The transcripts also provide new, firsthand records of the rise of Stalin's dictatorship. The contributors to the volume explore the power struggles among the Politburo members, their methods of discourse and propaganda, and their economic policies. Taken as a whole, the essays shed light on early Soviet history and on the individuals who supported or opposed Stalin's consolidation of power. This book is the product of a multiyear project between the Hoover Institution Archives and the Russian State Archival Service begun in 2004 following the discovery of the lost transcripts in the Russian archives. As a consequence of this project, the full collection of transcripts has been published for researchers in three volumes as Stenograms of Meetings of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1924-1928. Copies of the original documents of the key Politburo meetings of this period reside in the Hoover Archives. The Lost Politburo Transcripts, edited by Hoover fellows Paul Gregory and Norman Naimark, is part of a Yale-Hoover series on Stalin, Stalinism, and the cold war. Gregory is the Cullen Distinguished Professor of Economics, University of Houston, and Naimark is the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies, Stanford University.