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Subject: The Opening of the Politburo's Archives;Closely Guarded Minutes Made Public,
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 05:02:45 EST
Message-ID: <15.1992Nov16.050246@AmeriCast.com>

The Opening of the Politburo's Archives;Closely Guarded Minutes
Made Public, but Access Still Isn't Easy<By Michael Dobbs<

MOSCOW - Until a few months ago, few people outside the circle of
former Soviet Communist Party leaders even knew of the existence
of what is likely to prove an immensely valuable historical
source: the verbatim minutes of the Politburo.

For the better part of seven decades, the Politburo was the only
Soviet political institution where anything approaching free de-
bate took place. Closeted in the Kremlin for their weekly Thurs-
day meetings, the dozen or so Politburo members discussed the
state of the world with a candor and frankness that would have
been completely out of place in the rubber-stamp Soviet parlia-
ment or even the Central Committee, the party's top policy-making
body.

Like the most secret Kremlin documents, the Politburo minutes
were kept in one copy only. The note-taker was usually a senior
aide to the general secretary of the Communist Party. Only the
general secretary and his most trusted associates were allowed
access to the minutes, which were kept in the "special archive."
Politburo resolutions were given a somewhat wider circulation: in
several dozen copies.  Some Politburo records have so far been
declassified, to be used as evidence in the Constitutional Court
proceedings on the legality of President Boris Yeltsin's deci-
sions to ban the Communist Party. Some of these records - care-
fully screened for any material that could possibly embarrass
present-day Russian leaders - have been transferred to the Center
for the Preservation of Contemporary Documents.

Obtaining access to the declassified Politburo records is not
easy. In theory, they should be freely available. In practice,
distribution is tightly controlled. According to Russian journal-
ists who have taken an interest in the subject, the records are
frequently used for political purposes. Many of the documents
that have been released show former Soviet president Mikhail Gor-
bachev in a bad light. On occasion, documents are sold to the
highest bidder or given to a foreign government.

The documents quoted here represent only a small fraction of the
voluminous Kremlin files on Afghanistan, but cover some of the
key turning points in the war. Some have already been published
in the Soviet press. The documents on the decision to invade were
made available free of charge by Yeltsin's representatives in the
Constitutional Court. The minutes of Afghan president Mohammed
Taraki's conversations with Soviet leaders in March 1979 and the
Politburo sessions of March 1983 and March 1986 were made avail-
able by the Contemporary Documents Center for a fee of
$400.<<02:17 11-16C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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