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In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source is an artifact, document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, recording, or any other source of information that was created at the time under study. It serves as an original source of information about the topic. Similar definitions can be used in library science, and other areas of scholarship, although different fields have somewhat different definitions. In journalism, a primary source can be a person with direct knowledge of a situation, or a document written by such a person.
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, or the Hungarian Uprising, was a nationwide revolution against the Hungarian People's Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956. Leaderless at the beginning, it was the first major threat to Soviet control since the Red Army drove Nazi Germany from its territory at the End of World War II in Europe.
The Sino-Soviet split was the breaking of political relations between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), caused by doctrinal divergences that arose from their different interpretations and practical applications of Marxism–Leninism, as influenced by their respective geopolitics during the Cold War (1945–1991). In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Sino-Soviet debates about the interpretation of orthodox Marxism became specific disputes about the USSR's policies of national de-Stalinization and international peaceful coexistence with the Western world, which Mao decried as revisionism. Against that ideological background, China took a belligerent stance towards the West, and publicly rejected the USSR's policy of peaceful coexistence between the Eastern and Western blocs. In addition, China resented the closer Soviet ties with India, and Moscow feared Mao was too nonchalant about the horrors of nuclear war.
Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin was a major and senior archivist for the Soviet Union's foreign intelligence service, the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, who defected to the United Kingdom in 1992 after providing the British embassy in Riga with a vast collection of his notes purporting to be written copies of KGB files. These became known as the Mitrokhin Archive. The intelligence files given by Mitrokhin to the MI6 exposed an unknown number of Russian agents, including Melita Norwood.
The National Security Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located on the campus of the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1985 to check rising government secrecy, the National Security Archive is an investigative journalism center, open government advocate, international affairs research institute, and the largest repository of declassified U.S. documents outside the federal government. The National Security Archive has spurred the declassification of more than 10 million pages of government documents by being the leading non-profit user of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), filing a total of more than 50,000 FOIA and declassification requests in its over 30 years of history.
The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, located in Washington, D.C., is a United States Presidential Memorial that was established as part of the Smithsonian Institution by an act of Congress in 1968. It is also a highly recognized think tank, and was ranked among the top ten in the world in 2013.
Donald Niven Wheeler (1913–2002) was an American social activist, teacher, and Communist Party member, as well as an alleged Soviet spy.
Archival science, or archival studies, is the study and theory of building and curating archives, which are collections of documents, recordings and data storage devices.
The Cold War period of 1985–1991 began with the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was a revolutionary leader for the USSR, as he was the first to promote liberalization of the political landscape (Glasnost) and the economy (Perestroika); prior to this, the USSR had been strictly prohibiting liberal reform and maintained an inefficient command economy. The USSR, despite facing massive economic difficulties, was involved in a costly arms race with the United States under President Ronald Reagan. Regardless, the USSR began to crumble as liberal reforms proved difficult to handle and capitalist changes to the economy were badly instituted and caused major problems. The Cold War came to an end when the last war of Soviet occupation ended in Afghanistan, the Berlin Wall came down in Germany, and a series of mostly peaceful revolutions swept the Soviet Bloc states of eastern Europe in 1989.
OSA Archivum is an archival repository and laboratory that aims to explore new ways of assessing, contextualizing, presenting, and making use of archival documents both in a professional and a consciously activist way. It was founded by George Soros in 1995.
Patrick Lennox Tierney was a Japanologist academic in the field of art history, an emeritus professor of the University of Utah, a former Curator of Japanese Art at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, a former Director of the Pacific Asia Museum, and a former Commissioner of Art and Monuments during the Allied occupation of Japan (1945–1952).
Alexander Vassiliev is a Russian journalist, writer, and espionage historian living in London who is a subject matter expert in the Soviet KGB and Russian SVR. A former officer in the Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB), he is known for his two books based upon KGB archival documents: Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, co-authored with John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, and The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America: the Stalin Era, co-authored with Allen Weinstein.
The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washington, D.C. and New York City.
The Nicaragua White Paper is actually a misnomer, given that the paper in question was focused mainly on El Salvador. The 1981 February 23 State Department paper was entitled "Communist Interference in El Salvador: Documents Demonstrating Communist Support of the Salvadoran Insurgency." The "White Paper" used a variety of intelligence sources, including captured Salvadoran guerrilla documents, to show a flow of material support to the rebels from Nicaragua, Cuba, and a variety of other Communist countries, including the Soviet Union and Vietnam. While a few journalists found some errors in the paper, most of the claims have been substantiated, using declassified U.S. government documents, exfiltrated KGB documents, and other sources.
The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) is a non-profit anti-communist organization in the United States, authorized by a unanimous Act of Congress in 1993 for the purpose of "educating Americans about the ideology, history and legacy of communism."
The stated function of the Harvard Project on Cold War Studies (HPWCS) is to further the progress of, and actively encourage the ongoing primary research of archival, Cold War documents in the former Eastern-bloc nations. These documents have only become available since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and rapidly increase in numbers year by year. This function, or focus, is then combined with the intent to build on and apply the knowledge gained from this process. The project also encourages scholars and students to apply insights gained from research to current discourses pertaining to areas of international and domestic politics.
The North Korea International Documentation Project (NKIDP) is part of the History and Public Policy Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. It seeks to serve as an informational clearinghouse on North Korea for both the scholarly and policy making communities by widely disseminating newly declassified documents on the DPRK from its former communist allies as well as other resources that provide valuable insight into the actions and nature of the North Korean state.
The Wende Museum of the Cold War is an art museum, historical archive, and educational institution in Culver City, California. It was founded in 2002 by Justinian Jampol, a native of Los Angeles and scholar of modern European history. The museum was housed for more than a decade in an office park before moving in November 2017 to its current campus, a former National Guard Armory Building.
On February 23, 1981, the U.S. State Department released a document titled "Communist Interference in El Salvador: Documents Demonstrating Communist Support of the Salvadoran Insurgency", also known as "the White Paper". The document was used as justification for U.S. intervention in Nicaragua. Critics charged that the technique deployed by the White Paper was to corrolate events in El Salvador into alleged examples of Soviet and Cuban military involvement. The White Paper was claimed to be part of a propaganda effort to divert attention from U.S. support for a repressive regime by creating a false threat of communist insurgency.
The History and Public Policy Program (HAPP) is a program at the Woodrow Wilson Center. It focuses on the relationship between history and policy making and seeks to foster open, informed and non-partisan dialogue on historically relevant issues. The Program is a hub for a wide network of scholars, journalists, policy makers, archivists, and teachers focused on the uses and lessons of history in decision making. Through informed dialogue, the Program seeks to explore the advantages as well as the dangers of using historical lessons in making current policy decisions.
