Communist International (Comintern) Archives Project

The archives of the Communist International (Comintern) are in the custody of the Russian State Archives for Social and Political History (RGASPI) in Moscow. As part of an international effort to preserve the archives and make them accessible to researchers, RGASPI has digitized some one million pages of documents from 59 sub-series.

In selecting materials for digitization, the International Committee for the Computerization of the Comintern (INCOMKA), of which the Library of Congress is a participating institution, drew upon the expertise of Comintern historians from around the world. INCOMKA focused on the commissions, secretariats, and departments under the Executive Committee of the Comintern.

The role of the Library of Congress in the Comintern Archives Project has been to convert personal names from Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet and to translate “descriptors” (keywords/subject headings) from Russian to English. The descriptors link to the digital images, which are displayed in the Archidoc system. Archidoc is a product of the Spanish software company Informatica El Corte Ingles.

The digitized materials may be viewed at a dedicated terminal in the European Reading Room of the Library of Congress or through a subscription to the Comintern Electronic Archives (http://www.comintern-online.com).