Communist International (Comintern) Archives Project

About the Tables

The Comintern Document Index search system retrieves terms from four sets of tables in MS Word format.

I. About 130,000 personal names listed in Latin alphabetic order in 104 country tables. Each of the multicolumn tables provides the Russian Cyrillic version of the names as filed in RGASPI, the Library of Congress transliteration (see "Help on the Transliteration System") the “standard” spelling in Latin letters, and possible variant spellings. The names were taken from the so-called “personal files” (lichnye dela). Many of the 104 tables provide file (delo) numbers, pinpointing their location in RGASPI. The spellings of names in this set have been reviewed and vetted by Comintern historians from around the world.

II. About 40,000 personal names, arranged by country in Latin alphabetic order in 115 tables.. These names were found by RGASPI staff in so-called “collective personal files” as well as in the digitized documents. They are arranged in four-column tables, providing the Russian Cyrillic, the LC Romanization, linguistically enhanced spellings, and possible spelling variants. Unlike the first set, these spellings have not been reviewed and vetted by historians outside the Library of Congress.

III. About 24,500 personal names arranged alphabetically. These are rosters of students at two Communist International universities in the U.S.S.R. and a list of officials in the Comintern Administrative Department. These two-column tables provide the Russian Cyrillic original and the LC Romanization. No attempt was made to enhance the spellings beyond the standard LC transliteration since the vast majority of the names originally were spelled in Russian Cyrillic.

IV. Eight tables of keywords and phrases selected by RGASPI staff from the digitized documents. The tables provide the original Russian terms and their English equivalents. The tables cover the following categories of information:

• Official events, meetings, conferences, congresses
• Place names
• Publications
• Organizations
• Social groups
• Status (professions, titles)
• Themes (issues)
• Format