From the holdings of the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History

During the almost seven decades-long existence of the USSR, the leading organs of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) invariably acted as the principal regulating and directing powers in all spheres of activity of Soviet society. In the majority of cases, before documents came to the leaders of the Party and state, they were laboriously worked on by the various Sections of the Party's Central Committee apparat. These Sections received voluminous and varied information about Soviet life and world events, including information and communications from ministries, departments and social organizations; letters by Soviet and foreign citizens; and much more. Within these Section, a peculiar initial selection of the documents took place; part of them were archived, while the remainder were directed to a higher level of authority, becoming the basis for important state decisions and resolutions. Sections of the Central Committee apparat, in fact, exercised the Party's control over the entirety of Soviet society, influencing (at times quite substantially) the character of the development of political and socioeconomic processes within the USSR and beyond its borders.

This collection allows us to trace in detail important structural and functional changes within the Central Committee, giving researchers the opportunity to understand better how the Soviet system of administration operated in the post-Stalin period.

The Collection's materials will be of significant interest to historians, researchers, journalists and a wide circle of readers wishing to familiarize themselves with previously unknown pages of recent history.

Complete collection: 223 reels