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Two archives of the Russian revolution

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Abstract

The article examines the role of historical archives in the commemoration of the Russian revolution of 1917. In particular, it focuses on two specific case studies: the attempts to create the Archive of the Revolution in Petrograd in spring–summer 1917 and the competing archival project, which evolved in “Russia Abroad,” among the Russian emigrants in Prague, in 1923. The declared aim of both projects was to collect documents for future historians, but they were far from being politically neutral. All the participants in these archival projects had their own vision of the revolution; as a result, the very act of collecting documents actually instigated the formation of various, and sometimes contradictory, narratives of the revolutionary events.

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Acknowledgement

This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No 936/15).

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  1. Department of History, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Vera Kaplan

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  1. Vera Kaplan
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Correspondence to Vera Kaplan.

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Kaplan, V. Two archives of the Russian revolution. Arch Sci 20, 361–380 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-020-09342-z

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