Washington, D.C., August 11, 2023 – Recently unearthed documents from the Romanian national archives shed new light on the Comintern, the Soviet-led international organization that from 1919-1943 was at the forefront of Moscow’s efforts to establish hegemony over Communist parties in Romania, the rest of Europe and worldwide.
Washington, D.C., June 5, 2023 – Declassified highest-level records from the first six months of the Clinton administration’s relations with the Russian Federation in 1993 reveal a remarkable array of cooperative diplomatic initiatives and Bill Clinton’s direct personal support for Boris Yeltsin in the latter’s growing conflict with his own elected parliament over radical economic reforms known as “shock therapy.”
Washington D.C., May 25, 2023 - The National Security Archive today marks what would have been Anatoly Sergeyevich Chernyaev’s 102nd birthday with the publication for the first time in English of his Diary for 1983. At the time, Chernyaev was deputy director of the International Department of the Central Committee responsible for the International Communist Movement (ICM).
Washington, D.C., February 7, 2023 – With the Cold War coming to an end and the Soviet Union dissolving, President Bill Clinton was determined not to miss a historic opportunity to help Russia transform into a democratic capitalist state, according to a set of declassified State Department records published today by the National Security Archive.
Washington D.C., January 30, 2023 – The George H.W. Bush administration was reluctant to embrace the “relations of deep mutual trust and alliance” proposed by the newly independent Russian Federation and its leader, Boris Yeltsin, in early 1992, according to declassified U.S. documents published today by the National Security Archive.
Washington D.C., October 4, 2022 – Federal judge James Boasberg today supported a CIA claim that a public document about a famous nuclear war scare should be censored “to protect ‘intelligence activities’ or ‘intelligence sources or methods,’” despite the fact that his ruling and the CIA’s argument actually highlight the information and undermine any such protection.
Washington D.C., August 30, 2022 – The National Security Archive mourns the passing today of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, 1931-2022, first and last president of the Soviet Union, who ended the Cold War and enabled through his "glasnost" our work to open archives around the world.
Washington D.C. September 22, 2022 - The Soviets exposed then Vice President Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat, to ionizing radiation during his famous visit to Moscow in July 1959, according to declassified Secret Service records posted today by the National Security Archive. Using detection devices known as Radiac Dosimeters, Nixon’s Secret Service detail measured significant levels of radiation in and around Nixon’s sleeping quarters at Spaso House, the residence of the U.S. Ambassador, during the first days of his trip.
Washington D.C., September 15, 2022 - On December 9, 1975, as Secretary of State Henry Kissinger prepared to travel to Moscow for arms control talks, he placed an urgent phone call to Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin in Washington. “I want to talk to you about the signal,” Kissinger told Dobrynin.
Washington D.C., September 13, 2022 - On the 5th anniversary of the CIA’s September 13, 2017, decision to pull its agents out of Cuba, after several operatives were stricken with what has become known as the “Havana Syndrome,” the National Security Archive today posted the first of a declassified documentation series on the “Moscow Signals”—a decades-long chapter of the Cold War during which Soviet intelligence bathed the U.S.