Washington, D.C., November 2, 2020 – Declassified highest-level transcripts and diplomatic cables provide new granular detail on the rise to power of Russian President Vladimir Putin 20 years ago, much of it in his own words (as captured by American notetakers) and those of his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, according to the documentary publication today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
Washington D.C., May 25, 2020 –The National Security Archive marks what would have been Anatoly Sergeyevich Chernyaev’s 99th birthday today with the publication for the first time in English of his extraordinary Diary for 1980 At the time, Chernyaev was Deputy Director of the International Department of the Central Committee responsible for the International Communist Movement (ICM) and fraternal parties.
Washington D.C., April 15, 2020 - As the coronavirus puts at risk Russia’s celebration of Victory Day on May 9, 2020, with its huge military parade on Moscow’s Red Square, we are reminded of another event that threatened to undermine the festive atmosphere 25 years ago: the massacre by Russian troops of scores of Chechen civilians and the burning of their village of Samashki on April 8, 1995. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. The 50th anniversary came just a few years after the dem
Washington D.C., December 5, 2019 – Cooperative threat reduction by the U.S., Ukraine, and the Russian Federation successfully eliminated the world’s third largest nuclear weapons force in the 1990s – the ICBMs, strategic bombers, and nuclear warheads left in Ukraine when the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991 – according to declassified documents from all three countries published today by the National Security Archive.
Washington D.C., May 25, 2019 - The National Security Archive marks what would have been Anatoly Sergeyevich Chernyaev’s 98th birthday today with the publication for the first time in English of his extraordinary Diary for 1979, written from inside the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, where he was then a Deputy Director of the International Department responsible for the International Communist Movement (ICM) and fraternal parties. 
The U.S. and NATO allies worried about losing control of the public narrative of the Cold War in December 1988 after Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s offer of an arms race in reverse in his famous United Nations speech, according to declassified documents published today by the National Security Archive. Senior Italian officials, for example, complained to U.S. envoy Paul Nitze that the public’s sense of a diminishing Soviet threat would undercut their ability to maintain defense spending – even as the Soviet leader was announcing unilateral troop withdrawals from Eastern Europe.
Washington, D.C., October 4, 2018 – Twenty-five years ago last night in Moscow, Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered tanks and airborne troops to shell and storm the “White House,” the Russian Parliament (Supreme Soviet) building, to suppress the opposition trying to remove him.
Washington, D.C., October 2, 2018 – President Bill Clinton saw Russian leader Boris Yeltsin as indispensable for promoting American interests following the collapse of the Soviet Union, often prompting him to take controversial steps to ensure Yeltsin’s political survival, according to top-level memoranda of conversation just released from the Clinton presidential library.