Author: M K Tikku
Publication: The Hindustan Times
Date: April 27, 2001
The Soviet-Era documents available
at the Hoover Institution here, which reveal details of the cash handouts
to the Communist Party of India, were available in India much earlier.
But not surprisingly, they were kept under wraps.
Way back in 1995, the Kolkata-based
Asiatic Society signed an agreement with the State Archives in Moscow for
exchange of copies of archival records on either side. As a result, copies
of many of the papers that Hoover found so interesting arrived in Kolkata
too. But these remained locked up at the Society's Park Street premises.
Over a couple of years ago, the
ruling CPI-M in West Bengal managed to gain control of the Asiatic Society
(which had previously been a Congress monopoly). The new managing body
saw to it that the Russian studies project was scuttled while scholars
were still in the middle of preparing the documents for publication.
It is not difficult to speculate
why a curtain was drawn over a story that waited to be told: the papers
show that the party received at least $ 21,79,000 from 1951 to 1973.
On the other hand, the Hoover Institution,
with its conservative orientation and a pronounced anti-Communist track
record during the Cold War years, moved with remarkable alacrity to get
hold of the Soviet records. In Yelstin's Russia, it did not have any difficulty
befriending the authorities.
Within days of Yeltsin's assuming
power in Moscow, Hoover's deputy director Charles Palm was in Moscow cultivating
Rudolph Pikhoia, the new chief of the State Archives, handpicked by Yeltsin.
Their engagement resulted in the signing of an agreement in April 1992
granting Hoover access to microfilm the state records.
In return, the Russians were provided
equipment and training, and a royalty on sale of the microfilm. The agreement
was sharply criticized by many Russian intellectuals and journalists, who
felt that it would give easy access to western scholars -- a privilege
not available to even their own scholars.
As a further sop, the Hoover Institution
provided copies of its own records of the Soviet era, the largest collection
anywhere in the world outside Russia, to the Russians. "The Russians, too,
stood to benefit from the deal," Palm told this correspondent, "that is
why they went along with it."
While this provided access to the
state records, those of the Communist Party of Soviet Union were still
beyond reach. In November 1992, Yeltsin's announ-cement of the trial of
the former communist leaders by a constitutional court necessitated their
exposure.
Difficulties cropped up in 1996
as Yeltsin seemed headed for trouble and the communists looked set on a
comeback trial. The agreement, which had cost Hoover three million dollars
against 12.5 million documents, ended.
In 1998, Hoover reached another
agreement with the Russians providing access for the first time to documents,
numbering 50 million, revealing in minute detail what really happened in
the Gulag. The exercise is expected to be completed by 2003. But then,
that's another story.
