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Fact and fantasy in Soviet records : the documentation of Soviet Party and Secret Police investigations as historical evidence
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Harrison, Mark (2016) Fact and fantasy in Soviet records : the documentation of Soviet Party and Secret Police investigations as historical evidence. Working Paper. Coventry: University of Warwick. Department of Economics. Warwick economics research papers series (WERPS) (1110).
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Official URL: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/resear...
Abstract
When we use Soviet documentation of political and secret police investigations to write history, to what extent are we vulnerable to the biases and inventions of the investigators? The problem is framed as one of principal and agent. It is argued that Soviet principals allowed their agents scope to manipulate facts and bias interpretations, not freely, but within strict limits that were laid down from above and varied from time to time. These limits were set by the leader’s “revolutionary insight,” the communist equivalent of what passes in more open societies today as “truthiness.” An understanding of the Soviet truthiness of the particular time is the best guide we have to interpreting the documentary records of that time. Evaluating them in this light, we see that Soviet historical documents are little different from the records of any other time and place.
| Item Type: | Working or Discussion Paper (Working Paper) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DK Russia. Soviet Union. Former Soviet Republics | ||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics | ||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Kommunisticheskai︠a︡ partii︠a︡ Sovetskogo Soi︠u︡za -- Sources, Communist Party of the Soviet Union -- Sources, Communist Party of USSR -- Sources, CPSU -- Sources | ||||
| Series Name: | Warwick economics research papers series (WERPS) | ||||
| Publisher: | University of Warwick. Department of Economics | ||||
| Place of Publication: | Coventry | ||||
| ISSN: | 0083-7350 | ||||
| Official Date: | February 2016 | ||||
| Dates: |
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| Number: | 1110 | ||||
| Number of Pages: | 10 | ||||
| Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
| Status: | Not Peer Reviewed | ||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||
| Version or Related Resource: | This paper also appears as CAGE Working Paper No: 263 |
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