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community (see "Scholars Speak out on Cambodia Holocaust," letter to the Wall Street Journal, signed by 29 Cambodia scholars and specialists, 13 July 1995). These scholars represent virtually the entire field of Cambodian studies. Leading Cambodian scholars David P. Chandler, Milton E. Osborne, and Michael Vickery have already provided help in various ways. Others who have responded positively to requests for information on their personal archival holdings include Justin Corfield, Mark Dodd, Stephen Heder, Henri Locard, and Judy Ledgerwood. Additional Cambodia scholars like David Ashley and Jason Roberts have generously offered to work with the CGP on a volunteer basis.

An Australian professional working with the CGP has also initiated a project to begin the computer mapping of Khmer Rouge prison and mass grave sites. This project has now been funded by the Australian government at the level of A$24,300. Additional funding is being sought. This is the first time anyone has attempted to construct a comprehensive inventory of the terror apparatus used by the Khmer Rouge regime to murder up to two million people.

In June, July, and August 1995, CGP Director Ben Kiernan presented the Program's work-in-progress at the U.S. Forum on Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos (in New York), at Monash University and the University of New South Wales (in Australia), and at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Phnom Penh. These occasions all produced new collaboration from foreign scholars and specialists, ranging from an offer of a large biographic database to a promise of rare photographs of the Pol Pot leadership. The ability of the CGP to attract the cooperation of Cambodia scholars, along with legal and technical experts worldwide, is a key factor in explaining the success of the Program to date.

Cambodian Reception of the CGP. Cambodian leaders have complained for years that the outside world had not recognized the crimes of the Khmer Rouge and the tragedy of the Cambodian people. The initiation of the Cambodian Genocide Program helped answer this complaint on an international scale. This measure of recognition sparked a new willingness among the Cambodian political elite to squarely face the darkest chapter of Cambodian history. Cambodians have become full partners in

the CGP's work. His Majesty King Norodom Sihanouk wrote to CGP Manager Dr. Craig Etcheson on 21 July 1995, “I infinitely thank the distinguished promoters of this research program, especially Dr. Ben Kiernan and yourself, for the care that you have manifested, thanks to the 'Cambodian Genocide Program,' in nourishing truth and promoting and assuring respect for human rights in my country.”

Since the earliest days of the CGP in January 1995, the Royal Cambodian Government has been unreservedly supportive of the mandate given to Yale University by the U.S. government. The Co-Prime Ministers, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Co-Ministers of Interior, the Minister of Justice, the CoMinisters of Defense, and the President of the National Assembly have all pledged their personal and institutional cooperation with the CGP. Enthusiasm about the goals of the program transcends political affiliation, with support coming from the leadership of all three parties represented in the government. But the cooperation of the Royal Government has gone far beyond pledges. The Royal Government is providing the CGP with a wide range of resources to facilitate our work in Cambodia and in the region at large.

At the Striving for Justice Conference in Phnom Penh on 21 and 22 August 1995, First Prime Minister Samdech Krom Preah Norodom Ranariddh and Second Prime Minister Samdech Hun Sen publicly committed the Royal Cambodian Government to bring the Khmer Rouge leadership to justice for their crimes against humanity. In his opening address to the conference, the First Prime Minister complimented the CGP, saying, "On behalf of the Royal Government, on behalf of Samdech Hun Sen, Second Prime Minister, and on my own behalf, I would like to express my deepest appreciation and warmest congratulations to the Office of Cambodian Genocide Investigation and Yale University for embarking on the two years programme of documentation, research and training on the Cambodian genocide. I would also like to express my sincere thanks equally to the United States to create the Cambodian Genocide Justice Act and its appointment of Yale University to carry out the two year programme."

Substantively, the First Prime Minister argued, "The international crimes of the Khmer Rouge violated the most central norms

of international law and this clearly affected the interests of all states in general and Cambodia in particular." His Royal Highness the First Prime Minister added, "The Royal Government is determined to bring those responsible for the perpetration of these heinous crimes against the Cambodian people to face justice." In his closing address to the conference, His Excellency Samdech Hun Sen summed up the view of many participants by saying of the conference, "This is not about politics, it is about justice. If we do not bring the Khmer Rouge to justice for killing millions of people, then there is no point in speaking about human rights in Cambodia."

Large numbers of ordinary Cambodian citizens seem to concur with the Co-Prime Ministers. Many Cambodians in Cambodia, the U.S., and other countries have volunteered their assistance. Since June 1995, a team of Cambodian volunteers in New Haven, CT, has been preparing a biographical index of Khmer Rouge political leaders and military commanders. As of September 1995, Cambodian-American citizens' groups in New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Florida, Minnesota, Oregon, California, and Texas have offered to compile witness testimony on behalf of the CGP. The thirst for justice is powerful among the survivors of Pol Pot's genocide.

Consistent with these feelings of ordinary Cambodians and the policy of the government, the CGP has received from the Royal Cambodian Government significant assistance to our research program. One of the most useful forms of this aid is the unprecedented assistance from the Royal Government in retrieving documentation from Vietnam unavailable to researchers up until now. In combination with previously unexamined archives from the Cambodian People's Party, Royal Government ministries, and private archives now being opened to the CGP in Cambodia, a wealth of new data pertaining to criminal culpability during the Khmer Rouge regime seems destined to come to light. It is the expressed policy of the Royal Government to assist the CGP in uncovering such important information.

Evaluation. To ensure objectivity and quality control, the CGP has instituted a rigorous two-tier system of program evaluation. In the first tier, the Steering Group of the Department of State's Office of Cambodian Genocide Investigations conducts peri

odic external reviews of CGP operations. As a basis for these evaluations, in May 1995 CGP Manager Dr. Craig Etcheson produced a 209-page Implementation Plan outlining the Program's strategy for achieving its objectives. The first external evaluation, held in June 1995, termed the progress of CGP operations "excellent" (Time Magazine, 26 June 1995).

CAMBODIAN ARCHIVES

continued from page 260

very unlikely that a reply will be sent even if the letter is received), but I was able to obtain permission in Phnom Penh without great difficulty. It may, however, take a few days. archives at the end of 1992 were “dismayed (The first time I applied on the Friday before

Jarvis and Peter Arfanis, who visited the

at what we saw.... Valuable records from the French colonial days are on the floors and shelves rotting away. About 50% of the records-and there are about 2000 linear metres of records all up are either wrapped in brown paper or still in their original boxes. The boxes have been constructed from acidic

a holiday week. Nevertheless, permission to use the archives was received the Monday following the holidays.)

The archives is open only about four or five hours per day. Many documents remain wrapped in paper. The documents themselves are often in very fragile condition,

CGP also carries out an internal review process, staffed by distinguished experts in international law and genocide investigation, such as Professor Cherif Bassiouni, pasteboard, starch-filled cloth, and protein and insects sometimes scurry out from among

former Chair of the United Nations Com

adhesive which has promoted insect infiltra

mission of Experts for the inquiry on viola- tion, mainly termites and beetle larvae. Other

tions of international humanitarian law in the Former Yugoslavia (predecessor to the Yugoslavia War Crimes Tribunal). The first round of internal evaluation of CGP operations began in June 1995. This evaluation has already produced numerous useful ideas for improving various aspects of our operations, and yielded an overall positive appraisal of CGP progress. According to one evaluator, "Your thoughtful and methodical explanations for the preparation of such a project should serve as a model for the documentation and analysis of crimes against humanity in other countries.... The training program designed to support the project is outstanding.”

Summary. In 1994 the prospect of a trial of the Khmer Rouge leaders seemed remote. Now, through the work of the Cambodian Genocide Program, it has become a strong probability. In 1994, the information resources and legal evidence necessary for a judicial accounting of the genocide had yet

to be identified or assembled, and the required legal skills did not yet exist. These prerequisites are now well on the way toward fulfillment. By the end of 1996, when the CGP's mandate will expire, an international Cambodian genocide tribunal may have already commenced functioning. By then, the CGP will certainly have provided the scholarly and legal resources for Cambodians to pursue their own justice for the victims of the Khmer Rouge regime. In short, the Cambodian Genocide Program has taken major steps to fulfill its own threepart mandate: to expose and document the crimes of the Khmer Rouge, and to hold the perpetrators accountable.

records are sitting unwrapped gathering dust, mould and also being attacked by insects."4

By the end of 1994, conditions were still far from good. During my two visits to the archives that year, stacks of books, most beyond repair, still stood on the floor of the library's storage areas and in the archives. Wrapped and unwrapped documents remained on dusty shelves in the archives, and insect damage was evident everywhere. Nevertheless, thanks to the dedication of some Cambodians and some foreign (mainly Australian) assistance, there have been improvements, and the archives can in any event be used. There are now typescript guides to some of the more important documentary collections, and proper archival storage boxes, a gift from Australia, are increasingly being used.

The archives contain numerous, if eclectic, works including official journals, the United States Civil Code, Russian encyclopedias, and works from the French period. More significant are the collections of published and unpublished documents that have survived. The bulk of the collection consists of those colonial records which the French did not take with them when they left, particularly records of the Résidence Supérieure du Cambodge. Some of the manuscripts date to the late nineteenth century and concern a wide range of mostly domestic matters. These, along with some printed Foreign Affairs records from the 1950s and

1960s, were the documents most useful to me. However, other records concern the Buddhist Institute, Norodom Sihanouk, and the Khmer Rouge period.5

Permission is required to use the archives, and prospective researchers need to apply at the Council of Ministers. There is no fee. Writing ahead might be useful (it is

the pages. There is no working electricity in the building, and plumbing is rudimentary. Miss Kim Ly, the archivist, is helpful, as are other members of the staff. Kim Ly understands French and some English.

In May 1994, there were few researchers (often I was alone in the building), and the rainy season added to a sense of gloom and foreboding resulting from reports of rebel Khmer Rouge gains in the countryside. But by December the Khmer Rough threat seemed to have receded. Now government officials and private citizens did come by to consult the archive's records. School chil

dren also visited. The library was heavily used, especially in December when there was a very well attended celebration of the library's seventieth anniversary. Perhaps this is a hopeful sign of Cambodia's returning health.

1. Peter Arfanis and Helen Jarvis, "Archives in Cambodia: Neglected Institutions," Archives and Manuscripts [Australia] 21:2 (1993), 252-62.

2. Ibid., 255. George Smith, a librarian employed by the state of Alaska, made the same point in a paper delivered at the "Seminar on the Khmer Culture's Revival," Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 21 December 1994.

3. Helen Jarvis, "The National Library of Cambodia: Suriving Seventy Years of Drastic Socio-Economic Impact," Paper delivered at CONSAL9, the Ninth Congress of Southeast Asian Librarians, Bangkok, Thailand, 2-6 May 1993.

4. Arfanis and Jarvis, “Archives in Cambodia," 256-57. 5. For a more complete description of the archive's holdings, see Arfanis and Jarvis, "Archives in Cambodia."

Kenton J. Clymer, professor of history and department chair at the University of Texas at El Paso, is researching a history of U.S.Cambodian relations. His most recent book is Quest for Freedom: The United States and India's Independence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).

RESEARCH NOTE: DOCUMENTING THE EARLY SOVIET NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM

by Mark Kramer

Two recent developments pertaining to the early Soviet nuclear weapons program— the declassification of an edict promulgated by Josif Stalin in August 1945, and the issuance of a directive by the Russian government in mid-1995-are worth noting. Each development is covered here briefly, and the relevant documentation is provided at the end.

The Establishment of Beria's Special Committee

Exploration of the basic processes involved in nuclear fission began in the Soviet Union well before World War II, and serious work aimed at building nuclear weapons was initiated at a top-secret research facility in Moscow, known simply as Laboratory No. 2, in early 1943. Over the next two years the Soviet nuclear bomb program was spurred on by intelligence disclosures about the Manhattan Project in the United States, but it was not until after the fighting ended-and the technical feasibility of nuclear weaponry had been vividly demonstrated by the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki-that an all-out program was launched in the USSR. On 20 August 1945, the supreme leader of the Soviet Union and chairman of the wartime State Defense Committee (GKO), Josif Stalin, formed a ninemember "Special Committee" under the GKO's auspices to oversee the whole Soviet bomb effort. The Special Committee was placed under the direction of Stalin's top aide, Lavrentii Beria, the notorious secret police chief. The edict that Stalin issued (No. GKO-9887ss/op) to establish the Special Committee and its two main subordinate organizations was declassified and published in the July-August 1995 issue of Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal (“MilitaryHistorical Journal"), pp. 65-67. The full text is provided below in translation.

Several points about the document are worth noting:

First, Stalin's edict placed the Special Committee under the control of the GKO, the supreme organ in the Soviet Union dur

ing World War II. When the GKO was disbanded on 4 September 1945, the Special Committee was recast as a "Special Committee of the USSR Council of People's Commissars." (The Council of People's Commissars was itself renamed the USSR Council of Ministers in March 1946.) Shortly after Beria's arrest on 26 June 1953, the Special Committee of the USSR Council of Ministers (as it was then known) was dissolved, and the staff and organizations under its control were transferred to the newly formed Ministry of Medium Machine-Building.

Second, the edict provided for the creation of a Technical Council, which was to report directly to the GKO's Special Committee. Until now, Western experts such as David Holloway had thought that the Technical Council was set up as an integral part of the newly-created First Main Directorate of the Council of People's Commissars (an entity that is discussed below). A close look at Stalin's edict shows that on this point Holloway was incorrect. The Technical Council was established as a separate body under the Special Committee, not under the First Main Directorate (which itself was subordinated to the Special Committee).

Third, of the nine members of the GKO's Special Committee, five were also members of the 11-man Technical Council. The exceptions were Beria, Georgii Malenkov, Nikolai Voznesenskii, and Mikhail Pervukhin. (N.B.: Nikolai Voznesenskii, the director of the State Planning Committee-known as Gosplan for short-should not be confused with the distinguished physicist Ivan Voznesenskii, who was a member of the Technical Council.) It stands to reason that the three senior political officials on the Special Committee-Beria, Malenkov, and Nikolai Voznesenskii-would not have been included on the Technical Council, but Pervukhin's absence is somewhat more puzzling, since he was in charge of the USSR's chemical industry at the time. The Technical Council consisted predominantly of renowned physicists: Igor Kurchatov, Pyotr nowned physicists: Igor Kurchatov, Pyotr Kapitsa, Abram Ioffe, Abram Alikhanov, Yulii Khariton, Isaak Kikoin, and Ivan Voznesenskii. The other four members included a radiochemist, Vitalii Khlopin, and three highly capable industrial managers and engineers: Boris Vannikov, Avraamii Zavenyagin, and Vasilii Makhnev. Zavenyagin, among other things, had been a deputy to Beria at the People's Commissariat

for Internal Affairs (NKVD) since 1941, serving with the rank of general.

Fourth, Vannikov was appointed chairman of the Technical Council, and Alikhanov was appointed the scientific secretary of the Council. The text of Stalin's edict does not bear out David Holloway's assertion (in Stalin and the Bomb, p. 135) that Pervukhin, Zavenyagin, and Kurchatov were appointed deputies to Vannikov on the Council. In fact, Pervukhin, as noted above, was not on the Technical Council at all. Zavenyagin and Kurchatov were members of the Council, but were not listed as deputy chairmen.

Fifth, the other new subordinate organ created by Stalin's edict—a First Main Directorate of the Council of People's Commissars also was placed under Vannikov's supervision, and Zavenyagin was appointed a first deputy. Vannikov and Zavenyagin thus enjoyed the distinction of serving on all three of the main bodies created by Stalin's edict. Four officials who were not on either the GKO's Special Committee or the Technical Council were appointed deputy heads of the First Main Directorate: Nikolai Borisov, the deputy chairman of Gosplan; Pyotr Meshik, the head of the NKVD's economic directorate and deputy head of the "Smersh" Main Counterintelligence Directorate; Andrei Kasatkin, the First Deputy People's Commissar for the Chemical Industry (which Pervukhin headed); and Pyotr Antropov, a geologist and deputy member of the GKO. Antropov was placed in charge of a commission responsible for the exploration and mining of uranium.

Sixth, the document was forthright about the need for the Soviet Union to ensure access to foreign sources of uranium, including deposits "in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and other countries." Although it did not specifically mention eastern Germany as a source of uranium, the Soviet zone in Germany (which was transformed into the German Democratic Republic in 1949) became the largest supplier by far for the Soviet bomb program. The importance of uranium in Soviet policy toward Germany in the late 1940s should not be underestimated, as Norman Naimark points out in his recent book, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 19451949 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 235-250.2

Seventh, the GKO's Special Committee was given almost unlimited discretion over

its own funding and operations, a sign of the overriding priority that Stalin attached to the development of nuclear weapons. An entire directorate was set up within Gosplan to ensure that all necessary resources were available. Despite the ravages of the war and the need for mass reconstruction, no expense was spared in the drive to build a nuclear bomb. Although the extravagance of Beria's efforts proved troubling to some of the participants, their objections were on practical, not moral, grounds. Pyotr Kapitsa cited this matter (as well as his sharp personal differences with Beria) when he wrote a letter to Stalin in November 1945 asking to be removed from the program. Kapitsa argued that the path chosen by Beria was “beyond our means and will take a long time," and he insisted that a "methodical and well-planned" program would enable the Soviet Union to build nuclear weapons "quickly and cheaply."3

Eighth, Stalin's edict specified the need for increased espionage vis-a-vis the U.S. nuclear program. Until this time, responsibility for Soviet foreign intelligence had been spread among several agencies (and the NKVD's role in the process was very limited), but the edict gave Beria direct control over all nuclear espionage carried out by Soviet intelligence organs, including the People's Commissariat on State Security (NKGB, later renamed the Committee on State Security, or KGB), the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army (RUKA, later renamed the Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, of the Soviet General Staff), and other unspecified intelligence bodies. Copies of this part of the edict (Point 13) were distributed to Vsevolod Merkulov, the People's Commissar for State Security, and Fyodor Fedotovich Kuznetsov, the chief of the RUKA. (Incidentally, the mention of Kuznetsov's surname on the distribution list confirms, for the first time, that he was head of Soviet military intelligence in the 1940s. Kuznetsov is described in Soviet military reference works as having been the deputy chief of the General Staff from 1943 to 1949, but he was never explicitly identified as head of the RUKA.)

Both Merkulov and Kuznetsov had been overseeing a massive operation to gain intelligence about nuclear weapons technology, as the newly released "Venona" documents amply show (for more about these documents, partially decrypted Soviet intelligence

cables recently declassified by the U.S. National Security Agency, see below).4 Merkulov had been giving periodic reports to Beria before August 1945 about the technical progress of the Manhattan Project and about the prospects of locating adequate stores of fissionable material. In mid-October 1945, shortly after the GKO's Special Committee was formed, Merkulov sent a follow-up report to Beria, which drew on elaborate information supplied by the spy Klaus Fuchs in June and September. The report provided a detailed technical overview of the design, dimensions, and components of a plutonium bomb (the type of bomb dropped on Nagasaki). In subsequent months, Merkulov and Kuznetsov continued to furnish invaluable data about bomb technology and uranium supplies. The inclusion of Point 13 in Stalin's edict is one further indication of the crucial role of intelligence in the Soviet nuclear bomb program.

The Russian Government's May 1995 Directive

On 17 February 1995 Russian President Boris Yeltsin issued a decree "On the Preparation and Publication of an Official Compilation of Archival Documents Pertaining to the History of the Development of Nuclear Weapons in the USSR."5 This decree (No. 180) was published in the 1 March 1995 issue of Rossiiskaya gazeta, and an English translation was provided in the Spring 1995 issue of the CWIHP Bulletin (p. 57). The decree stipulated that certain archival materials were to be released for an official compilation (sbornik) of documents (presumably a single volume) on the Soviet Union's pursuit of nuclear weapons between 1945 and 1954. It did not, however, provide for any broader declassification of materials related to the early Soviet nuclear program.

The February 1995 decree indicated that a Working Group was to be established within one month (i.e., by mid-March 1995) to begin considering which documents might be released for an official compilation. This Working Group, formed under the auspices of the Russian government's Commission for the Comprehensive Solution of the Problem of Nuclear Weapons, was not actually set up until 24 May 1995, some two months behind schedule. Directive No. 728-R, signed by Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and published in Rossiiskaya

gazeta on 7 June 1995 (p. 5), listed 20 individuals who were given responsibility for "studying archival documents and developing proposals concerning their declassification" for an official anthology.6 The full text of that directive, including the 20 members of the Working Group, is featured below.

The combination of Yeltsin's decree and Chernomyrdin's directive provides some cause for concern. The announcement of plans for an official anthology is a welcome step, but unless it is followed by a more systematic declassification of archival materials, the proposed anthology will give only a very limited-and perhaps misleading-depiction of the early Soviet nuclear weapons program. Unfortunately, judging from the instructions approved by Yeltsin and Chernomyrdin, it appears that, at least for now, no broader release of documents is under consideration.

The composition of the Working Group also does not bode well. The affiliations and backgrounds of most of the 20 members imply that archival openness will not be their paramount concern:

*** The panel is chaired by Lev Dmitrievich Ryabev, a first deputy Minister of Atomic Energy. Ryabev has decades of experience in the Soviet/Russian nuclear weapons program, including several years (beginning in 1986) when he served as head of the Ministry of Medium Machine-Building, the body now known as the Ministry of Atomic Energy. (Although Ryabev currently is only a first deputy minister rather than a minister, his retention of a senior post in the former Soviet nuclear weapons complex is a sign of his trustworthiness and political acumen.) As an institution, the Ministry of Atomic Energy has been extremely wary of releasing documents that would shed any light on Soviet nuclear weapons developments. Ryabev has been among those who have expressed the need for "great caution."

*** One of the two deputy chairmen of the Working Group, G. A. Tsyrkov, is also a senior official in the Ministry of Atomic Energy. Like Ryabev, Tsyrkov has been leery of divulging any information about Soviet nuclear technology and design practices.

*** Of the other 18 members of the Working Group, five are senior officials from the Atomic Energy Ministry and five

are high-ranking military officers from the Ministry of Defense, including the General Staff. The Defense Ministry, like the Atomic Energy Ministry, has been highly skeptical as an institution about the merits of releasing documents for scholarly purposes. Russian military archivists have been especially disinclined to release items pertaining to nuclear weapons, ostensibly because of concerns about nuclear proliferation. (This policy can be taken to ludicrous extremes. When I worked in the Russian General Staff archive in the summer of 1994, I was told that all documents pertaining to nuclear operations-just operations, not technology-would be sealed off until the year 2046. I asked why that particular year was chosen, but no one seemed to know.)

*** Other members of the Working Group include senior officials from the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Federal Security Service, the Department for the Defense Industry, and the State Technical Commission. (The first two bodies are the main successors to the Soviet KGB, and the last two bodies are under the jurisdiction of the Russian President's apparatus. The State Technical Commission is housed in the same building as the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces.) These four agencies have hardly been noted as champions of archival openness. Documents held by the Foreign Intelligence Service and Federal Security Service, in particular, have been kept tightly sealed away. The role of these two agencies is bound to be critical in the release of documentation, whether for an official anthology or for other purposes. The Foreign Intelligence Service archive houses the most sensitive documents on the role of espionage in the Soviet nuclear weapons program, and the Federal Security Service archive contains documents generated by the Special Committee headed by Lavrentii Beria from August 1945 until his arrest in late June 1953 (see above). So far, there is little indication that access to either agency's document holdings will be expanded.

However, two factors may induce the Foreign Intelligence Service and Federal Security Service to be more willing to release documents about nuclear espionage: First, the U.S. National Security Agency has begun declassifying some of its huge collection of "Venona" transcripts of intercepted Soviet communications from 1939 through 1945. The initial batch, released in

July 1995, contained numerous documents that shed light on the activities of Soviet spies in the Manhattan Project. The disclosure of these materials may erode the traditional secrecy about such matters in Moscow. Second, some officials in the Russian security and intelligence organs may want to release sensitive documents to spotlight the role of espionage in the Soviet nuclear and thermonuclear bomb projects. A fierce debate emerged in Russia in the early 1990s about the relative importance of espionage versus indigenous scientific achievements in the Soviet nuclear/thermonuclear programs. Most observers in both Russia and the West now agree that information provided by Soviet spies was vital in accelerating the construction of the first Soviet fission bomb, but that espionage was of much less importance for the Soviet thermonuclear program. If the release of documents could show that the extent of Soviet nuclear spying was even greater than previously thought, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service and Federal Security Service might be somewhat less averse to the prospects of declassification.

*** Two heads of research institutes specializing in the history of science and technology-V. V. Alekseev and V. M. Orel-are included on the Working Group, but even if they are inclined to press for greater openness (which is by no means certain), they will be far outweighed by officials from the nuclear weapons complex and military establishment.

*** Rudolf Pikhoya, the director of the Russian State Archival Service (Rosarkhiv), is the only panel member from Rosarkhiv. Even if Pikhoya seeks the release of as many documents as possible-and it is far from clear that he will-his influence on the Working Group is inherently limited, despite his position as a deputy chairman. The most valuable documents on the early Soviet nuclear weapons program are stored in archives outside Rosarkhiv's jurisdiction.

*** The presence of Yulii Khariton on the Working Group is encouraging, but it may be largely symbolic. Khariton, who was born in 1904, was one of the key physicists in the early Soviet nuclear program, and is the only living member of the Technical Council that was established in August 1945 to advise Beria's Special Committee (see above). Khariton has given lengthy written and oral testimony over the past few years about the early Soviet nuclear and thermonuclear bomb

programs, and he provided useful information to David Holloway for the book Stalin and the Bomb. No doubt, Khariton is more inclined than the other panel members to urge the release of extensive documentation, especially materials that would shed light on the role of espionage versus indigenous scientific achievements. But because he is in his early 90s, it is unlikely that he will be able to play a central role on the Working Group.

Quite apart from obstacles posed by the composition of the Working Group, it is possible that the Russian government's directive (and Yeltsin's decree) will go largely unimplemented. Several impressive-looking decrees and directives about the declassification of archival materials have been issued by Yeltsin and the Russian government over the past two years, but very little has come of them. Now that the political outlook in Russia is so uncertain, there is little chance that the archival situation will improve anytime soon. If anything, the increased strength of Communist delegates in the Russian parliament could lead to further restrictions on access to major repositories.

If an official anthology of documents about the early Soviet nuclear weapons program is eventually published, it undoubtedly will contain many interesting and valuable materials. Even the release of individual documents can add a good deal to the historical record (see above). But in the absence of a wider declassification of relevant items, the one-time compilation of an official anthology will not reveal as much about early Soviet nuclear developments as one might hope.

1. David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 135. Holloway's book is by far the best source available on the early Soviet nuclear program.

2. See also Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, 174-180. 3. P. L. Kapitsa, Pis 'ma o nauke (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1989), 237-247. On Kapitsa's withdrawal from the program, see Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, 138-144.

4. Some new details about spies in the Manhattan Project are also available from Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, eds., The Secret World of American Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), esp. 216-226. In addition, see Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, 82-88, 90-95, 102-108, 129, and 137-138.

5. In Russian: "O podgotovke i izdanii ofitsial'nogo sbornika arkhivnykh dokumentov po istorii sozdanii yadernogo oruzhiya v SSSR."

6. The directive was published under the rubric "Sbornik

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