Compiled by B. Ivanenko, O. Bazhan, A. Kentii, N. Makovs'ka, A. Soloviova.
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The archive known since 1991 as the Central State Archive of Public Organizations of Ukraine (TsDAHO) preserves the remaining Soviet republic-level records of the former Party Archive of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, which were transferred to state archival control on 27 August 1991. This initial comprehensive guide to TsDAHO-the first guide to a Communist Party archive published in Ukraine-describes a unique complex of documentation open to researchers only since Ukrainian independence in 1991, a large portion of which has now been declassified.
The immediate predecessor of TsDAHO-the Party Archive of the Institute of Party History of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (TsPA KPU)-dates its formal establishment to 1929, when the Unitary Party Archive of the All-Ukrainian Communist Party (IePA VKP[b]) was established in Kharkiv. Its holdings had their origin in the collections of the Central Archive of the Revolution (TsAR) founded in 1921-1922. The central Ukrainian republic-level Communist Party archive was transferred to Kyiv after 1934, when this city became the Ukrainian capital. Although approximately ninety per cent of the prewar Communist Party holdings were lost during World War II, the archive was reorganized and expanded after the war as the hub of a network of Communist Party archives in Ukraine.
As described in this guide, TsDAHO now houses the records of the Central Committees of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Komsomol, as well as records of various Party political departments, educational establishments, and Komsomol organizations. Included are protocols of Central Committee meetings and related materials, plenums, Party congresses, files of subordinate Party organizations, along with the personal papers of many prominent Ukrainian Party leaders. In 1991, TsDAHO received 34,000 file units from the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) regarding individuals repressed in the 1920s-1950s by the Soviet security services GPU, NKVD, KGB (covering Kyiv and Kyiv oblast).
TsDAHO holdings now consist of 158 archival fonds (record groups), with 255,106 separate files. Along with central Communist Party and Komsomol records, the holdings contain documentation on Ukrainian society in the first quarter of the twentieth century, including the revolutionary period, as portrayed by political parties and organizations; the creation and destruction of the party-state system, activities of the party leadership in political, economic and cultural matters of the Soviet Ukrainian state and the leaders' relations with the center in Moscow; the period of Ukrainization in the 1920s; on the activities and repression of cultural and academic elites; collectivization, destruction of farmer-land owners, famines; Ukrainian lands during World War II; the development of Soviet society in Ukraine following the war; social and political developments in the 1980s and early 1990s; and events surrounding the Chornobyl disaster.
The first section of the guide describes the records of the Communist Party, along with those of other political parties and organizations in Ukraine from 1902 to 1996. The second section describes fonds of organizations such as the Komsomol (1920-1991), the Rukh movement (from 1989) and others. The third is dedicated to fonds with documentation on the partisan movement during World War II. The fourth describes fonds of the Commissions on the History of the Civil War and World War II and collections from the Museum of the Struggle for Liberation of Ukraine (Muzei vyzvol'noż borot'by Ukrażny; after 1946, the Ukrainian Museum) in Prague. That collection (received from Ukrainian security services in 1988) is particularly rich in files of Ukrainian émigré organizations and personal papers of prominent émigrés during the interwar period. The fifth section is devoted to fonds of personal papers and collections associated with individuals.
The description of each fond includes the full name of the fond, previous names, institutional history, a list of opysy (sections with separate inventories within the fond), and a short annotation highlighting files or documents of special significance.
An appendix provides an interarchival directory listing fonds of the of former oblast-level Party archives that are now housed in state oblast archives in Ukraine. The guide includes a bibliography of relevant literature, personal-name and geographic indexes, a glossary of specialized terminology, and a list of abbreviations.
Prepared and published with the support
of the Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University,
and the Ukrainian Studies Fund, Inc.
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