Smolensk Archive

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The Smolensk Archive is the name given to the archives of Smolensk Oblast Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which were captured intact by the army of Nazi Germany when it conquered the city of Smolensk in 1941. The archive was then moved to Germany.

After the defeat of Nazi Germany, a significant part of it eventually ended up in the United States, providing Western scholars and intelligence specialists with unique information on the local workings of the Soviet government during its first two decades - since otherwise such archives were not open to the Western (or any) public.

The archives were returned to Russia by the United States in 2002 [1][2]