KGB Files Open to Public

To the editors:

Your article "Declassified KGB Files," (News, Oct. 6) contains some misunderstandings about the microfilm collection of Soviet archives, complete sets of which are now located at both the Hoover Institution and Harvard University.

The Hoover Institution was not simply the financial backer of the project that produced this collection. With the Russian State Archives (Rosarkhiv), Hoover initiated and directed the project. Since 1992, when I signed an agreement with the Russian State Archives, Hoover and Rosarkhiv have microfilmed over 12 million pages of documentation from the Communist Party and State archives, and are now filming documents on the Soviet Gulag. Hoover provided all the necessary resources for the project. An advisory board composed of scholars representing the Hoover Institution and Rosarkhiv selected the documents filmed for the collection.

One of the project's goals is to make the microfilm collection as widely available to scholars as possible. Accordingly, Hoover and Rosarkhiv agreed to publish the collection by offering it for sale. Hoover's $3 million investment to create the collection has thus made it possible for libraries around the world, including the Lamont Library at Harvard, to gain access to an valuable scholarly resource at a very reasonable cost. As a result of its purchase, Harvard has acquired an archival collection that will serve its students and scholars well for many years to come.

Finally, I wish to correct the false impression in your story that the collection at Hoover is available only to post-doctoral scholars. Access to this collection is opened without charge to everyone, including the general public.

Charles G. Palm

Oct. 11, 1999

The author is the Deputy Director of the Hoover Institution.