"You can see how the system was designed to get families to betray one another," Kramer said. "Stalin was actually removed from the Politburo [the ruling body of the central committee of the Communist party] before he died."

Goldman said the University has acquired valuable Soviet documents before. Perhaps the most famous of these is the Smolensk collection, seized from the Germans--who had stolen it from the Soviet Union--at the end of World War II.

"They gave us our first insight into the Communist party," Goldman said.

Still, Goldman said the O'Neill collection will be even more valuable than the Smolensk collection, as it contains nearly 200 times more information and offers information on the entire Soviet state, not just the city of Smolensk.

The O'Neill collection is currently being processed for shelving in Lamont Library.

Michael C. Herrick, who is in charge of the cataloguing, said processing would take about two months. But 30 reels have already been made available.

Herrick said only half of the collection will be kept at Lamont. Those used not as frequently will be stored in Harvard's depository.

"A lot of this is sort-of run-of-the-mill stuff," Herrick said of the documents that will be stored off-site.