Danish personal files from the Comintern archives in Moscow

Announcement, ABA Kopenhagen, Denmark

[This is a Google Translation of a text in Danish - far from perfect, but given the importance of the subject we think it is informative. For the original text in Danish, go to http://www.arbejdermuseet.dk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=827&Itemid=150]

Written by Jesper Jørgensen
Thursday 09 January 2014 09:54

Who was in the 1930s secret courier for the Comintern, and what they talked about when Danish communists visited the Soviet Embassy in Copenhagen in 1970? Previously unknown archival material sheds new light on Danish communism and the Soviet system work in Denmark.

The last three years, ALA News ABA, Center for Cold War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark and the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) had joint research and archive project, entitled Comintern and the Danish communists .

Central to the project is the digitization of the Danish personal matters in Kominternarkivet at RGASPI. This collection of more than 400 cases have not previously been used in its entirety, so it is therefore with great pleasure that we can now provide access to this interesting material from the ABA in Taastrup.

The collection includes cases for known Danish communists, such as Aksel Larsen, Arne Munch-Petersen, Martin Nielsen, Thøger Thoegersen, Knud Jespersen, Jørgen Jensen and a large number of smaller Communists, who in one way or another have had contact with the Soviet system.

In addition, the collection includes cases for a wide range of prominent Danish politicians of both social democratic and bourgeois leanings, including statsministerene from Vilhelm Buhl Jens Otto Krag, and a few other opinion leaders such as Niels Bohr.

As examples of individual cases suggests that stops the cases not in time with the discontinuation of the Comintern in 1943. These records continued after the war under the auspices of the CPSU, the CPSU, right up until the fall of the Wall in 1989.

The cases that vary in size from one page to the small 1,000 pages typically contain biographies, letters, student evaluations from the Soviet party schools and Russian news flash, but also, for example afraporteringer from secret Comintern couriers and from the Soviet Embassy in Copenhagen to the CPSU Central Committee International Department .

The documents are mainly in Russian, German and Danish.

See the registrant of the cases in the ABA's file system . Access to the material by the archive's general access conditions.

An introduced variety of documents from individual cases have been published in bounds Датские кадры Москвы в сталинское время. Избранные документы из личных дел датчан в архиве Коминтерна [Danish Moskvakadrer during the Stalinist period. Selected documents from the Danish personal matters in the Comintern archives], edited by Jesper Jørgensen, Andrei Sorokin, Thomas Wegener Friis, Alexander Chubaryan, Chris Holmsted Larsen, Morten Møller, Anette Eklund Hansen, Svetlana Rosental and Anne-Mette Anker Hansen.

It is available from Oxford University Press .

See also the project release Comintern and the Danish-Soviet relations from 2012.

The project is supported by the Carlsberg Foundation.