RGASPI

Abbreviation for Rossiiskij gosudarstvennyj arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoj istorii (Russian State Archive of Social and Political History), known until 1999 as RTsKhDNI, for Rossijskoe tsentral’noe khranilische dokumentov novejshej istorii (Russian Central Depository of Documents of Contemporary History). This archive was established in late 1991 as a government archive at the federal level, with the former Central Party Archive as its base. It houses collections of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR until 1953; personal collections of Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and other Soviet Communist Party leaders; and collections pertaining to the history of the international Communist movement and the Comintern, including the Communist Party of the United States.

In July 1992, the archive concluded several agreements with foreign partners for the funding and publication of documentary anthologies on the history of the Comintern and national Communist parties. One was an agreement with Yale University for the publication of an anthology on the history of the Comintern and the Communist movement in the USA, as well publication of the letters of Joseph Stalin to V.M. Molotov and the Letters of Georgy Dimitrov to Joseph Stalin.