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Cold War International History Project
Virtual Archive
Collection : The Mitrokhin Archive
| The Mitrokin Archive -- A Note on Sources |
Date:
1990 |
Source:
Vasily Mitrokhin |
Description:
A note on sources contextualizing the Mitrokhin Archive. Please read this first in order to understand the nature of the material. |
THE MITROKHIN ARCHIVE
GEOGRAPHICAL VOLUMES
All the Archive material is ultimately derived from contemporaneous manuscript notes made by MITROKHIN as KGB documents passed through his hands in the Archive Department of the KGB First Chief Directorate (Foreign Intelligence) – the FCD.
The source material falls into three broad categories:
• Top Secret FCD and Directorate S ("Illegals") files;
• Secret background papers and manuals held in the restricted-access FCD Operational Library;
• Articles taken from the Sbornik KGB, the secret KGB in-house quarterly journal containing (sanitised) case histories and success stories for the edification of the staff.
After his retirement in 1984, MITROKHIN organised his manuscript fragments (initially roughly sorted in dozens of brown envelopes) to compile a series of volumes dealing with KGB activities in various key area of the world: Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, India and subsequently the USA and the UK. All these volumes were typed out by MITROKHIN himself in the Soviet Union (and eventually brought out by him to London in 1992).
As each volume was completed, the underlying manuscript notes were systematically destroyed by MITROKHIN, primarily for security reasons, but also to avoid inadvertent duplication.
In London, the 8 geographical volumes were rapidly scanned and roughly translated, to provide raw reports and pointers for more detailed investigation. The present English rendering is provisional, unedited and contains passages which may have to be withheld for legal reasons. Any cuts eventually made in the English text will equally have to be made in the Russian original.*
Besides the geographical volumes, MITROKHIN produced 2 volumes of case histories, also typed by him in the Soviet Union (and subsequently incorporated in the “Chekisms” Anthology).
He also brought over 27 large envelopes crammed with manuscript fragments covering aspects of the KGB's work which could not be fitted in the Moscow-typed volumes.
Much (but not all) of this manuscript material was typed out by MITROKHIN in London, and subsequently translated and analysed. It has extensively been used as source material for the Penguin MITROKHIN ARCHIVE Volumes I and II and may also appear in the "CHEKISMS" Anthology, now in preparation.
September 2004
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The Mitrokhin Archive
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3F58AC3C-97DA-B9E5-4A1D764B0D6A4AF8 |
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