Archival materials - diaries, correspondence etc.?

[Maxim]

Hello all.

I'm a postgraduate student from Australia studying Russian history. In particular, I have been researching a thesis on the social lives of the Soviet elite in the Stalin period. After over a year of research, including a trip to the Russian archives, I am coming to the conclusion that there is simply not enough available material for me to write the thesis I had envisaged, however, which has made me think of ways to  change my subject slightly in order to get around this very real problem.

As you would be aware, the Soviet Union enacted some very progressive (and also regressive) policies with regards to women's emancipation, the role of the family and the organisation of society. It had been my intention to compare and contrast the private lives of prominent Bolsheviks such as Molotov, Ordzhonikidze etc. with the progress of Soviet reform to seek out the relationship between the family life and personal beliefs/actions of Bolsheviks and the movement towards more traditional family values as the Soviet Union 'grew older'. To this end I have been seeking out personal diaries and biographies by Bolshevik leaders from this time and have visited RGASPI - the archives of socio-political research in Moscow - to go through what correspondence and materials there are there...

That is all by means of introduction. Having gotten this far in my research (time-wise and burrowing-for-information-wise), but not having enough material to go on with, my hope now is to find a good way of broadening my research, without detracting from my thesis. One promising option seems to be to examine the interface between the Russian 'elite' and social policy under the tsars and during the time of the provisional government also. Although I have next to no knowledge of tsarist history, there seem to be parallels that can be drawn between the two eras to some extent, and knowledge of 'traditional Russian views of the family' can also inform my discussion of Bolshevik social circles.

I followed the link to this forum from the excellent collection of personal correspondence of the last tsar with his wife, and am particularly interested in finding out what particular materials like this would be available to a researcher wanting to find out more about the social lives of the political elite from about 1910-1917. Even more specifically, I am wondering which archives and fondy in those archives might be useful to them.

The type of documents I'm interested in include diaries of members of any of the Duma or of the provisional government, accounts by advisors to the Romanovs, personal correspondence between wives and husbands in such positions, autobiographies and biographies by close family members, or even secondary sources that give details of the demographics of Russia's ruling elite (intermarriage of elite families, interactions of elite on a private level, ages, children etc. etc.).

If anyone can suggest any sources of information that might interest me, I would be very grateful. Forgive the length of the post, but to be any more specific, I'd be interested in:

1] Any English or Russian-language publications or articles with husband/wife correspondence or diary entries by the 'political elite' from 1910-17, or a general idea of where to search or what types of materials are available.
2] Whether GARF (State Archives of the Russian Federation) is the best place in Moscow to look for archival materials of Nicholas II, and whether there are any guides as to fondy and opisi available for me to check what's in the collection before going to Moscow. Is f. 601 there the best source of personal materials on the last tsar?
3] If the original Russian of the letters between the tsar and tsaritsa is available in publication, or someone could give me the exact archival reference for them.
4] Whether there are any archival collections outside Russia - like at the Hoover Institute or Stanford - that contain much of this material and might be worth a look either instead of or in addition to GARF.
5] If anyone has any recommendations for books on the everyday life or social interactions of the Russian political elite before 1917. I'm wondering, for instance, if Romanov Autumn would be a good place for me to start to get a taste of Romanov social life, together with perhaps Massie's biography of Nicholas and Alexandra (which I haven't read, giving an indication of just how new this area is to me).

Sorry to ramble and have such specific requests - I am hoping to go overseas to Moscow and elsewhere this year to collect more materials, so am keen to find out what's out there as quickly as possible to avoid being there in the depth of winter

[Georgiy]

3] If the original Russian of the letters between the tsar and tsaritsa is available in publication, or someone could give me the exact archival reference for them.

The letters were actually written in English, as this was for all intents and purposes the Empress's native language. The Tsar's English was absolutely fluent as well, and it is said he spoke like an Englishman.

I have however seen Russian translations of the Empress's letters to the Tsar, in a version of "The Letters of the Tsaritsa to the Tsar." They are translated using pre-revolutionary letters of the Russian alphabet, though it was published of course well after the Revolution. The book is in the library of Victoria University, Wellington New Zealand. I am in Auckland however, so can't give you any further details. I do not know if "The Letters of the Tsar to the Tsaritsa" also has a version in both English and pre-Revolutionary Russian.

[Maxim]

Ah - thankyou, Georgiy. I knew they wrote in English from time to time but didn't know it was the language of basically all their correspondence: I'd assumed that sign-offs like "your wify" were some attempt to translate a Russian diminutive into English (I guess they were, but had already been translated by Aleksandra).

Thankyou for the information about the book with pre-revolutionary spelling. I've found a copy of the letters in an English hardback at an extravagant price, so have ordered that, although will try an inter-library loan of the Russian version if it seems at all useful.

[Belochka]

I have however seen Russian translations of the Empress's letters to the Tsar, in a version of "The Letters of the Tsaritsa to the Tsar." They are translated using pre-revolutionary letters of the Russian alphabet, though it was published of course well after the Revolution.

I have a tired old copy of this book. It was published by Slovo in Berlin sometime in the 1920's.

Part I provides the Russian translation (how odd to say that), while Part II provides the original English.

There are 199 pieces of correspondence, with editorial annotations.

[s66405h]

Here’s an interesting link to the online memoirs of the last French Ambassador to Imperial Russia, Maurice Paléologue in English.
http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/memoir/FrAmbRus/palTC.htm#TC