I believe that no one has a copyright on history, and since I was lucky to receive these documents, I consider it my duty to share them with all researchers.

Vladimir Tolts:

Most of the documents relate to the international activities of the CPSU. All are marked: “Secret”, “Top Secret”, and even more so - “Special folder”, “Of special importance”.

Vadim Zagladin:

Any documents that came out of the archive were classified as “Secret”. It was believed that the activities of the CPSU in the communist movement, and in international relations in general, were a matter of state secret.

Anatoly Chernyaev:

I’m not hiding anything, that’s how it is: I just don’t know anything...

Vladimir Tolts:

A former Soviet political prisoner and former employees of the former Central Committee of the former CPSU in the program " Vladimir Bukovsky and the international affairs of Soviet communists on the Internet ."

[...]

Together with the famous public figure Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky , (he is now in our Prague studio), employees of the Gorbachev Foundation are participating in the program: former deputy heads of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee Vadim Valentinovich Zagladin, (he ended his party career as an adviser to the President of the USSR) and Anatoly Sergeevich Chernyaev , (his party career ended as an assistant Gorbachev and sitting with him in Foros). I recently met with both of them in Moscow.

The first question is for Vladimir Bukovsky: about the history of the archive that has now appeared on the Internet.

Vladimir Bukovsky:

- This story begins in 1992, when I was invited by the then Yeltsin leadership to help them with the process in the Constitutional Court. (In 1992, the CPSU challenged Yeltsin’s decree banning the CPSU in the Constitutional Court, and they filed a lawsuit, arguing that this decree was unconstitutional.) The legal side was complex, and the judges were known for their pro-communist sentiments, so Yeltsin’s circle was afraid.

Burbulis called me and asked me to come and help them with this court case. To which I told him: if you open the archives, I will come, but if you don’t open them, I won’t come. Without archives, you have no business, and I have no interest. They said: we will open...

And so it was, the archives were open during the Constitutional Court and passed through a special presidential commission headed by Poltoranin, the then minister of mass information. They decided which of the documents we requested could be declassified for the needs of the court and which could not. Thus, I gained access to a large number of documents.

The commission worked quite broadly and they gave us almost everything we asked for. Of course, I understood perfectly well that they wouldn’t let me copy it, they’d let me read it, since they promised, but they wouldn’t let me copy it. Not directly, they wouldn’t dare to refuse me outright, but they would say that the copier doesn’t work, there’s no paper, and so on... So I bought myself a Japanese laptop computer and a hand-held scanner, which at that time was a novelty even in the West. I figured that this had never been seen in Russia, and so it was. I arrived quite brazenly at the court itself and in the building of the CPSU Central Committee on Old Square, where the archives themselves were, sat with this computer and scanner, and scanned what I needed from all the material accumulated for the court. It all ended with the fact that at the end of the trial these archives were again classified, a law was passed on a 30-year period of secrecy, and it is still in effect.

Some of these materials, however, the Archives Department managed to declassify; a small part was declassified, which now has the name “Fond-89”. It is accessible to archivists and researchers, more or less accessible. But I have most of these documents submitted to the Constitutional Court, I have about 5 times more than in Archive-89. And based on the materials of these documents, I later, after the end of the trial, wrote a book, “ The Moscow Trial ,” which was published in many countries: Germany, France, Italy, Poland, and so on. It was also published in Russia, in a very small edition, privately published, with Solzhenitsyn’s money, by the way. The circulation was tiny, the book sold out immediately, and that was the end of it.

But since I couldn’t use all the documents in the book, it’s physically impossible, then the book would be endless, I thought that for the sake of historical truth, I should make these documents available to the public, to researchers. And then my American friends, computer scientists, in particular, Yula Zaks , so well-known in our human rights movement, took such an initiative, worked for more than a year, translated everything into the necessary media and “posted” it on the Internet on one of the pages of Johns Hopkins University. This is where this archive is now located, it is approximately 1200 documents, with a total volume of almost 7 thousand pages.

Vladimir Tolts:

- Why does a significant part of the documents in your archive on the Internet relate to the activities of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee? And in general, tell the listeners what this documentary block is.

Vladimir Bukovsky:

- Strange as it may sound, I was much more interested in the external activities of the CPSU than the internal ones. You will understand, as a person involved in archives, you will understand me, because we more or less imagined the internal activities, we might not know some minor details, of course, it is always nice to see a document, all this is true, but I didn’t have such a rush, such a zeal to look at these documents. I was much more interested in the external activities of the CPSU, which, by the way, is considered the most secret, which is why there is this 30-year period of secrecy. In particular, "Fond-89" has almost no documents on foreign policy. So I focused exactly on this.

Vladimir Tolts:

Question to my Moscow interlocutors: what is the reason for such secrecy in the activities of the Central Committee and the International Department in which they worked, in particular?

Vadim Zagladin:

- Any documents coming from the department were classified as “Secret”, because it was believed that the activities of the CPSU in the communist movement, and in international relations in general, were a matter of state secret.

Anatoly Chernyaev:

- I can’t tell you anything. But, nevertheless, I’m not hiding anything, that’s how it is - I just didn’t know anything about it. And I had nothing to do with all these issues - financial, closed, underground - in my work.

Vladimir Tolts:

Vladimir Bukovsky has his own explanation...

Vladimir Bukovsky:

It’s just that the activities of the CPSU themselves were secret, they were a secret organization. Even in one of Andropov’s documents there is “ Conspiracy Documents of the Central Committee .” That is, they seemed to be underground, in 1717 they won, but the party did not fully emerge from the underground, it was underground, and since it was engaged in spreading the world revolution, and their task, the task as such, was to cause a world revolution, and the USSR was only a springboard for this revolution.

Vladimir Tolts:

Former deputy heads of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee, Vadim Zagladin and Anatoly Chernyaev, discuss the activities of this institution and its documents, which ended up on the Internet thanks to Vladimir Bukovsky, who is in our Prague studio.

I think it would be useful for our listeners, many of whom already have a vague idea of the structure and activities of the Central Committee that has sunk into oblivion, to explain what exactly the International Department of this organization did, what goals were set for it and how they were achieved.

Vadim Zagladin:

- His official task was to maintain relations with communist workers' parties around the world. Then, gradually, these functions expanded, because socialist and social democratic parties, and then generally different political parties with which we maintained contact, also became involved in the orbit of our work.

Anatoly Chernyaev:

- The International Department was a continuation of the Comintern and even in its initial leadership cadres it inherited the Comintern. And Ponomarev left the Comintern, where he was Dimitrov’s assistant at one time. And the main function is the connection between the CPSU and communist parties around the world. The department was an organ of the Central Committee and performed certain functions of the Central Committee.

- The Central Committee had an ideology, the ultimate meaning of this ideology was that humanity would inevitably and inexorably come to communism. Accordingly, the functions of the department were to have some personnel who prepared the coming of communism, who prepared it ideologically, politically and in the form of some very specific organizational relationships. So our work was subordinated to this ideology and this goal.

Vladimir Tolts:

- And the department employees themselves, did they believe in this chimera - in the possibility of achieving this goal?

Vadim Zagladin:

- If we talk specifically about the people who worked there, they had different degrees of cynicism, different degrees of belief in this final goal. I was one of the people who never believed that communism was possible. Nevertheless, life assigned me to this service, and I served conscientiously and honestly.

Vladimir Tolts:

- How effective was the activity of this group of people with varying degrees of cynicism? Actually, the general ending is known - the collapse of the international communist movement, which, however, cannot be considered as the merit of the International Department of the Central Committee alone. But now I am interested in a private question, without an answer to which it is difficult to evaluate the documents of the “Bukovsky archive”: how did the department’s employees and their superiors, the Politburo, evaluate the effectiveness of their work?

Vadim Zagladin:

- Efficiency can be assessed from different perspectives. If we talk about efficiency in the sense of the effectiveness of carrying out instructions from management, then I would say that our efficiency was very high, all instructions were carried out, of course. And in my opinion, at a good level, because the International Department differed from all the others in its very high concentration of specialists.

The other side of effectiveness: did it influence, say, the improvement of the communist movement or give it strength, long-term existence or not? Of course, the answer here should be negative, but not because the department worked poorly, but because the communist movement itself gradually entered a period of decline.

But we tried, especially when speaking to audiences that were not departmental or central, to somehow explain, saying that a period of adaptation to new conditions was underway, a period of restructuring of some kind of internal work. But in fact, the point was that the movement was gradually losing its capabilities, because it increasingly came into conflict with the demands of the time, with the requirements of the politics of its own countries, with their situations. The dogmatic current in the communist movement became a big obstacle to its work, and we could not turn this current in any way, because we ourselves stood in these positions.

Vladimir Tolts:

Document from Bukovsky's archive:

"Top secret"

Special folder S 2309.

Central Committee of the CPSU. Question from the leadership of the Communist Party of El Salvador.

The General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of El Salvador, Comrade Handal, visited Vietnam at the beginning of July of this year, where he was received by the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Comrade Le Duan. As Comrade Handal reported, in a conversation with Comrade Le Duan, he raised the question of the Vietnamese side providing the Salvadoran comrades waging an armed struggle against the military junta with Western-made weapons (this word is handwritten). This request was granted. However, Comrade Le Duan, as Comrade Handal reported, advised us to contact our Soviet comrades on the issue of transportation. In this regard, Comrade Handal sent a request to the Central Committee of the CPSU (coded telegram from the city of Havana, special number 662 dated July 30 of this year) to provide assistance in transporting from Hanoi to the city of Havana by Aeroflot aircraft in batches (hereinafter by hand - V.T.) of weapons and ammunition weighing 60-80 tons. As for the transfer of weapons from the city of Havana to El Salvador, Comrade Handal personally agreed on this with Comrade Fidel Castro. We would consider it possible to satisfy the request of Comrade Handal and entrust the transportation (again by hand - V.T.) of weapons for Salvadoran friends from the city of Hanoi to the city of Havana in September-October of this year to the Ministry of Civil Aviation. The costs of delivering the specified cargo to the city of Havana could be attributed to the allocations from the State Budget of the USSR for the provision of gratuitous assistance to foreign states. With the Deputy Minister of Civil Aviation, Comrade S.S. Pavlov. and the First Deputy Minister of Finance of the USSR, Comrade V.V. Dementsev. Agreed.

The draft resolution of the CPSU Central Committee is attached.

Deputy Head of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee A. Chernyaev.

August 8, 1980.

S 25 C 1458."

Vladimir Tolts:

In May 1999, at the Gorbachev Foundation, I read this document and other papers with the same signature about the military-sabotage training of 30 comrades from Latin America to Anatoly Sergeevich Chernyaev and asked him: what kind of life was behind these “Soviet secret” documents?

Anatoly Chernyaev:

“I can’t explain anything to you about life, because even if my signature is there correctly, it’s probably still there, or maybe it was just sealed up, but I’ve never been involved in Latin America, I’ve never had anything to do with it.

The only time I went to Chile, the delegation was headed by Zhukov, a Pravda journalist, but I never had anything to do with Latin America. I don’t know the Spanish language, I don’t know any people personally, except those I met in Chile.

I do not rule out that I could have accidentally been “on the farm” at that time, for example, there was no first deputy, there was no Ponomarev, there was no Brutents , who was involved in Latin America, or someone else who was involved, a special deputy in the profile. I worked in the Scandinavian countries, England, the United States of America, sometimes in combination with France and Italy, Spain, sometimes Germany, but this was also by chance.

My work in the International Department was strictly literary and theoretical: we compiled information, drafted reports to Ponomarev and the leadership of the Politburo, and public speeches by Ponomarev . We participated in the preparation of reports to Brezhnev and other members of the Politburo. This was my job. If indeed my signature is there, then that’s where my participation in this work ended; I knew nothing more about these Salvadorans, about these Uruguayans who were mentioned there, from beginning to end.

Vladimir Tolts:

Another document from Bukovsky’s archive:

"Top secret. Special folder.

S 2551.

Central Committee of the CPSU. Request from the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USA, Comrade Ges Hall.

The General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USA, Comrade Gass Hall, asked to receive his personal representative in Moscow for special training, who would carry out his special assignments. A member of the party leadership, who carried out special assignments for Comrade Gass Hall for a long time, was relieved of these duties due to serious illness. We would consider it possible to satisfy the request of Comrade Gass Hall. The reception and service of the representative of Comrade Ges Hall will be entrusted to the International Department and Administration of the Affairs of the CPSU Central Committee, and the organization of training for 60 days will be entrusted to the State Security Committee of the USSR. It was agreed with the Chairman of the State Security Committee of the USSR, Comrade Andropov. The expenses for the travel of the representative of Comrade Ges Hall from the USA to the USSR and back, as well as for his stay in the USSR, will be charged to the party budget. The draft resolution of the CPSU Central Committee is attached.

Deputy Head of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee V. Zagladin.

September 1, 1980.

½ 25 C 1597".

Vladimir Tolts:

In May 1999, Vadim Valentinovich Zagladin recalled little about the special training of “American comrades”:

Vadim Zagladin:

- I don’t know about the United States, because I was not specifically involved in this batch and I never received documents of this kind.

[...]

Vladimir Tolts:

Recently in Moscow, collecting material for a future series of programs about the end of the CPSU, the Soviet Union, and what grew from their ruins , I met with many members and workers of the Central Committee, including the former deputy heads of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee at different times, Vadim Valentinovich Zagladin and Anatoly Sergeevich Chernyaev. I will introduce you in full to the recordings of these conversations when the still-conceived series of programs about the history of the end of the party and the Union goes on air. But today I have selected only some fragments of these records related to the documents of the Bukovsky archive.

When you read the inventory of the archive, you inevitably notice how much material is related to special training: this includes encryption and radio, and military sabotage training, and many other things for foreign communists. Here are a few lines from this inventory at random:

"August '70. KGB question; Politburo decision on organizing official encryption communications for the body of the Central Committee of the Italian Communist Party, which deals with the organization of radio communications with the KGB.

May '74. On providing special assistance to the Italian Communist Party. Politburo decision S P 136/53. Special training for 12 people.

January '79. About the request of the leadership of the Italian Communist Party. Resolution of the Secretariat of the Central Committee. Special training for 15 people.

May '80. About the request of the leadership of the Portuguese Communist Party. Resolution of the Secretariat of the Central Committee. Purchase of foreign-made special equipment.

May '88. About the request of the leadership of the Progressive Party of the Working People of Cyprus. Resolution of the Secretariat. Special training.

Next... About the request of the General Chairman of the Republican Turkish Party of Cyprus Osgur. Resolution of the Secretariat. Special training.

January '89. On an appeal from the leadership of the Labor Party of Ireland. Notes of the International Department of the Central Committee dated January 6, 1989 and the KGB dated December 21, 1988. Refusal of special training for five people."

Well, and so on...

When you read all this, it begins to seem that taking care of this very “special training” was one of the most important problems of the International Department of the Central Committee and the Central Secretariat. However, Vadim Zagladin thinks differently...

Vadim Zagladin:

- I can say that “most important” is a complete exaggeration. There have indeed been cases when parties asked us to train, say, radio operators, bearing in mind the possibility of a state of emergency in their countries. In addition, there were people's liberation movements that waged armed struggle; naturally, they needed preparation. If we were talking about ordinary military personnel, others did this, and if we were talking about party cadres who were supposed to wage an armed struggle, then the Department did this, too. Therefore, special operations concerned only these groups of people.

Vladimir Tolts:

I drew Vadim Valentinovich’s attention to the fact that often special training was given to representatives of the communist parties of those democratic countries where there was no sign of either a military coup or an impending dictatorship, for example, Italy and France, which he knows well.

Vadim Zagladin:

- As for the Italian and French, here you are a person who knows the West well, yet, apparently, you overestimate it in some sense. Because Italian comrades, I knew very well all the work of the Italian Party, the situation in the country and I still love this country very much, the people I met there before and am meeting now, situations arose several times when the party could be banned, when there could be a coup d’etat, and they had to prepare for these cases. Because sitting and just waiting for someone to put you behind bars is absolutely not the position that a reasonable person should take.

Vladimir Tolts:

From the Bukovsky archive:

"S 0104. Central Committee of the CPSU. On the request of the leadership of the Italian Communist Party.

The leadership of the Italian Communist Party (comrade Pecchiole) appealed to the CPSU Central Committee with a request to send 15 Italian communists to the USSR for special training (hereinafter by V.T.). We would consider it possible to satisfy the request of the IKP leadership. The issue was agreed upon with the USSR State Security Committee, Comrade Chebrikov.

The draft resolution of the CPSU Central Committee is attached.

Deputy Head of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee V. Zagladin.

January 10, 1979.

S 25 S 64".

- Well, for example: why do the Italian communists train cryptographers?

Vadim Zagladin:

- For the same cases. They never maintained encrypted communication with us, maybe they did with each other, I don’t know, I fully admit that some party organizations maintained encrypted communication with their center. Why not? Others are doing this too...

Vladimir Tolts:

From the Bukovsky archive:

"Subject to return within 24 hours. Central Committee of the CPSU, General Department, first sector.

Top secret. Special folder.

S P 17123.

Comrades Andropov, Ponomarev.

Extract from minutes No. 171 of the meeting of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee dated August 3, 1970.

Question of the State Security Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. First: agree with the proposals set out in the note of the State Security Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated July 28, 1970 No. 2052-A. Second: to instruct the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee to recommend to the Central Committee of the Italian Communist Party to determine the need for retraining of radio operators of the Italian Communist Party, taking into account that due to the age of their training (beginning of 1968), they could have forgotten the rules of working on high-speed radio stations. Together with the State Security Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, determine practical measures agreed upon with the Central Committee of the ICP for organizing official encrypted communications by the bodies of the Central Committee of the ICP, which deals with the organization of radio communications with the State Security Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Third: to allow the State Security Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR to transfer gratuitously to the Italian Communist Party 5 Selenga radio stations with appropriate equipment and to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the People's Republic of Bulgaria 2 sets of receiving equipment of the Shift-69 type with spare equipment. Provide the IKP Central Committee with the necessary encryption documentation to organize a closed service line of communication with the State Security Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR.

Secretary of the Central Committee."

Vladimir Tolts:

I also asked Anatoly Chernyaev about “special training”.

Anatoly Chernyaev:

Now you can show me these documents, let me admit that my signature is there, but apart from this signature, I can’t tell you anything about the fate of these people for whom I worked for, in their future, whether they arrived, whether they studied, where they went later. But our department was really involved, and in this Lenin school there was a division, in Pushkino, where they lived, where they worked secretly; it was a more or less legal organization; there were several people there, about a dozen or so, from different countries, who were trained in various methods of underground armed struggle. That's all I heard.

Vladimir Tolts:

When you get acquainted with the Bukovsky Archive, you pay attention to the density and diversity of connections between the International Department of the Central Committee and the KGB. How was the relationship between these two companies built?

Vadim Zagladin:

- I was the first deputy head of the Department, in fact I led the Department not only when Ponomarev was not there, but also in everyday work, and I can tell you that, firstly, the KGB never commanded us, absolutely, it was completely excluded, on the contrary - yes. Secondly, I personally had contacts with the KGB in those cases when I asked them either to find out something, or to send some information to me, which was received through their channels or in other cases, Ponomarev already did this, then Dobrynin did it, when it came to transferring funds to the party. This was done through the KGB, but this was done exclusively by high-ranking department heads; I could no longer do it. I could give a recommendation, give or not give, say, something, but all the issues related to the transfer of what was done through the KGB, I did not deal with this. Third, during the perestroika period I was in more frequent contact with the KGB, but on completely different issues. It was mainly and first of all about facilitating the release of certain prisoners of conscience or allowing someone to travel abroad, because the absurdity of detaining these people was clear to any of our workers immediately, long ago, before perestroika, but we could not do anything.

Vladimir Tolts:

One of the cases of release mentioned by Vadim Zagladin even before perestroika was the exchange of Vladimir Bukovsky, who was in a Soviet prison, for the head of the local Communist Party, Luis Corvalan, who was arrested in Chile. There are also documents on this topic in Bukovsky’s archive, but Vladimir assesses the functions of the International Department in this case more than modestly:

Vladimir Bukovsky:

You know, after all, it was not the International Department that was involved in this; it prepared some certificates, but these decisions were made only by the Politburo. For some reason, it was believed that in general everything that concerned dissidents, no matter how funny it may seem, was decided only by the Politburo at the highest level. And of course, exchange issues, naturally, since this concerns foreign policy. The International Department could prepare information on this matter; in particular, my exchange in the International Department was handled by the person who oversaw Latin America - Brutents. His signature is on many documents from the period of negotiations about my exchange, for an obvious reason - since Chile is the country of my “accomplice” Corvalan, for whom I was exchanged, then it was necessary to have some kind of relationship with Chile, know, interact, and so on, this is what Brutints did in the International Department. But he did not make decisions, he only prepared certificates, all decisions were made by the Politburo. Let's say, the final document of the Politburo during my exchange - it was adopted 4 days before the exchange, somewhere on December 14-15 - there are three signatures: there is the signature of Gromyko, Andropov, Ponomarev - the head of the International Department. So anyway, at the final stage of the decision in the Politburo, the head of the International Department had, as it were, an equal voice with everyone, he represented this decision.

As for the later period, perestroika, when, as we know, quite a lot of political prisoners were released - almost all political prisoners - then even then this issue was resolved exclusively by the Politburo. The International Department had a very indirect relation to this, since no such subtle things (like Chile and so on) were involved; the International Department in this case did not even draw up certificates. Those decisions of the Politburo that I saw were made, as a rule, on the basis of KGB reports reporting on the presence of political prisoners, their number, the degree of their readiness to repent, say, and so on, since Gorbachev released only those who were ready to give a signature not to continue their activities, only at the very end he began to release everyone in a row, and in the initial stage of release he demanded that the prisoner give such a signature. So, reports came from the KGB, (not from the International Department), about the state of affairs with political prisoners and were always decided at the Politburo level.

As for Corvalan, I found quite a lot of interesting documents. Our entire exchange is of course in my documents, in the decisions of the Politburo, this is more or less known. But it turned out that there was still a continuation of this story, that in the year 83 Corvalan, as stated, at his own request, was sent illegally back to Chile. He underwent plastic surgery, was given fake documents, and with these fake documents and a greatly changed appearance, he illegally entered Chile, where he led the underground struggle of the communists against Pinochet. In 1989, he found himself in a stupid situation: Pinochet left, held elections and retired, left politics, the country seemed to already have democracy, but he, as they say, “still derails trains.” And so he writes, reports to the Central Committee, and the International Department reports to the Politburo, that it would be good to bring Comrade Corvalan back illegally to Moscow, change his appearance back to his previous one and give him old legal documents so that he could legally go to Chile and legally engage in political activities, which was done in 1989. However, according to Corvalan himself, the second plastic surgery was unsuccessful. Last year, Russian television made a fairly large program about our entire exchange, and they took the time to go to Chile and interview Corvalan. So Corvalan complains that his nose, his famous hooked nose, which is why his underground nickname was “Eagle”, they never managed to restore completely, he lost his main feature, his trademark - this eagle nose. He was clearly upset by this and cursed.

Vladimir Tolts:

To be fair, it should be noted that in the Bukovsky archive, now available to all Internet users, not all important secrets of the sphere of activity of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee are presented equally fully. This is also due to what documents were available to Vladimir Bukovsky during the preparation for the sessions of the Constitutional Court and to his personal preferences and interests.

Let's take, for example, such an important, most unstudied problem as the transportation of party funds abroad , and - this is also very important - money from the State Budget, which the Politburo disposed of easily, as if it were its own party money. The “Bukovsky Archive” contains a lot of materials about assistance to the so-called “firms of friends”, about the transfer of party funds to one party or another. The amounts are significant, sometimes a million or more dollars. True, to my current interlocutors from the then Central Committee they seem insignificant.

Vadim Zagladin:

First of all, I want to draw your and our listeners’ attention to the fact that the amounts that the International Department had from the State Budget, or rather not the International Department, but the Politburo of the Central Committee, because all the amounts were allocated by the Politburo of the Central Committee, these are all completely insignificant amounts, these are pennies compared to the amounts that were spent in the country or outside the country. After all, if we sometimes take our bribe takers, then each of them took tens of times more than was allocated to all fraternal parties in a year, hundreds of times more!..

Vladimir Tolts:

Here Vadim Valentinovich Zagladin and I differ in our assessments. After all, let’s say, in 1976, Gass Hall alone was given two million dollars at a time to compensate for his election campaign expenses; multiply that by a hundred - and even now no one takes such bribes! Well, if we return to the Bukovsky Archive, I repeat, there are many such documents there. There are no general documents on the commercialization of the CPSU and on the transfer of its wealth abroad, such as Phalen’s memorandum of March 28, 1990, known to researchers. Unfortunately, my interlocutors from the International Department could not fill this archival gap - we, they say, did not do this... The topic, however, does not become less important from all this, I will return to it later.

And now let's talk about something equally important - the collapse of the international communist movement.

Vadim Zagladin:

Gradually, the movement lost its capabilities, because it increasingly came into conflict with the demands of the time, with the requirements of the politics of its own countries, with their situation. The dogmatic current in the communist movement became a big obstacle to his work. And we could not turn this current in any way, because we ourselves stood in these positions. Actually, the task was, as they said then, the purity of Marxism-communism, or as one of our comrades said: we worked as a bath and laundry trust.

Vladimir Tolts:

This bath and laundry trust, as you know, went bankrupt; its papers remained, which became available to us - the client of this bath - paradoxically, thanks to one of the most active opponents of the world-communist wash. Now he’s telling me about what he created - about the “ Bukovsky Archive ” - like this...

Vladimir Bukovsky:

You see, one of the tasks, one of the goals of putting my archive on the Internet is an attempt, as it were, to encourage the opening of further archives. After all, it turns out to be a completely absurd thing - these documents, which you can now see on the Internet by clicking your mouse, they are still secret in Russia, if you go to the archive, they will not give them to you, but you can look at them on the Internet. By creating such an obviously absurd situation, I seemed to want to encourage the authorities to at least declassify, well, at least these documents. Unfortunately, none of this has been done, we have not achieved our goal, and these documents continue to be secret in Russia, but in principle, they hang as a reproach to the current Russian government. And once they begin to declassify these documents, they can declassify them further.

As we know, this process is a little uncontrollable, as it was during the Constitutional Court: if you start to open one thing, another will follow... That is, our task is to somehow, somehow contribute to the further disclosure of documents from the period of communist power in the USSR. The second task, as I have already said, and the most obvious, is to allow researchers to use the documentary material that I already have. I don’t consider it my property, I believe that no one has a copyright on history, and since I was lucky to receive these documents, I consider it my duty to share them with all researchers.