In: International journal of law libraries: IJLL ; the official publication of the International Association of Law Libraries, Band 9, Heft 4, S. 162-165
In: International journal of law libraries: IJLL ; the official publication of the International Association of Law Libraries, Band 8, Heft 3, S. 126-129
The Soviet passion for secrecy is by now proverbial. Anybody who has ever worked on a topic related to Soviet diplomacy has had occasion to bemoan the incompleteness and unreliability of the factual record. The situation smacks of rare irony when one remembers that the Soviet leadership first made a mark on the international scene by its vociferous advocacy of open diplomacy. In a dramatic gesture, the revolutionary directorate proceeded then to denounce the former tsarist regime and its bourgeois confederates for constantly dabbling in secret machinations aimed at deceiving the international community as well as their own people and to publish scores of confidential documents drawn from the tsarist archives to demonstrate the gross inequities of the imperialist system.