Soviet Clandestine Mail Surveillance 1917-1991

A Rossica Society member in Moscow - Mikhail Dymshits - decided to go on a tear through the archives there to see what he could find to buttress or debunk our empirical musings. We began to see a torrent of declassified documents directly related to our subject. As a glance at the Table of Contents will amply demonstrate, that torrent was more on the order of a tidal wave. Forty-four NKVD, MGB and KGB orders, instructions, reports, summaries, and memoranda were dragged before our incredulous eyes. When the similar items from Vols. 1 and 2 are added, the grand total comes to 71 documents. Now that they are translated, they comprise, as far as we are aware, the largest English-language "library" of official Soviet clandestine mail surveillance and military censorship documentation to be found anywhere. Their strength lies in the periods from 1918 to 1920, 1940 to 1952, and the 1960s to 1975.So, Volume 3 is the "archival dump truck," adding muscle and flesh to Volumes 1 and 2.