REPATRIATION OF THE BAKHMETEFF ARCHIVE: RUSSIAN DREAMS AND AMERICAN REALITY

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, the Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European History and Culture at Columbia University, like many other Russian émigré archives all over the world, has become a critical resource in the process of rewriting twentieth-century Russian history. Now and then, references to the Bakhmeteff's holdings have appeared in Russian archival publications. Regrettably, some of these publications contain alarming instances of Russian demands for the “repatriation” of the Bakhmeteff Archive's holdings. A major factor behind this trend is an official government program to retrieve archival Rossica at any price; but it also is due in part to . . .