Information, Raw and Cooked

This issue features a series of articles that examine the creation, management, manipulation, control, circulation, and transfer of information within Russian and Eurasian space. The articles come out of a Kritika workshop (“Information and Secrecy in the Russian/Eurasian Space”) held at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute in May 2018.¹ Recognizing that information comes in many forms and is often “raw,” to use Claude Levi-Strauss’s metaphor, our conference focused on how it becomes “cooked” into knowledge (or, in some cases, into disinformation), as well as the uses to which it is put.²

The meeting thus examined the Russian past through the lens of information history and sought to answer a cluster of related questions: What does the lens of “information” and “secrecy” add to our understanding of Russian and Eurasian history? What continuities and transformations can we observe in approaches to information in the Russian Empire and the USSR over time? And what does a consideration of information management in a comparative and transnational context reveal about similarities and differences between Russia and the West? In seeking answers to these questions, the resulting articles cover a broad range of topics—from spying and censorship to glasnost and what is termed today “fake news.” Authors examine the relationship between telephone technology and information control and transfer in Soviet ruling circles (Larissa Zakharova), the disputed relationship between publicity and the incitement of violence in the 1905 revolution (Susan K. Morrissey), the transnational circulation of information between Islamic scholars in Cairo and the Volga-Urals region of the Russian Empire (Roy Bar Sadeh), the centrality of information in shaping new systems of passenger air travel in the late Soviet era (Steven E. Harris), the image of the spy in late Soviet culture (Tarik Cyril Amar), and the process not only of making information a secret but also the reverse process of declassification (Gregory Afinogenov and Andrew Jenks). That each of these articles intervenes in very different historiographies only underlines the potential of information history to contribute across diverse spheres of scholarship.

It is well known, of course, that the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union had what might be called “information issues.” On the one hand, they depended on reliable information to uphold their power and pursue effective governance—that is, governance that “worked” for the state’s interest. The difficulties in obtaining this information—whether due to the logistical challenges presented by the immense spaces of empire or the proclivity of underlings to manage its circulation—preoccupied officials throughout much of the imperial and Soviet periods. On the other hand, they were perennially concerned that too much information—especially any information, reliable or otherwise, that ended up in the wrong hands—had the potential to challenge or undermine state authority. One consequence was the constant tension between information generation and information suppression. One of the points underscored by the conference, and that we also find in these articles, is that this predicament was hardly Russia’s alone. Although imperial Russia and the USSR operated within their own distinct contexts, their information dilemma was not fundamentally different from the basic challenge facing states all across the world in the modern era. As Afinogenov points out, our inclination to see Russia as a uniquely secretive place has conditioned us to wait with bated breath for revelations from the archives. Yet when we consider the problem of information access from a broadly international point of view, we discover that Russians have not always been so secretive and others not always so open.

Although this point resonates across a number of the articles here, we also see it reflected in wider developments. The standard Western view of Russia’s increasing authoritarian turn under Putin, for example, is that rising authoritarianism perforce means an uptick in secrecy and classification. But the truth actually appears more complex, as all of us who have worked in central and regional archives in the Russian Federation and other former Soviet republics can attest. A recent article by Mark Kramer reviews the current archival situation in the Russian Federation and concludes, perhaps surprisingly for some, that scholarly access to documents on...