Overseas Fieldwork Report: Joseph Nicholson

Joseph outside the Russian foreign ministry

A fascinating report from DTC student Joseph Nicholson who has recently returned from his overseas fieldwork visit:

"My fieldwork trip to Russia took place over the period October 2015 to July 2016. I spent the period October 2015 - March 2016 in Moscow, followed by 2 weeks in the UK for consultation with supervisors, and then from April - July I was in Saint-Petersburg. The purpose of the trip was to consult original sources in archives and printed materials in libraries, which are fundamental to my PhD research on the history of early Soviet foreign trade. In this report I shall first outline the logistical details of the trip before moving on to discuss the research process and my findings.

The research was conducted in the following archives and libraries:

Moscow:

• The State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF): Materials from this archive gave me insight into high-level decision making in the Soviet government.
• The Russian State Archive of Economics (RGAE): This archive contained one of the most important collections for my dissertation, that of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Trade.
• The Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI): Here I consulted materials on key individuals relating to my project, for example foreign minister Chicherin and trade minister Krasin.
• The Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (AVP RF): I had a rare opportunity to work in this very restricted access archive.
• The Russian State Library: To consult rare Russian printed materials

 Saint-Petersburg:

• The Central State Archive of Saint-Petersburg (TsGA SPb): I worked with a variety of materials here relating to my local case study, to see how nationalised foreign trade worked at ground level
• The Central State Archive of Historico-Political Documents (TsGAIPD): the local party organisation of the foreign trade ministry. It proved a rich source for analysing individuals' behaviour within the institution.
• The Russian National Library (RNB): more printed materials

I had identified the main materials I wished to consult before I departed for the field work, thanks to the availability of online resources, plus I had already worked in one of the Petersburg archives, so I knew how the system worked. Thus I was able to start working effectively as soon as I got necessary letters of introduction from the HSE. From the time of ordering files there is usually a waiting time of around 2 working days until one can actually go and read them. Thus I coordinated my time between different archives and the libraries. As a result I was able to gain access to materials on almost every weekday. On other days, I would work from my flat, processing my notes and reading up on the academic literature on my topic as it developed. I also attended several events and seminars hosted by the HSE on Soviet history, by eminent historians including Sheila Fitzpatrick and Dominic Lieven. I also had useful consultations with Dr Liudmila Novikova of the HSE History department of Moscow, and Dr Mikhail Khodyakov of the Saint-Petersburg State University.

Results:

The materials I consulted in Russia have led me to change my focus to a significant extent. Before I went to Russia I had a rather general focus on UK-Soviet trade relations in the early 1920s. I wanted to look at what studying these relations could tell us about Soviet attitudes to the west following the 1917 revolution, and I was also interested in Russia's internal development. As a result of consulting the Moscow materials, I shifted the focus of my work from UK-Soviet trade relations to a study of the Soviet nationalised foreign trade system with relations with the UK as just a case-study. I felt the documentation I had studied allowed for a stronger focus on the system itself and this also gave my work more coherency. Also, whereas before I had several case-studies in mind and didn't really see how they would fit together, my new conception led me to abandon some (for example, Soviet coins manufactured in the UK in 1924) and focus on others (such as timber export). Following the Saint-Petersburg trip, I decided to narrow my focus again, to look at corruption within the foreign trade system. My study of how the system worked on ground level showed me that corrupt practices were a universal part of the day-to-day organisation of foreign trade. I plan to analyse these within the broader contexts I identified earlier, with a case-study of the Petersburg region.  There has been almost nothing written on economic corruption in the early Soviet period, and a lot of the materials I have studied have never been used in historical research. Nevertheless they can provide rich new insights into both this period of history, as well as Russia, including contemporary Russia, and the concept of corruption more generally."