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Current digest of the Soviet Press


The Current Digest of the (Post)Soviet Press was founded in 1949. Each week it presents a selection of Russian-language press materials, carefully translated into English. The translations are intended for use in teaching and research. They are therefore presented as documentary materials without elaboration or comment, and state the opinions and views of the original authors, not of the publisher of the journal.

The Current Digest carried translations of all important documents of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet government, providing an impressive documentary record of:

• all significant speeches by Soviet leaders;
• meetings of all Party congresses, including the 1956 20th Party Congress and Nikita Khrushchev’s “secret speech” denouncing the Stalinist “cult of personality”;
• all five-year plans and reports on plan fulfillment;
• all important Soviet laws, including initial drafts, official public discussion of the drafts, and final versions as adopted by the USSR Supreme Soviet;
• Soviet diplomacy, Soviet-US summits and other meetings of Soviet leaders with their foreign counterparts; and
• all Soviet treaties, including arms-control treaties, and all major foreign-policy developments, from the Cuban missile crisis through the Soviet war in Afghanistan and withdrawal from that country.

In the Soviet period, CDPSP editors were ever alert for anything atypical that might herald a change in Soviet life. At the same time they provided readers with representative samples of what was typically in the press.