Contemporary Periodicals
For historians and researchers interested in documenting popular attitudes towards aviation and aeronautics there are few sources more valuable than periodicals. In addition to providing useful “first-hand” narratives of then current events, materials drawn from newspapers, journals, and magazines are critical resources for revealing the issues and attitudes that shaped contemporaries’ views about aviation (and everything else for that matter!). Likewise, one can develop a clearer understanding of what was considered important at the time by tracking the quantity of articles (or the number and length of newspaper columns) devoted to a given topics. Imperial Russian and Soviet-era periodicals proved to be among the most important sources in researching DotA. I utilized contemporary aeronautical journals (like Herald of Aeronautics and Wings) to track developments within the scientific and sporting communities. Coverage appearing in the general press proved crucial to understanding how these developments were described to and perceived by citizens.

Domestic Archives
As I noted last week in the first part of this post, the use of archival sources is one of the chief characteristics that distinguishes “professional” from “popular” history. The materials that were incorporated into DotA came from both American and Russian archives. Although the latter were clearly more important than the former, I was able to glean a great deal of useful information from two US collections in particular.

National Air & Space Museum
The documents housed at the National Air & Space Museum represent a treasure trove for scholars working on aviation-related topics. Although the Air & Space collection is most useful for those focusing on American issues, regardless of one’s national/geographic specialty, the Museum’s library contains immensely useful resources. More important still are the curators and historians who work at NASM. Their collective knowledge of things aeronautical is unsurpassed. Anyone researching the history of aviation should plan to spend some time at Air & Space.

National Archives (Washington, DC)
In addition to providing me with a clearer understanding of America’s own aviation programs, the Records of the Bureau of Aeronautics provided extremely useful contemporary assessments of Imperial and Soviet developments from the perspective of US aviation experts. Meanwhile, correspondence from the Office of Naval Intelligence (America’s leading intelligence agency in the years prior to WWII) and the Defense Intelligence Agency was invaluable for documenting the Soviet Union’s extensive infiltration of American aviation businesses and industry during the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.

Russian Archives
Naturally, the vast majority of archival research for DotA was conducted in the Russian Federation. As very few readers have any need for a detailed description of Russian archival holdings relating to aviation, here I’ll simply provide samples of the more important materials that I uncovered during the course of my research.

Russian State Military-Historical Archive (RGVIA): The Russian State Military-Historical Archive is the principal repository for materials relating to the history of the Imperial Russian military. From the standpoint of my own work, the archival records of the General Staff and the Military Ministry’s budget office proved to be quite valuable. In addition to containing memoranda and reports on the tsarist government’s efforts to build a military air fleet, the latter collection contained correspondence that shed light on the relationship between the state and the private airplane manufacturers with which it negotiated contracts for the domestic construction of aircraft.

Russian State Military Archive (RGVA): RGVA houses Soviet military records from the Civil War to the eve of the Second World War (1918-1941). The archive is extremely important as materials contained in the various collections of the Revolutionary Military Committee enabled me to document the origins and development of the Red Air Fleet during the early 1920s. Recently declassified reports contained in the RGVA collection also revealed the numerous manufacturing and production crises besetting the USSR’s aviation industry during the decade preceding WWII.

Russian Archive of the Economy (RGAE): Along with documentation relating to Soviet planning commissions, RGAE provided a wealth of information concerning Communist Party efforts to popularize aviation among the USSR’s citizens. The two most important collections in this regard were the Main Inspectorate of the Civilian Air Fleet (fond 9527) and the “Maxim Gorky Agitational Squadron” (fond 9576) which contained reports and memoranda regarding domestic propaganda (or, “agit”) flights from the late 1920s through the mid 1930s.

State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF): Of all the Russian archives that I visited, GARF proved to be the most valuable. This is not surprising given that the archive’s collection contains the records of the USSR’s various “voluntary societies” devoted to aviation: the Society of Friends of the Air Fleet, Dobrolet, Aviakhim, and Osoaviakhim.

As the preceding descriptions are only intended to serve as glimpses of the kinds of materials used in writing DotA, I encourage graduate students and other researchers interested in visiting these archives to contact me for specific information regarding the collections and current working conditions.

ScP