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Article: Canadian volunteers in the Spanish civil war: new evidence from the Comintern Archives.
- Article from:
- Labour/Le Travail
- Article date:
- September 22, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Canadian Committee on Labour History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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WHEN THE BERLIN WALL came down in 1989, symbolically ending the Cold War, few imagined that the resulting shockwaves that toppled the Soviet Union would also reach a perpetually dark and quiet microfilm reading room on the third floor of Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. But this is what occurred. The disintegration of the Communist order in Russia loosened rigid Soviet control of state archives and made available to Western researchers material which had been inaccessible for the length of the Cold War. This included tens of thousands of documents pertaining to the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War--foreign volunteers, including roughly 1,600 Canadians, ...