Propaganda in USSR

[Peasant]

Greetings to y'all.

Lately I've been wondering: how much we can rely on the historical information extracted from the USSR/RF archives by historians?
Even though I trust (for the most part) what they've written in their books, their knowledge is only as good as the information they've been provided with in the first place.

Now, I'm not saying that soviet government has taken hurdle of falsifying a significant part of the 100s of thousands of historical documents, but there are other ways to lie, in particular: lie by omission.

What if, the documents in open access for civilians (yes, even those shown to the Western historians during Glasnost' period) are a carefully curated subset of a much larger whole, carefully selected to present a specific picture of a strong nation led by capable and far-sighted leadership?

Because, it's not as if USSR were a free country, where a citizen could write and print a memoir that goes against the narrative established by the government and by the '90s most of the people who lived during WW2 were dead anyway.

This leaves the written records as the sole way to confirm or deny anything asserted by the soviet government, which is why the only reason I see them giving access to these records is if the documents provided were previously cleared of all sensitive information.

Cheers.

[Art]

What if, the documents in open access for civilians (yes, even those shown to the Western historians during Glasnost' period) are a carefully curated subset of a much larger whole, carefully selected to present a specific picture of a strong nation led by capable and far-sighted leadership?

Why bother so much? Until certain moment access to archives was given only to few certified authors who were also subject to strict censorship. Wholesale screening of archives or wholesale falsification were simply redundant. Besides, even the task of thorough examination of millions of folders was unfeasible with a limited staff available.
By the moment when censorship and archival access loosened the political narrative was already different and there was no elite consensus on maintaining the old narrative. Also this official narrative changed with time and in 1980s was different from 1950s.

Omission can be easily established for many types of records. For a example, if a staff prepares situation reports twice a day, you can find when they are missing. Many documents contain internal references to other documents "In pursuance of the order No.... of .....". Etc, etc.

Lately I've been wondering: how much we can rely on the historical information extracted from the USSR/RF archives by historians?

You shouldn't trust by 100% any document from any archive, but critical examination of sources can produce reasonably reliable results.

Because, it's not as if USSR were a free country, where a citizen could write and print a memoir that goes against the narrative established by the government and by the '90s most of the people who lived during WW2 were dead anyway.

Many millions were alive. Many wrote unpublished diaries and memoirs (*). Many wrote private letters. Many left oral accounts etc, etc.
Besides, in addition to memoirs and documents you have other types of sources: archeological, photos, cinema chronicle, when war is concerned you have sources from the other side. It can be easily established that the T-34 tank was real without any reliance on Soviet documents. In general, I don't see the problem of paucity of sources regarding the war, it's not the XIV century for sure.

* from top figures there are memoirs by Golovanov and Khrulev, diary by Yeryomenko, Simonov's interviews with Zhukov, Vasilevsky and Konev, Chuyev's interviews with Molotov. All came to light after 1985.