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De communistische erfenis
Margreet Schrevel and Gerrit Voerman (eds), De communistische erfenis: Bibliografie en bronnen betreffende de CPN, 188p., Stichting beheer IISG and Documentatiecentrum Nederlandse Politieke Partijen, 1997, Hfl. 34,50, ISBN 90 6861 130 5
Although the Communist Party of the Netherlands was officially disbanded before the eyes of the television cameras in 1991 (it had merged with three other left-wing parties to form the Green Left party), it has hardly been out of the news since then. Did the Party receive Moscow gold (or to be more precise diamonds) before the Second World War? Should the records on the activities of Party members held by the Dutch intelligence services be destroyed without the permission of those concerned? Should communists in leading social and political positions been made to reconsider because they had been fundamentally 'wrong', like Dutch national socialists who had been purged after the German occupation? These and other questions continually made the headlines. It was the debate resulting from this last suggestion, made by liberal politician Frits Bolkestein, that coincided with the publication of De communistische erfenis (The Communist Heritage) late last year. Instead of tackling these questions head-on, this reference guide helps historians and others to find their way to the original sources.
De communistische erfenis is a companion volume to Van bron tot boek (From source to book), a guide that was published in 1986 listing the sources on the Dutch Communist Party that were accessible at the time. Apart from entries on pamphlets, periodicals, posters, photographs and an extensive and therefore very useful bibliography, the 1986 guide was remarkable for providing outsiders for the first time with a glimpse into the contents of the Party's own archive. That the regulations drawn up by the committee responsible for the running of the archive took up two full pages could be characterised as another example of typical East European-style bureaucracy, but at least now the access procedure was no longer dependent on the whims of one or the other Party full-timer. Van bron tot boek also listed the contents of a series of microfilms of material from the period 1918-1941 that the Party had received from Moscow in the early 1980s. When the Communist Party folded great care was taken to safeguard the future of its archives. These were eventually deposited with the renowned International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. A more detailed inventory of its contents was published in 1994. What De communistische erfenis adds is on the one hand information about written sources that have come to light recently and on the other audiovisual material produced by the Dutch Party or related to it. The entries include an updated list of material relating to the Dutch CP found in the Comintern archives. Interesting too are contributions on the archives of the Dutch intelligence service and on the holdings of the Netherlands Institute of War Documentation, dating from the German occupation and including records from the Sicherheitspolizei, the justice departments and the Gestapo. The entries on the audiovisual heritage of the Dutch CP deal with sound records, films and television programmes. The oldest sound record, a speech by the Communist MP Louis de Visser, recorded in Berlin on a disk and then transmitted as election broadcast by Dutch radio, dates from 1929. After the Cold War ban on party political broadcasts was lifted in 1965, the Party made extensive use of both radio and television
