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Title: Sonia Melnikova-Raich papers
Date (inclusive): 1920-2011
Collection Number: 2021C13
Contributing Institution: Hoover Institution Library and Archives
Language of Material: In Russian and English
Physical Description:
10 manuscript boxes, digital media
(4.17 Linear Feet)
Abstract: The collection comprises thousands of copies of documents from Russian state archives, related to the history of Soviet foreign
concessions of the 1920s to the early 1930s.
Creator:
Melnikova-Raich, Sonia
Physical Location: Hoover Institution Library & Archives
The collection is open for research; materials must be requested in advance via our reservation system. If there are audiovisual
or digital media material in the collection, they must be reformatted before providing access.
For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Acquired by the Hoover Institution Library & Archives in 2022.
[Identification of item], Sonia Melnikova-Raich papers, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Sonia Melnikova-Raich was born in Moscow. She immigrated to the USA in 1987 and lives in San Francisco, where she works as
a translator and independent researcher. She is an acknowledged expert on the subject of American roots of accelerated Soviet
industrialization during the First Five-Year Plan. and an author of
The Soviet Problem with Two "Unknowns": How an American Architect and a Soviet Negotiator Jump-Started the Industrialization
of Russia
, which can be found in two issues of
The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology included in her papers.
Scope and Content of Collection
The collection comprises thousands of copies of documents from Russian state archives, relating to the history of Soviet foreign
concessions of the 1920s to the early 1930s. The collection was amassed in the course of 25 years when Sonia Melnikova-Raich
acted as a consultant, translator and assistant researcher for renowned British jurist and legal scholar, leading arbitrator
Van Vechten Veeder QC (1948-2020).
In addition, this collection includes copies of material from the NKVD records relating to the prosecution, arrest, and rehabilitation
of Stefan Sebők, an architect who had disappeared in the Soviet Union during the Second World War. These materials were collected
by his niece Lilly Dubowitz (née Sebők) and published in her book
In Search of a Forgotten Architect. The documents are in Russian and most of them are accompanied by an English translation.
Lilly Dubowitz shared these papers with Sonia Melnikova-Raich in anticipation of future collaboration on the project shortly
before she died in 2016.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Archives
Russia
Russia (Federation) -- Foreign economic relations
Russia -- Economic conditions
Facsimiles