We are happy to present you with issue no. 29/30 of The International Newsletter of Communist Studies (INCS). It is available for online reading and download at:

https://incs.ub.rub.de/index.php/INCS/issue/view/83

Due to an unforeseeable workload related to other projects, this is a double issue, covering the years 2016 and 2017. We hope nevertheless that you will enjoy this issue. From 2018 onwards, we will switch again to an annual publishing cycle.

We also welcome our new correspondents Aruã Lima from the Federal University of Alagôas, Maceió, Brazil, who is professor of history and chairman of the Department of International Relations of the University, and Adriana Petra from the Universidad Nacional de San Martín at Buenos Aires (UNSAM), Argentina, who is researcher of the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) and Fellow of the Centro de Documentación e Investigación de la Cultura de Izquierdas (CEDINCI), Universidad de San Martin, Buenos Aires, and also active in the Red Iberoamericana de estudios sobre Comunismo.

With the help of the Institute for Social Movements and the University Library of the Ruhr University Bochum, the International Newsletter has restarted to gain momentum. Our new website, located at http://incs.ub.rub.de, based on the sophisticated and comfortable open-source “Open Journal Systems” publishing platform, has been largely accepted and receives visitors from all over the globe. Thanks to the new platform, all contributions are accessible individually, as it has been a long wish of our contributors (while we alternatively still provide a single-PDF version of the issue). Also, it is possible to browse all contributions by a single author.

The website already features all back issues from 2010 onwards. Older issues will be added soon. Moreover, some of the Newsletter sections, such as the list of relevant websites and the list of periodicals, will be transferred permanently onto our website so that they can be updated more often and be more accessible for Internet users.

The current issue features 231 pages full of news on recent developments of communist studies and archives, project reports, eleven reviews, two review essays on Eduard Fuchs and the historiography of the German Revolution of 1918/19, besides a study about anticommunism in Argentina it features a fundamental retrospective on the Dimitrov Diaries which in fact amounts to a synthesis of the history of the Communist International under Stalinism (1933-1943), and the International Bibliography of Communist Studies for the years 2015-2016, listing 968 book publications from 66 countries. The issue also carries a comprehensive list of recent and future conferences and international events on the 1917 Russian Revolutions, a detailed list of journals relevant to communist studies, and other features. The International Newsletter is still and by far the most complete bibliographical reference for new publications in the field of global communist studies. Nevertheless, we still need to ensure better coverage of new publications from some parts of the world, particularly from Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa.

Since the very beginning 23 years ago, the International Newsletter of Communist Studies as an independent and unsalaried project has aimed to bridge the gap between archives and research as well as between university-based and independent scholarship. Just as the initial impulse for the first issue of the Newsletter in 1993 was to draw attention to the opening and preservation of the archives in the East and West, we still aim to champion and document the accessibility of the global archives of communism, socialist internationalism and respective cultural cosmopolitism. Moreover, we continue to regard the opening of the archives as the essential precondition for a new phase of fundamental research in communist studies – a necessary global field of research, aimed at overcoming global attempts at re-nationalising history. Paradoxically, while the interest and productivity in this field, as shown once more by this publication, continues to be high, the degree of academic institutionalisation of studies on communism, socialist internationalism and cultural cosmopolitanism remains rather low. This situation threatens free, independent and fundamental research and privileges governmental, commercial or private interests. Thus it is even more important to stress that in order to deliver a useful research platform, to provide input for achieving coverage of the field on a global scale, and to strive towards a stronger institutionalisation, we depend on the contributions and input of our readers and correspondents.

Issue no. 31 (2018) of the International Newsletter of Communist Studies will be published in spring 2018. We are looking forward to receiving any sort of relevant information and contributions from our readers before 31 March, 2018, including news on archives and institutions, project presentations, announcements of new publications, bibliographic items from the years 2016-2017, suggestions for book reviews, and proposals for articles on aspects of communist history, socialist internationalism and respective cultural cosmopolitism. Also, in accordance to the original goals of the International Newsletter in the 1990s, we would specifically like to encourage annotated publications of archival sources relevant for the history of communism. For article and sources contributions, we would ask you to get in touch as soon as possible, so we can evaluate the proposals and give you enough time to complete your manuscripts. In doing so, please be aware of our formal guidelines and refer to the stylesheet published on the website.

Our next aim will be

• Firstly, to improve the functionality of the website by implementing key word search functions,

• Secondly, to merge the International Bibliography of Communist Studies in order to construct a synthetic database allowing specific research and presenting an impressive image of the worldwide publications since the opening of the archives.

• Moreover, beginning with the next issue, we introduce the "World Wide Archives of Communism and Internationalism Project". That means that in in the coming Newsletters issues a new section will focus on descriptions of specific archives relevant to communist history (party archives, public archives, private archives etc.). We encourage our correspondents and readers to send in proposals for this section, which could also be reports on the situation of the respective archives in one specific country. Meanwhile, after a first phase of brainstorming, we shall set up a list of questions and bullet points in order to ensure a degree of harmonization of the different contributions.

To fulfil some of these tasks, we are planning to pursue different funding possibilities and we would be glad to receive hints concerning international funding.

Last but not least, we hope you will find the new issue of the International Newsletter useful for your research,

All the very best,

The Editors,
Bernhard H. Bayerlein and Gleb J. Albert (Bochum-Zurich, 25 July 2017)

PS: We still have a limited stock of printed International Newsletter issues from 1993-1998. Libraries and research institutions are welcome to request copies to be shipped to them free of charge.