Commies! And Other Threats

Today I read an interesting article by R.D.W. Connor. For those of you who do not know, Roosevelt appointed Connor to be the first Archivist of the United States. In March of 1936 the Minnesota Historical Society Press published his article entitled, “Our National Archives.” Connor’s article originated as an address that he presented to the historical society earlier in 1936. From a historiographical point of view, I love this article. It not only showed how different the definition of “archive” was in the 1930s, but it also showed how ingrained the fear of communists and anarchists had become.
I am one of those young people who do not remember the Cold War (however I do have the misfortune of knowing one too many commies.) I find it fascinating how people found communism so terrifying in the 1920s and 1930s, especially since we now know that it does not work so well. Connors began his article explaining that if we wanted the freedoms of a democratic society, we needed an archive. He argued that the preservation of records will always be necessary for a functioning, truthful government (3).Connors alluded to the fact that there would be an awful lot of confusion if records did not exist. He used the example of an earthquake in Nicaragua in 1931 to prove his point (2). The earthquake (and the fire that resulted) destroyed most of Nicaragua’s records (3). We now know that an earthquake will probably not destroy our nation’s records, but I still think that Connors made a good point. Without records, mistruths and disorder will prosper. To mainstream society in 1936, Communism had become a scary mistruth and anarchists threatened disorder. Not everyone could understand the importance of preserving records for historical needs. But they could all understand the threat of Communism and anarchy. Connor showed that a threat to records had become a threat to the democratic liberties of all. I believe that this is a pretty typical statement of the period especially since it would easily have the support of the majority in this country in the 1930s.
Now, I know that anarchy kind of fizzled after this period, but I know that the fear of communism only increased after this period (especially after World War II.) Communism became the main reason why our civil liberties were threatened because a communist government eliminated many of the things that we considered to be liberties. Therefore, communism became a pretty good excuse for maintaining an archive. But I have to wonder what happened after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism in the late 1980s. Did our needs for an archive change? Certainly, by the 1990s, the majority of Americans did not feel that their civil liberties could potentially be threatened by a few rouge commies that may have not given up hope. Without fear, can an archive survive?
I have fear. I do not think that the commies are going to take over, or that any terrorist organizations are going to take over either. I fear for the records because few other people do. I feel as if we take our civil liberties for granted these days since we have basically eliminated any major threats. Without the threat of our civil liberties, the only other purpose of an archive is to store information. And while the National Archives gives access to information to many different researchers and agencies every day, the average American may not see this as an important task. However, I do but I also realize that not everyone cares about records. Without the threat of losing our civil liberties, the National Archives has little to connect itself to the general public besides genealogy (which is not something that the majority of Americans care about on a daily basis.)
I cannot point out any clear solutions to this problem. But I can point out that the solution will routed in the way in which we define archives. The definition of the term “archive” has evolved due to the purpose in which archives serve. Today, we consider archives to be a place where records are stored, preserved, and made accessible to the public. Connor’s article showed that this has not always been the case. He argued that the main purpose of an archive was to store and preserve records (13). In that sense, the American archival movement really gained momentum in the 1880s when, after inquiries, Congress realized that the depository system of the late nineteenth century failed (13-14). Connors found a whole lot of archival history in the early depository setting that current archival historian would consider being storage settings and not archival settings. I found it interesting how Connor used the word “depository” over the word “repository.” Today we consider archives to be repositories because they repurpose old documents. In 1936, the National Archives had just opened, and although researchers had used the facilities in the first year, Connors had not yet experienced the flood of researchers that would come in the following years who would turn his depository into a repository.
But without hindsight, it is understandable why Connors would have used the word depository. As Archivist of the United States, Connor combined the contents of over 250 different storage facilities in the National Archives building (7). He also contented with the results of deplorable storage conditions. Early archivists found empty liquor bottles and a dead cat mixed in with federal records (8). The National Archives in 1936 was not at the stage in which it could have been receiving researchers.
These are some of the many insights which I discovered after reading this article. Connor’s work is chock full of interesting tidbits which I am certain I will use in the future in my assessment of the National Archives

* Please note: All citations are to the following article:
Connor, R.D.W. “Our National Archives” in Minnesota History 17 (1936) 1-19.