In the Hoover Digest (issue no. 4 of 2007) Paul Gregory relates: "Verbatim transcripts of the Soviet Politburo have come to light, revealing candid discussions by the USSR’s ultimate decision-making body as it invented a political, economic, and social system and struggled over who would lead the country. The discovery is like unearthing a lost gospel. Scholars did not know the transcripts existed; they had to content themselves with published Politburo agendas, surmising that transcribers would have been banished when secret matters were taken up. Yet thanks to the Hoover Archives’ pioneering efforts to microfilm significant Soviet state and party documents, and with a key clue from visiting Russian archivists, the transcripts have surfaced and are to be published by a Hoover team. They range from routine economic matters to the highest party politics— the expulsion of Leon Trotsky and his allies in the “United Opposition”— and are peppered with crude jokes, petty arguments, and threats. They chart a crucial 15-year period during which the last opposition to Josef Stalin was wiped out." The full text of Gregory's article is available at http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/10653636.html.