Pravda archive, 1959-1996 : twentieth-century global perspectives For decades the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Pravda was widely read both within the Soviet states and by foreign diplomats, politicians, and intelligence agencies. Researchers have long considered Pravda a bellwether of Soviet thought, yet access to the papers archives has been limited to those who could read Russian or travel to find it on microfilm. Now, with Readexs Pravda Archive, 1959-1996, this important trove of primary source documents is available in English via a fully searchable digitized collection ... Although its name means truth in Russian, Pravda was a mouthpiece for Kremlin leaders, from Khrushchev to Gorbachev to Yeltsin. It distributed their ideas, policies, and propaganda to some 11 million readers at its peak ,and spoke with absolute, leaden authority, wrote a major American newspaper. Yet despite its heavy-handed approach, Pravda remains an essential resource for understanding Communist thought and Soviet perspectives on major 20th-century events, including the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the Cuban missile crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall ,and the collapse of the Soviet Union.