Working Archive of International Marxist History and Documentation

The PRL’s purpose is to collect, preserve, and make available the historical record of the international workers movement and to assist Marxist scholarship. As the masthead of the first issue of the American Trotskyist Militant newspaper proclaimed in 1928, citing Lenin: “He who takes somebody’s word for it is a hopeless idiot.” In keeping with our revolutionary forebears, the PRL collects documents from all sides of the internal debates that built Trotskyist and early Communist parties to facilitate the objective study of revolutionary history.

We are very interested in obtaining minutes, bulletins, or correspondence of the early Communist and later Trotskyist movements, as well as the left more broadly, so such historically valuable documents are not lost. We welcome deposits of originals, photo-copies, or digital archives. Please contact us if you have such materials. The PRL shares our holdings with other archives and libraries to make the archives of the workers movement more complete and accessible. We assist researchers, the left and the labor movement, without regard for our particular agreement with their views.

The PRL’s collection includes over 8,000 books, pamphlets, and periodical volumes, 270 reels of microfilm, and over 300 linear feet of archival documents and bulletins. Particular emphasis is on minutes of leading committees and internal discussion material. Most of our holdings are in English, but our collections in other languages are also significant, including Lenin's Collected Works in French, German, Spanish, and Greek.

Our Russian language holdings are unique and document the history of the Bolshevik Party in books, stenographic records of Congresses and Conferences, public leaflets, internal party documents, early Cheka reports, memoirs, as well as publications and exile correspondence of the Trotskyist Left Opposition. The PRL has a small but growing collection of Chinese language books, including Left Opposition documents from the 1927 Chinese Revolution. The PRL's audiovideo collection includes interviews from key figures in the Marxist movement, Marxist education, presentations on left, labor and black history, other political topics, current events, and debates between left organizations.