Two collections of digital photographs depicting activities and sites in the former Soviet Union are available for research at the Hoover Archives.

The Hoover Archives is pleased to announce the acquisition of the Francis Eugene Stafford photograph collection. The albums are a generous gift from Ronald E. Anderson (PhD, Stanford University, 1970) and family.

Francis E. Stafford (1884­–1938), a US lithographer and photographer, arrived in Shanghai, China, in 1909. He was hired by the Commercial Press­—then Asia’s largest publishing company—to manage its printing division from 1909 to 1915. During the onset of the Wuchang Uprising in October 1911, Stafford was on hand to capture remarkable photos of the Qing Dynasty’s collapse. The collection, which consists of nearly 1,100 images, also includes the largest number of surviving original photographic prints of the Chinese Revolution of 1911.

In May 1961 Nikita Khrushchev visited the autonomous Soviet Republic of Adjara (Adzharia) in the present Republic of Georgia. The chief communist official in the region, Aleksandr Dursunovich Tkhilaishvili, was his guide and host. The photographs in this collection depict some scenes and meetings that took place during this visit. Of particular interest is someone in the crowd greeting Khrushchev holding up a large photo of Joseph Stalin, who at the time was out of favor with Khrushchev and his supporters.