…Today, nearly every historian of the Soviet twentieth century spends time at Stanford’s Hoover Institution for archival research. In the shadow of the university’s most distinctive landmark, the Hoover Tower, preeminent scholars scurry between buildings, chatting about projects on Civil War era Siberian despots, Boris Pasternak’s poetry, 1950’s Radio Free Europe, and perestroika’s political advisors. The main stacks of the Russia collection are housed in the first nine floors of the Tower itself, an obelisk dedicated to inquiry.