Sieć archiwów federalnych Rosji (1992–2016)
The Federal Archives Network in Russia (1992–2016)

Author(s): Alicja Kulecka
Subject(s): 19th Century, Pre-WW I & WW I (1900 -1919), Interwar Period (1920 - 1939), WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Post-War period (1950 - 1989), Transformation Period (1990 - 2010)
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: State Archive of the Russian Federation; Russian State Historical Archive; Russian State Archive of Historical Records; Russian State Archive of Social and Political History
Summary/Abstract: The basic goal of the present paper is to discover the factors which shape the network of federal archives in Russia. There are plenty such factors to list. One of the basic ones are transformations in the political system and territorial changes undergone by the Russian state. These are visible in the manner of both naming and establishing individual archival units. In 1992, the adjective “central” was removed from the names of archives which had operated in the Soviet era. Only the adjective “state” remained. Its presence signalled that the resources stored in a particular archive were significant from the point of view of Russian statehood and considered an important and unifying element for the nations of the Russian Federation. Another decision taken was to cease to name archives after historical events shaping the communist movement. This concerned primarily the 1917 October Revolution. The Archive of the October Revolution, Supreme Organs of State Power was renamed to the State Archive of the Russian Federation. The architects of the archival network merged the funds of central USSR archives and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Such was the case of the Archive of the Russian Federation. One of the archives which enriched its resources was the Central Archive of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic. Federal archives were structured according to historical, material, and chronological criteria. Among them there is a group of archives collecting documents produced by central institutions, interior administration, and other administration divisions, including party administration – with the exception of military administration, whose documentation is stored in what may be called general administration archives. Forming part of this particular group are five units: State Archive of the Russian Federation, Russian State Historical Archive, Russian State Archive of Historical Records, Russian State Archive of Contemporary History, Russian State Archive of Social and Political History. The centres established in the 1990s for the purpose of collecting resources assembled from party material, contemporary and historical documentation, and military records, were given the rank of archives in 1999. The Centre for the Storage of Modern Records was given the rank of the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History, while the Russian Centre for the Storage and Analysis of the Records of Youth Organisations became the foundation of the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History. The Centre for the Storage of Historical-Documentation Collections was incorporated into the Russian State Military Archive. The first decade of political and social transformations went hand in hand with rapid changes in the organisation of archives. The network of federal archives does not encompass the records of Russian diplomatic services held in the Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Russian Academy of Sciences also has a separate archival network. The aforementioned Russian State Military Archive became the third unit in the network of federal archives which stores army records. The network includes a separate group of archives collecting materials produced by military institutions. Forming its part are the Russian State Archive of the Navy, Russian State Military Archive, and Russian State Military Historical Archive. Another group of archives was formed and organised according to the format criterion. It comprises institutions storing photographs, recordings, and film footage. This archive group includes the Russian State Documentary Film and Photo Archive, the Russian State Phonographic Archive. There are two archives storing a specific type of records – technical documentation. These are the Russian State Archive in Samara and the Russian State Archive of Scientific and Technical Documents. Literature and art were assigned to a separate archive – the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art. The network of federal archives also includes an economic archive – the Russian State Archive of Economics. The final shape of the network was also largely determined by territorial factors, as in the case of the Russian State Historical Archive of the Far East. Records from the Far East, primarily documents of the General Governorate of Eastern Siberia in Tomsk, were separated and deemed an object requiring an autonomous archive. A separate archive was established to store records produced by the central administration of the Russian state in the period when Petersburg was the capital city. These documents are held in the Russian State Historical Archive. This decision was most likely motivated by the rule of limited territorial pertinence. Another consequence of systemic transformations was also the foundation of archives storing historical and contemporary records of institutions which were dissolved as a consequence of this process. These newly established units came to hold, among others, the records of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its youth organisation. The function of the historical archives of the CPSU and concomitantly of the unit researching and analysing the party history was performed by the Institute of Marxism and Leninism. The records of the Institute came to form the foundation of the Archive of Contemporary History. In 1999, documentation centres were merged and transformed into archives. In case of some of these units, only the name was changed from “centre” to “archive,” while others were incorporated into previously existing archives. The archival network was formed on the basis of various criteria, which included both the contents and the formats of the records. The process of founding new archives followed the rule of provenance. Various steps were taken to ensure that archival fonds were not divided. However, it bears emphasising that in case of Russian archives, an archival fonds may consist in both records of a single institution or records of one of its organisational units, for instance the files of a department of a certain ministry. Changing the location of the seat of the Russian State Historical Archive of the Far East turned out to be a complicated endeavour. Not all files from the transferred archive reached their destination. The network of federal archives includes a group of documents considered particularly valuable and unique. Consequently, a number of federal archives have been assigned the status of institutions holding rare records of particular importance. These are the State Archive of the Russian Federation, Russian State Archive of Historical Records, Russian State Historical Archive, Russian State Military Historical Archive. The federal archival network encompasses records from all historical eras. Its structure has been shaped by such factors as various formats of recording information, types of documents, wealth of contents resulting from the large territorial span of Russia and later the USSR, and the importance of these states on the international forum. The information stored in the archival network constitutes an important source for researching the history of Russia and the world.

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