ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia: B-3
Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (RGIA)
Access & Facilities
Access
In terms of declassification, all fonds in the archive are now open for research.
In connection with transfer to the new building, the archive was closed from the spring of 2005 to fall 2008. As of 1 April 2009 just under 500 fonds were not yet accessible for use, but the number of accessible collections is gradually being increased. A list of the unavailable collections is held in the reading room and at the pass bureau (biuro propuskov). Research should phone the archive for up-to-date information.
Working conditions
The main reading room opened in January 2009 for bona fide academic researchers. Currently one can order up to three files a day, with delivery two days later. A researcher may hold only six files at one time. (The order limit is attributed to a shortage of staff.)
Copy facilities
Photograph, digital, microfilm, scan, and xerox facilities are available. Reproduction of documents for commercial purposes requires a license agreement.
Reference facilities
The new archive website has a list of all fonds (http://fgurgia.ru/search.do?objectTyp...) with brief annotation and indication of the number of opisi: http://fgurgia.ru/search.do?objectTyp.... The opisi have been scanned and are now consulted by computers located in a separate room, but currently the opisi cannot be consulted from off-site.
The new electronic system available to researchers in the archive updates the earlier typescript annotated register of 8,546 opisi covering all fonds (b–146) with provisional printout (b–138) from an electronic version. The register identifies the contents of each opis' or significant group of files. Additional information was added to the electronic system about more recently declassified fonds.
Many prerevolutionary published inventories and guides to subsidiary parts of the archive have unpublished supplements. Of particular importance in the reference system are more than 5,000 prerevolutionary alphabetical and chancellery desktop registers, many of which can be used as directories of existing opisi (see b–146). A special register of these registers has been prepared linking them to current fond and opis' numbers. There are many thematic inter-fond indexes of opisi and groups of records covering several fonds, and there are special indexes of documents within some fonds. An automated database “Architecture and City Planning in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and their Suburbs” provides document-level references for these subjects (see Istoriia pamiatnikov arkhitektury i gradostroitel'stva Moskvy, Leningrada i ikh prigorodov: Katalogi arkhivnykh dokumentov. 12 vols. Moscow, 1985–1991).
At the end of the 1950s an extensive systematic card catalogue was started—which now has 2,210,422 cards—covering parts of approximately half the fonds in the archive. Its structure is explained in a special schema (published in rotaprint form in 1977) with 21 thematic groups and name indexes, and also ten prerevolutionary agency-produced card catalogues.
Researchers now have access to the unpublished 274 thematic short surveys covering holdings in many fonds and more than 20 additional special thematic surveys for important fonds.
See more detailed information about reference facilities on the website of archive: http://www.fgurgia.ru/showObject.do?o....
Library facilities
An excellent reference library has its own reading room, which is accessible for researchers in the archive (see http://www.fgurgia.ru/showObject.do?o...). It is particularly rich in prerevolutionary official and internal agency publications, including laws, decrees, instructions, reports, and other reference publications, many of which remain in a single copy and are not available elsewhere (see b–174). The library includes collections from the Holy Synod, the archive and Heraldry Department of the Senate, the imperial chancellery, the libraries of the Ministries of Public Education, Communications, and Finance, and the private collections of V.D. Nabokov, G.I. Chertkov, and G.G. Gagarin, to name only a few. There are catalogues of the internal agency publications of the Russian institutions from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whose fonds are kept in the archive; alphabetical and systematic catalogues of books in the Russian fond; an alphabetical catalogue of publications in European languages; and various other card catalogues.