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ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia: B-8

Last update of repository: 2 December 2020

Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voennyi arkhiv (RGVA)

[Russian State Military Archive]

Agency: Federal'noe arkhivnoe agentstvo Rossii (Rosarkhiv)
[Federal Archival Agency of Russia]

Address: 125212, Moscow, ul. Admirala Makarova, 29

Telephone: +7 499 159-80-91, +7 499 159-88-39

Fax: +7 499 159-85-04, +7 499 159-80-91

Reading room: +7 499 159-85-23

E-mail: [email protected];  RdngRm: [email protected]

Website: http://rgvarchive.ru/;  http://www.rusarchives.ru/federal/rgva/

Opening hours: MWTh 10:00–17:00; Tu 12:00–20:00; F 10:00–16:00

Transport: metro: Vodnyi stadion; Voikovskaia + trol.: 6, 43

Director: Vladimir Petrovich Tarasov (tel. +7 499 159-80-91)

Deputy Director: Vladimir Nikolaevich Kuzelenkov (tel. +7 499 159-80-17)

Deputy Director: Vladimir Ivanovich Korotaev (tel. +7 499 159-79-02)

Deputy Director: Aleksandr Petrovich Naganov (tel. +7 499 159-85-04)

Deputy Director: Liudmila Nikolaevna Sakharova (tel. +7 499 159-80-21)


About RGVA
First established in 1920 under the name of the Archive of the Red Army (Arkhiv Krasnoi Armii), and later the Central State Archive of the Red Army (TsGAKA), the archive was in 1956 renamed the Central State Archive of the Soviet Army (TsGASA). It received its current name in 1992. RGVA retains records of the Soviet armed forces and internal special troops from the years of the Civil War through the interwar period (1918–1940), together with related fonds of personal papers. Along with the records of the highest, central organs of military administration of the RKKA and the General Staff are those of the political command of the Red Army, military and political sections and administrations of different military districts, fronts, armies, and divisions in the course of various military engagements, local organs for military administration, as well as records of the military intelligence service (GRU), and military educational institutions.
        With the 1999 Rosarkhiv reorganization, the former Special Archive for trophy foreign records—TsGOA, renamed in 1992 the Center for the Preservation of Historico-Documentary Collections (Tsentr khraneniia istoriko-dokumental’nykh kollektsii—TsKhIDK) was abolished as a separate archive, and its holdings are now part of RGVA.
        In July 1992, the formerly top-secret Central State Special Archive (TsGOA SSSR) was reorganized and renamed TsKhIDK. The so-called Special Archive (Osobyi arkhiv) was officially established in March 1946 to house the archival materials of foreign origin from many European countries that were captured by Soviet Army at the end of World War II in Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia and brought back to Moscow. The 593 fonds of captured records (as early 2012), comprise official records of the Third Reich and personal papers of many Nazi leaders and prominent public figures of the Nazi movement; records of the high state agencies of other European countries, which had earlier been captured by Nazi authorities; records of many non-govermental organizations, agencies, and individuals throughout Europe, including those of Jewish and Masonic groups, socialist parties and labor associations, newspapers and publishing houses, student organizations, and business firms; and collections of unique documentary materials of private and family origin.
        Later the archive also acquired records of Soviet agencies dealing with prisoners of war and displaced persons under the NKVD–MVD, namely voluminous complex of records of agencies subordinated to the Main Administration for Affairs of Prisoners of War and Internees (GUPVI, 1939–1960), including records of individual POW camps, which contain personal files on individual foreign prisoners and documentation on the burial of prisoners who died in the USSR.
        The archive of the Grand Duchy of Lichtenstein was returned in 1997, the British wartime records were returned in 1998. In 2002 almost all of the fonds of French and Belgian provenance were restituted. As of May 2003, the last fonds of Dutch provenance were returned to the Netherlands. In June 2009, 51 of the fonds of Austrian provenance were returned to Vienna, and the remainder are being prepared for return. The return of files of Greek provenance is pending, as is the return of Masonic files from Norway.
N.B: As of the mid-2015, all remaining holdings from the former Special (Osobyi) Archive (ul. Vyborgskaia 3, kor. 1) have all been moved to the main RGVA building. A separate reading room for those fonds is no longer operated.

Holdings from the former Special Archive (TsGOA; 1992–March 1999—TsKhIDK)
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ABB ArcheoBiblioBase Archeo Biblio Base Patricia Kennedy Grimsted