Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation

 Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (abr. WUA of the Russian Federation, former Archive of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs) — the largest repository of foreign policy documents Russian Foreign Ministry.

Archive creation history

The WUA of the Russian Federation was created from the very beginning as a departmental archive The People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (NKID), formed in November 1917 after its liquidation Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Empire. In September 1917, during the evacuation of valuables from Petrograd part of the documents of the archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Empire were moved to Moscow to the premises of the Moscow Main Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, another part - to the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery in the former Novgorod province, and the third remained in Petrograd. Thus, after the relocation of all government institutions from Petrograd to Moscow in March 1918, the NKID was faced with the need to create a new foreign policy archive.

It is known that the first People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, L. D. Trotsky, who headed the People's Commissariat from November 1917 to February 1918, was not directly involved in foreign affairs. Acting from the beginning of March as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, and on May 30, 1918, officially appointed People's Commissar G. V. Chicherin attached great importance to the preservation of documents. G. V. Chicherin's attitude to the archive was expressed later in the form of a figurative comparison: "The NKID needs documents, just as the Red Army needs ammunition"

Therefore, it is no coincidence that the NKID archive was created under the People's Commissar's office as his personal archive, which was transformed into the Current political archive after the NKID moved to the building on Kuznetsky Most in 1920. Probably, this is where the tradition that existed for almost 40 years later began to form personal archival funds of the secretariats of People's Commissars and their deputies. In June 1920, for the first time as an independent structural unit in the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, the General Archive of the NKID appeared. It was headed by E. A. Adamov Later , for his numerous works on international law and the history of international relations, he received the degree of Doctor of Historical Sciences and the title of professor — by way of exception, without defending his candidate and doctoral dissertations.

Activities of the archive during the Soviet period

The General Archive of the NKID was responsible for collecting, classifying, processing, and storing unclassified correspondence from all the then six political departments of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. Secret and telegraphic correspondence of the People's Commissar, as well as notes signed by him and his deputies, international treaties remained in the Current political archive at the People's Commissar's office. According to the decision of the NKID Board of October 27, 1922, the General Archive became directly subordinate to the secretariat of the NKID Board. Gradually, its role increased. As early as October 1926, the Current Political Archive was added to the General Archive as a sub-department.

With the expansion of the Soviet state's comprehensive relations with the outside world and the establishment of diplomatic and consular missions abroad, the volume of documents received from abroad, which were temporarily stored directly in the diplomatic missions (embassies) and consular offices, increased. Acute political conflicts with a number of countries that arose in 1927 in connection with the assassination of the Soviet envoy P. L. Voikov in Warsaw The death of employees of the Consulate General of the USSR in Canton (Guangzhou), the search by the British police in the premises of the Soviet-British joint-stock company ARKOS, the subsequent severance of diplomatic relations with Great Britain, and other similar facts prompted the leadership of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs to take care of greater security of documents of Soviet foreign institutions. A commission was created, which included A. M. Kollontai, J. H. Davtyan, I. I. Spilvanek. The members of the commission examined the situation in the General Archive and submitted a report to the NCID Board, which sharply criticized the current situation. It was pointed out that the Archive is a warehouse of unassembled and unsystematic materials received for storage from abroad, there is no plan for processing these materials.

Taking into account the commission's decision, the NKID board decided on December 8, 1929, to combine all the documentary materials of the People's Commissariat, secret and general, into a single Political Archive.

In the following years, the activities of the Political Archive were repeatedly reviewed at meetings of the NCID Board, and decisions were made there aimed at further improving the archival service in close connection with the tasks of operational diplomatic work.

19 April 1936, Deputy people's Commissar B. S. Stomonyakov approved the first position on Policarpio, which-along with the storage and accounting of documents, including international treaties and agreements, authentic maps on the state borders of the USSR, the development of archival materials, the compilation of dossiers and reports on the foreign policy of the USSR and its relationship with foreign countries and many more.

By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the Political Archive had more than 500 thousand archival files, of which only a little more than one-tenth were secret files. In connection with the decision of the Soviet government to evacuate government institutions from Moscow, including the NKID of the USSR, the head of the Political Archive, I. K. Zyabkin, reported on June 27, 1941 to the General Secretary of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, A. A. Sobolev about the plan to evacuate the archives, for which it was planned to divide them into several groups. The materials of primary importance included original treaty acts (about 2 tons), notes and orders on the NKID (about 1 ton), archives of the secretariats of the People's Commissars and the Board of the NKID (about 6 tons), archives of territorial departments of the central office of the NKID, personal files of employees.

Employees of the Political Archive, working from morning till late at night, packed all the documents and materials of the first stage in four days, preparing them for evacuation. I didn't have enough containers. On July 2, 1941, the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs requested an additional 200 crates and 200 bags from the USSR Council of People's Commissars ' Affairs Department, and on the next day — another 400 crates. On July 5, 1941, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR issued an order, according to which People's Commissariats and institutions were instructed to take measures to unload archives from materials that were not subject to long-term storage. In accordance with this resolution, the NKID issued an order dated July 7 on the creation of a commission "for unloading archives and current office work from materials that do not have operational and scientific and historical value." A. P. Pavlov became the chairman of the commission, which also included G. N. Zarubin, I. K. Zyabkin, G. F. Saksin, V. N. Pavlov and others. All of them later became well-known Soviet diplomats, and then they were just beginning their diplomatic career. The Commission, having mobilized the staff of the Archive and a number of other departments of the NKID, did this gigantic work in the shortest possible time, and the materials were reviewed, selected and issued for destruction in the most thorough way, without any discounts on circumstances. For example, the entire unclassified fund of the Press Department for 1917-1941, which was not of particular value, was destroyed. Of course, there were also flaws, but they were more related to the fact that the new generation of Soviet diplomats, "brought up by the party", was intolerant of their predecessors expelled from the NKID, the so-called "enemies of the people". "It's not enough to shoot you," the then deputy People's Commissar Dekanozov, who came to the NKID from the NKVD and spoke to employees in his usual language, told the leaders of the Political Archive when he learned that Chicherin's personal correspondence with foreign political and public figures had been destroyed.

By July 17, 1941, 510 crates (about 26 tons) were packed and ready for shipment. The next day, July 18, the Evacuation Council issued an order signed by N. M. Shvernik, which, in part, stated::

Allow the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs to evacuate a highly secret part of the NKID Political Archive from Moscow to Melekess, Kuibyshev region.

Oblige the Kuibyshev Regional Executive Committee to allocate the appropriate premises for the archive to the NKID.

Oblige the NKPS to allocate 6 wagons to the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs for the transportation of the archive and its accompanying guards.

On July 28, the first batch of archives arrived at their destination. The archive in Melekessa was located in the premises of the club of an organization called Glavmuka, and the diplomats who worked in the archive became "club employees"for outsiders. At the end of August, the rest of the archives arrived in Melekess. In autumn, the central office of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, headed by First Deputy People's Commissar A. Ya.Vyshinsky, moved to Kuibyshev (Samara). People's Commissar V. M. Molotov and a small team of employees stayed in Moscow. Work in the archive did not stop, despite the difficult conditions in which they had to work. Only in 1942, more than 3,500 archival files were sent to Kuibyshev from Melekess at the request of the NKID leadership. Scientific processing of the funds continued. After the victory of the Red Army in the Battle of Kursk, the first batch of archival documents was returned to Moscow, and all other archives-in February 1944. We must pay tribute to the military generation of archivists, who, despite serious domestic and official difficulties, managed to preserve the most valuable documentary materials for posterity.

In December 1945, in accordance with the decree of the Council of People's Commissars, the Archive Department of the NKID of the USSR was created, which also included the Political Archive. This decision of the government provided for a significant expansion of the functions of the archival service in connection with the general intensification of foreign policy activities of the USSR after the end of the Great Patriotic War. New departments were added to the Archive Department: the Scientific and publishing Department, the Archive of Russian Foreign Policy, consisting of documents of the Board and the former Ministry of Foreign Affairs for 1720-1917, which were previously under the jurisdiction of the NKVD, and the Archive of Foreign States, created from the so-called "trophy funds" taken from Germany and other countries, which were later returned.

In March 1946, all the People's Commissariats of the Soviet Union were renamed ministries. In August 1958, the Archive Department was transformed into the Historical and Diplomatic Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which consisted of the Archive of Foreign Policy of the USSR, the Archive of Foreign Policy of Russia, research and scientific publishing departments. The existing structure proved to be stable and lasted for more than three decades. In 1992, the Historical and Diplomatic Department was transformed into the Historical and Documentary Department, and in 1993 - into the Historical and Documentary Department of the Ministry. Established in 1958. It coincided with a very significant event for the Archive of Foreign Policy of the USSR-the move to the new building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. If earlier the Archive was huddled in the basement of the house on Kuznetsky Most, where the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs was located, now it has moved to the risalit of a high-rise administrative building on Smolenskaya Square, in specially equipped archives for this purpose. The safes that held the most important documents could withstand, according to the manufacturer, being on fire for 48 hours. Thus, the Archive received first-class premises for those times.

Unfortunately, the then leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs failed to foresee the information "boom" that in a few years "ate up" the existing insignificant reserve of archive storage space. Already in the mid-60s, the question arose about the construction of a new building for the Archive. After numerous petitions and approvals, funds were allocated for the construction of a new building.

However, instead of a 12-story building, as planned, it was proposed to build an eight-story archive building in order to save money. It was even planned to move into this building the Archive of Foreign Policy of the USSR and the Archive of Foreign Policy of Russia, whose documents were located in a separate building at 15 B. Serpukhovskaya Street.Merging the two archives would create unthinkable working conditions. Only thanks to the energy and perseverance of the staff of the Historical and Diplomatic Department, this ill-conceived action was prevented and the archive premises on B. Serpukhovskaya Street were preserved. The construction of the new building lasted for 10 years, during which time the archival equipment went ahead. In the summer of 1977, the first hundreds of thousands of cases were moved to a new building at 11 Plotnikov Lane. The remaining cases were moved in the following summer. A huge amount of physical work was done, mostly by women employees of the Archive, who were deeply dedicated to their work. At the same time, the current operational activities of the Archive were not interrupted for a single day.

In the late 1980s, as transparency and openness in foreign policy gained momentum, the need for researchers to have access to archival materials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs became increasingly apparent. Issues related to declassification of archival documents are regulated by a number of legislative acts of the Russian Federation** In particular, this refers to the Law of the Russian Federation on State Secrets of July 21, 1993 No. 5485-I with amendments and additions of July 18, 2010; Fundamentals of legislation of the Russian Federation on the Archival Fund of the Russian Federation and archives, etc. and they fall within the competence of the Federal Archival Agency, federal and departmental archives, and the Interdepartmental Commission for the Protection of State Secrets.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union

Since 1992, the WUA of the USSR has been called the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation. Currently, the WUA of the Russian Federation can name several large groups of materials that are listed in 1873 funds. Funds are numbered according to the order in which they were originally listed in the List of Funds. Collection "International treaty acts". This collection has been developing since the creation of the Political Archive and began to grow especially rapidly after the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a resolution on March 2, 1951, entrusting the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the duties of permanent storage of authentic international treaty acts. This function of the depository is assigned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation by the Law of the Russian Federation "On International Treaties" of June 15, 1995. The collection consists of three parts: bilateral treaty acts, multilateral treaty acts with the participation of the Russian Federation (USSR) and documents on the demarcation and redemarkation of the state border. Materials from this collection are not allowed in the reading room, so as not to break the seals that bind them. Most treaties are published in the Collection of Legislation of the Russian Federation, and previously published in the series "Collections of existing Treaties" and "International Treaties", published by the Legal Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia. The next group of materials is the funds of the secretariats of Ministers (People's Commissars), their deputies, members of the NCID Board, materials and resolutions of the Board of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (NCID). These funds, which were formed mainly in the 20s and 40s of the XX century-the funds of G. V. Chicherin, L. M. Karakhan, M. M. Litvinov, N. N. Krestinsky and others-contain a rich correspondence on the countries they supervised. In the fund of the secretariat of the Deputy People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs of S. A. Lozovsky from 1939 to 1946, numbering more than 1,700 cases, you can find notes of the NKID in the Central Committee of the CPSU(b), memos to the People's Commissar, recordings of his conversations with foreigners, as well as recordings of conversations of other senior employees of the NKID, music correspondence with foreign diplomatic representatives in Moscow, mainly from Eastern countries, which he supervised, reports and bulletins of the Press Department of the NKID, information on various foreign policy issues, correspondence of the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS), the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Union of Societies of Foreign Cultural Relations, the USSR Academy of Sciences, and the Union of Societies of Foreign Cultural Relations. Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (SOCC), Union of Soviet Writers, etc. Along with correspondence on general issues, this collection contains materials on individual countries, such as documents on the steps taken by the Egyptian government to establish diplomatic relations with the USSR in 1943, on cooperation with China in 1945, and on the visit of Chinese Foreign Minister Song Jingwen to Moscow, on the inter-Union control mechanism for Japan, etc.

A much larger number of archival files and, consequently, documents on various issues are stored in the funds of the secretariats of those ministers who have been in office for a longer time. Thus, the fund of the G. V. Chicherin secretariat has over 9 thousand cases, the fund of the M. M. Litvinov secretariat has about 3 thousand cases, and the fund of the V. M. Molotov secretariat has over 12 thousand cases. The formation of the secretariat funds continued until the mid-1950s. The General Secretariat, which was re-established in 1957, no longer concentrated in its collection the diverse palette of documents that was characteristic of the funds of the Minister and his deputies. The collections of territorial departments contain country-specific materials. The names of departments (for example, the First European Department, the Second Asian Department, etc.) and the number of countries included in them may change, but the files of the reference department or department for a particular country continue to be archived according to a strictly defined inventory in chronological order. For each of the countries with which the Russian Federation, the legal successor of the USSR, maintains diplomatic relations, a fund is formed, which consists of secret and unclassified documents. The number of cases varies depending on the country and the activity of foreign policy relations, but the principle of forming archival cases remains common.

The next category of archival materials is the embassy funds. Funds of embassies of the Russian Federation abroad are formed directly in embassies and are constantly replenished. There are so-called "dead funds", that is, the funds of those embassies that have ceased to exist, for example, the embassy in the GDR. At the same time, the former "dead funds", for example, in the Baltic states, have come to life again. Currently, the materials of the embassy funds due to the improvement of communication facilities are somewhat impoverished compared to the past. But still, many documents can only be found there. Embassy funds are reserved for music correspondence with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the host country and embassies of third countries, correspondence on economic and cultural issues, student exchange, etc. In many embassies, documents such as chronicles of events and reviews of the host country's press are compiled. Considering that our libraries do not always contain newspapers from, for example, Bolivia or Singapore, the press reviews made by embassy staff are very valuable for Russian researchers. According to the nature of documentation, the funds of the Russian Federation's representative offices to international organizations, in particular to the UN (New York), the UN European Office (Geneva), UNESCO (Paris), etc., also belong to the embassy funds.

Consular offices of the Foreign Ministry abroad may be of interest to those researchers who are engaged not so much in studying big politics, but rather in studying the details of bilateral relations or the history of a particular country. In this regard, I would like to mention the documents of consular institutions of the 1920s. It was in one of them that N. K. Roerich's autographs were found.

The collections of international meetings and conferences contain documents not only from our delegations, but also official materials from various bodies of the organizations themselves, such as the Brest-Litovsk Peace Conference of 1918, the Genoa Conference of 1922, the League of Nations Disarmament Conference of 1932, the Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam Conferences of Heads of State and Government during World War II, the San Francisco Charter and UN Conference, the Paris Peace Conference of 1947, and others.

Each archive is proud of its rarities. The Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation is also proud of its rare and unique documents, which contains autographs of many state and political figures of the USSR and Russia, as well as other countries of the world (I. V. Stalin, N. S. Khrushchev, F. D. Roosevelt, S. de Gaulle, W. Churchill, etc.). Many interesting finds related to the names of famous writers, scientists and musicians (M. Gorky, S. Yesenin, A. Einstein, F. Chaliapin, etc.) were found in the WUA of the Russian Federation. One of the activities of the Archive is to collect materials of personal origin related to the history of Soviet and Russian diplomacy. Now the Archive already has 142 personal funds of diplomats of different generations. There are materials reflecting the activities of G. V. Chicherin, V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, A. M. Kollontai, Ya. Z. Surits, Ya. A. Berzin, S. S. Alexandrovsky.

Materials of personal collections-memoirs, correspondence, posters and certificates, anniversary medals, photographs-unlike ordinary official documents stored in the Archive, have a vivid illustrative and emotional quality. They provide an opportunity to feel the spirit of the era.

The documents and materials stored in the WUA of the Russian Federation, covering a relatively short historical period, are truly priceless assets, without which it is impossible to explore all the nuances and turns in Soviet foreign policy.

An important feature of the WUA of the Russian Federation is that it has always been and remains a structural division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation and performs tasks that are closely linked to the operational activities of the Ministry.

Currently, the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation, located in two buildings-32/34 Smolenskaya-Sennaya Street and 11 Plotnikov Lane-has more than 26 km of shelves containing about 1,500 thousand items of storage.