2022 Volume 82 Pages 3-19
The paper discusses the issues related to the Russia’s archival management system, focusing on cultural and political aspects of archives. First, through the analysis of the concepts of ‘centralization’ and ‘the state archival fond,’ the author examines how and in what degree the Russian archival system inherited the features and approaches of its state-predecessors, the Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. Second, he traces the course of ‘the archival revolution’ of 1990s, analyses the characteristics of the Federal Law ‘On Archival Management’ of 2004, and, thus, describes the legal framework of archival management in Russia. Third, he discusses the evolution of Rosarkhiv’s legal status, functions and the problems it faced from the 1990s to 2010s, and verifies how the principle of centralization has been applied in reality in the New Russia. The author admits that the present Russian centralized archival system has had a strong positive effect in unifying and standardizing rules and approaches, but points out that it may have problems in catalysing a negative centralization tendencies such as an excessive concentration of power in hands of the President of Russia.
