LEGAL REGULATION OF THE SELECTION AND DESTRUCTION OF ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTS IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE XIX CENTURY: REGIONAL ASPECTS
Authors: Tkachenko Vladimir G. 
Published: December 2023

The purpose of the study is to analyze the legislative regulation of the processes of selecting and destructing archival documents, which since the second half of the XIX century influenced the formation of complexes of archival documents in local government bodies and determined their information potential.

Methods and materials. The published legislative acts of the Russian Empire and departmental legal acts of the ministries of archival affairs were used as the source base of the study.

The research is based on the basic principles of historical cognition: historicism, consistency, objectivity. Taking into account the homogeneity of the text arrays of sources involved, the content analysis of legislative and regulatory legal acts was used as the main method, which made it possible to trace the main trends, to identify some patterns and assess the processes underlying management decisions in the field of selecting for archival storage and destruction of documents that lost their practical significance.

The novelty of the study lies in the fact that such an analysis has not been carried out yet. As a rule, most authors limited themselves to mentioning a number of legislative norms and stating the fact about a significant number of archival documents destroyed during the period under review. The scientific and practical significance of the proposed publication corresponds to the needs of modern understanding the historical experience of the national archive-keeping.

Study results. In the Russian legislation on archives during the XVIII – first third of the XIX century there were no prescriptions concerning the procedures for selecting for storage and destruction of cases. By the middle of the XIX century state institutions of the Russian Empire faced a very serious problem of a shortage in premises for archives and the need to solve the issues about the fate of archival documents accumulated in them. The situation was further aggravated by the reforms of the 1860s – 1870s, as a result of which it became necessary to decide the future fate of documents of the liquidated institutions as well. Since the beginning of the 1860s, the legislative initiative on the analysis of archives and destroying files was mainly aimed at taking organizational and methodological measures. Only during 1861–1869, 11 legislative acts regulating the organization of storage and destruction of resolved cases in the main departments of the Russian Empire were published. It was during this period that special “timetables” began to be actively used – they were the lists of documents indicating the terms of their storage. In total, after 1845, 12 such lists of cases for 9 departments were approved at the legislative level in Russia. However, at this, the supreme power in its legislative activity relied on the practice of adopting legislative acts for each department separately, which led to inconsistency in understanding the value of the same categories of documents and, as a result, destruction of really valuable archival materials and excessive storage of obvious waste paper. It should be noted that the drafters of legislative and departmental normative legal acts, attempting to form certain legal mechanisms to protect archives from unjustified destruction, acted within their competence and at the level of understanding the value of documents that existed in the official environment at that time. They could only be guided in this matter by their accumulated experience and their own ideas about the expediency of preserving documents. It would be unfair to implicitly reproach the officials of the departments for their indifference to the fate of archival documents. In the legislation of the period under review, there are many prescriptions regarding a cautious approach to the examination of cases. As one of the measures to prevent the destruction of cases of scientific interest, involvement of provincial statistical committees to participate in the analysis of archives was authorized.

Conclusions. In general, the Russian legislation on the analysis of archives in the period under review is characterized by ambiguity of the content and inconsistency of the acts adopted. Thus, there was no unity in the departmental rules in determining the sequence of categories for grouping cases; there were different approaches in setting the archival life of cases that had lost their practical value, and in some cases they were not regulated at all. Vagueness of some formulations left officials at various levels of government with a field for “initiative”. A high role of the personal factor in making decisions on distributing documents by category and establishing archival life of cases, fixed at the legislative level, as well as lack of instructions on how and by whom these actions of officials should be controlled and whether they should be monitored by higher authorities at all, further aggravated the situation.

As a result, the departmental approach in the issuance of acts on the analysis of archives and the allocation of cases for destruction, strong dependence on decision-making by individual officials endowed with relevant powers by the law, and, as a result, opaque and uncontrolled making conclusions about the value of documents could not but cause concern to the scientific community, whose representatives repeatedly raised the issue on developing uniform rules for all departments. At the same time, while condemning official arbitrariness during selection and destruction of cases, they were not ready to offer constructive ideas enabling them to rely on scientific approaches in carrying out this work, since the theoretical basis of archival science was just beginning to be formed at this period.