The archive was formed beginning in 1921 as the Commission to Collect and Study Materials for the History of the October Revolution. The archive holds the records of Communist Party and Komsomol organizations of Moscow and Moscow Oblast. These include editorial records of Party journals and publishing houses as well as records of local CP educational and research institutions. After the attempted August 1991 coup the archive took over the massive current records of all local Moscow Party organizations, which are still being processed.
Statistics are still estimates about the quantity of fonds and files involved.
Since 1992, the archive has started to collect records of other social movements and political parties in Moscow. Access Only a small portion of the records have been declassified, particularly those from the years 1917 through 1945. Putevoditel' po fondam tsentral'nykh arkhivov Moskvy. Compiled by I. G. Tarakanova et al. Edited by A. D. Stepanskii et al.