Foreign Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office : Embassy and Consulates, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Subtitle: General Correspondence
Contributors: Great Britain. Public Record Office
Series: Public Record Office. F.O. 181; Records of the Public Record Office; PRO -- FO 181
Publisher: Public Record Office
Published: 1981
Place of publication: London
Language: eng; rus
Subjects: Foreign relations; Sources; British Diplomatic and consular service
Other titles: Embassy and Consulates, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (formerly Russian Empire): General Correspondence.; Embassy and consular archives, Russia: Correspondence.; F.O. 181.; FO 181.
Description: This series contains general correspondence of the British embassy and consulates in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (formerly the Russian Empire). There is no correspondence for the period 1921 to 1937.
Notes: Title from The National Archives online catalogue.

Document numbers: F.O. 181/1-1262 (1801-1970)

Before the embassy staff were withdrawn in 1918, many post 1908 papers of certain types were destroyed. Another serious loss of embassy archives occurred in 1941 when, with the advance of the German armies, all records, confidential and otherwise, up to and including part of 1941, were burnt by embassy staff before they left for Kuibyshev.

In 1941, as German forces advanced, all British embassy staff in Moscow (with the exception of a few personnel) left for Kuibyshev. It was not until 1943 that the embassy was fully staffed again.