The reception of the theory of the Unified State Archival Fund

Abstract

The paper is dedicated to the 100^th anniversary of the establishment of a network of state archives in Russia. The author states that one of the achievements of the Russian archivists from the early 20^th century is at the same time the greatest theoretical achievement of the world archival science in the last century.

The theory of Unified State Archival Fund appears in response to the new tasks of historical archives around the world in respect of the immense amount of emerging documents, their extreme diversity in type, mode of creation and use, the rapid development of social sciences. The comprehensive coverage of historically valuable documentation for its preservation for future generations (regardless of the type, author, creator and owner of the information, the technique of fixing and using it) appears to be the most easily achievable in Soviet Russia and in the countries similar to her in terms of organization, but it is a task for all other countries.

The article mentions statements about the positives of overall and integrate centralization of the archives, made by many prominent representatives of world archival theory and practice. Throughout the 20^th Century, there actually was an exchange of ideas and positive practices in this respect, regardless of the economic and political differences between countries. Particularly impressive are the successes of the archivists in Canada, where the quest is for archives that are even been called «total” but which, unfortunately, forgetting their predecessors are presented as a theoretical novelty.