The Russian emigration and preservation of national memory

Abstract

The emergence of communities of Russian diaspora in several countries of the World caused the formation of extensive archival heritage. The study of this heritage is one the most topical contemporary problems. The activities related to revealing, restitution to Russia and use of this heritage significantly increased in the last decades. This is connected with the change of political situation, the availability of access of researchers to archival collections of Russian diaspora. The topicality of this fundamental research problem is being deepened by the necessity of elimination of existing information flaw during the contemporary period of Russian history – to reveal the information about the documents of Russian diaspora and their locations in foreign archives and compile it in the unified information data base. The revealing of contemporary location of different documents of this group has as a further aim the reconstruction of integrity of dispersed archival collections by the ways of restitution, exchange or copying of documents and also by the way of virtual unification, for example, in the form of digital archive. The availability of possibly complete information about documents which are kept in foreign archives, libraries, museums, private collections gives the opportunity to reconstruct on the revealed documentary base the comprehensive picture of the most tense periods of Russian history.