Some additions to the assessment of V.N. Autocratov’s contribution to the development of Russian archival science

Abstract

The article considers V.N. Autocratov’s contribution to the development of the theory of Russian archival science; it also provides an assessment of the scholar’s understanding of the object, subject and the boundaries of archival science as a scientific discipline, of the issues of acquisition, recording and organization of recordkeeping of the USSR State Archival Fund. The paper characterizes the conditions in which V.N. Autocratov developed his archival theory. The latter was based on Marxist methodology and the so-called “principle of partisanship”, to which Autocratov gave a rather original interpretation, essentially defining it as a search for professional criteria for assessing the source significance of a document when appraising its value. At the same time, it is noted that in his work Autocratov widely used a popular at his time information approach, giving it a paramount importance in a number of cases, for example, in determining the object of archival science. The scholar did not resort to the theory of archival science based on social memory, which was being developed at that time. However, while standing a historian, in his work he emphasized the historicism of archival knowledge, its orientation not only towards an archivist, but also towards the user of archives – a historian. The article highly evaluates Autocratov’s fund theory, which retains its significance at the present time. Autocratov’s contribution to the development of the concept of the USSR State Archival Fund is shown