The first post-revolutionary years in the Nizhny Novgorod province. Authorities, archives and archivists (1919–1924)

Abstract

The article considers the initial stage of formation and establishment of the state archival service in the Nizhny Novgorod province from the moment of creation in the region of the post of a provincial commissioner of the General Archives Department and appointment to it of Alexander Yakovlevich Sadovsky, chairman of the Nizhny Novgorod Provincial Scientific Archival Commission. Sadovsky held that position until the beginning of 1924, when the service was headed by Nikolai Semenovich Burmistrov, far from archival work, but ambitious and energetic. The first archivists had to organize their work in very difficult conditions: the lack of suitable, heated, guarded premises, which made it possible to fully work only in the warm season; frequent looting of archives caused by a deficiency and high cost of paper, often accompanied by fires; extremely low salaries and constant delays in payments, meager rations, household disorder and, as a result, “personnel defections”; the unwillingness of newly created Soviet institutions to cooperate with archives and transfer departmental archives of former institutions to state custody, and many other reasons. However, despite everything, Nizhny Novgorod archivists managed to ensure the preservation of the historical and documentary heritage of their native land and create favorable conditions for the formation and further development of the branch.