Alexey Bogolyubov and Ivan Slavin are the two prominent figures in the cultural and public life of the Russian Empire’s Saratov Province. The former was a well-known painter, philanthropist, and Maecenas. In 1885, Alexey Bogolyubov initiated the foundation of the Saratov Museum of Fine Arts (the first public fine arts museum in Russia) and the creation of the famous Saratov drawing school, the cradle of many Russian painters, which was opened after Bogolyubov’s death in 1897. The latter – Ivan Slavin was an eminent public figure in Saratov, the author of the memoirs about the development of his native city in the pre-revolutionary period. In his book, Slavin described the events in which he himself was directly involved as a member of the city government. The Saratov Region State Archives has preserved the documents attesting to the long-lasting friendly relationship between A.P. Bogolyubov and I.Ya. Slavin. The materials elaborate on the roles of the two personalities in the history of the Volga city, which, before World War I, was considered to be the “capital of the Volga Region”. The article tries to analyze how and on what basis did the two characters draw closer. The difference in age was not an obstacle and did not interfere with their business and friendly relationship. Alexey Bogolyubov spent most of his life abroad. Ivan Slavin, out of his convictions, never left his homeland. They were united by the Russian language, pan-European culture, their dedicated service to Russia, understanding of their duty to contemporaries and descendants. “The Sons of the Fatherland” – this noble definition can fully characterize both figures.

Georgi Pirinski Jr. is a prominent Bulgarian politician. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs and Chairman of the National Assembly. This article regards his father, Georgi Pirinski Sr., who was the Executive Secretary of the American Slav Congress (1944–1951) and Chairman of the Bulgarian Committee for Peace (1969–1972). An emigre from Bulgaria, he took a pseudonym in memory of his native land – the Pirin Macedonia. Rather soon, Pirinski became a prominent trade union leader. His influence on the situation in the world was the greatest, when he was actually the leader of the largest all-Slavic organization in America – the American Slav Congress (the ASC). As an executive secretary of the ASC, Pirinski Sr. determined the American and foreign policy of the organization; in particular, he spoke on behalf of the ASC from the rostrum of the US Congress. Being an illegal member of the Communist Party of the USA, he pursued a pro-Soviet policy inside the ASC which contributed to the schism and abolishment of the ASC; he himself after several arrests had to return to Bulgaria. At the end of his life he felt regret for his fanaticism. Looking at the career of his son, one would say that Georgi Pirinski Jr. learnt from his father’s mistakes and became so successful as a politician that he had to be stopped by semi-legal means.

Based on Russian and French materials, a comparative analysis of the informational value of French and Soviet (archived in Russia) documents on the participation of Soviet citizens in the French Resistance was carried out for the first time, their authenticity and reliability were evaluated. In this article, the authors examined the difficulties of documenting the participation of Soviet people in the French Resistance during and after World War II. The authors showed how the processes of “liquidation” of the Resistance structures and the repatriation of displaced Soviet citizens caused lacunae in the archival holdings. The article reveals the history of the formation, description and use of documentary systems preserved in France and Russia about the participation of Soviet people in the Resistance, as well as the creation of their scientific and reference apparatus. The authors demonstrated how those sources were used in the historiography of the Resistance in various periods of Soviet history and Franco-Russian relations. The authors provided the most relevant information about the libraries, museums and archives that store and collect those documents; for the first time, recommendations are given for working with their scientific and reference apparatus, as well as an advice to Russian-speaking researchers of the Second World War, including the family history researchers.

The article is devoted to the history of the Leningrad archives during the Great Patriotic War and the blockade. The evacuation of the most valuable archival funds and parts of the funds largely repeated the experience of the 1917 evacuation. Especially valuable documents and the collections of finding aids of the archives were evacuated. That allowed to save the most valuable part of the archives, but made it almost impossible to use of information from the archives left in the besieged city. But thanks to the highest professionalism and dedication of the Leningrad archivists, these documents were nevertheless shown up and used in the interests of the defense, foreign policy, the national economy, as well as propaganda. In the most difficult conditions of the blockade, thematic requests were carried out, reviews, lists of documents were compiled, documentary collections were prepared for publication. Social and legal requests were also carried out in the interests of individuals. Documents of “operationalchekist” interest were identified. Work on the use of information from the archives of besieged Leningrad was carried out on a large scale. The archives suffered from bombing and artillery shelling. The greatest losses were suffered by the Central State Historical Archives in Leningrad (TsGIAL). Those losses (as well as losses during evacuation and re-evacuation) amounted to approx 1.3% of the total number of documents stored in the archive. But the main part of the documents of the Leningrad archives was saved.

Basing on the archival sources of the GARF and RGAE, the article analyses the stages of collection and usage of the documentary heritage of the Great Patriotic War. It was at the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War that the decision was made to collect the war-time records. It is noted that various institutions and organizations were involved in the process of accumulating such documentary heritage including the Commission on History of the Great Patriotic War at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR which developed into the methodological centre coordinating the work of local commissions. Under war-time conditions, the state archives acquisition techniques and methods made it necessary to introduce significant changes into the collecting procedures of the State Archival Fund. The paper discusses the initiatives and measures taken by the State Archives Administration for the acquisition of archives with the war-time documents. The article analyses the reports and speeches of the delegates of the All-Russia Conference of Historians and Archivists, held in June 1943, at which the issue of collecting various types and kinds of the documentary evidence of the Great Patriotic War was raised, and among that evidence – the documents of personal origin: the letters, diaries, memoirs of ordinary participants in the events. Proposals were put forward and the resolution was adopted concerning the foundation of the Central State Archives of the Great Patriotic War, what, however, was not implemented. The idea of establishing a special Archives, promoted by the Conference, was revived in the 1970s by Konstantin Simonov, the writer, whose actions still did not result in the creation of the institution. Using archival sources, the article considers the work of the staff members of the state archives and museums, and also of the academic staff and the students of the Moscow Institute for History and Archives referring to their activities such as the collection and preservation of the documentary heritage of the Great Patriotic War.

The article covers the issues of initiative acquisition of archives in the documents of personal origin during the Great Patriotic War, the organization of work to identify and collect the wartime documents. Collecting documents of ordinary citizens, in particular letters from the front and to the front is analyzed. Proposals to create the specialized archives of documents on the history of the war were never implemented. Quite a lot of the actions, search operations and expeditions were conducted in the country, for example, the “Chronicle of the Great Patriotic War”, the “Frontline letter”, the “Search”, the “Memory”, etc., during which a significant number of documents of war participants and home front workers were collected and stored. Not so much of the documents of personal origin of the war participants are concentrated in the archives. In general, there prevails the collection type of organization for storing documents from the period of the Great Patriotic War. With reference to the corpus of documents of personal origin of the war period the research literature pays its attention mostly to correspondence and diaries, memoirs. Historians and archivists, analyzing wartime letters, offer different classifications depending on the authors, recipients, subjects, etc. The article provides a generalized classification of letters based on their inherent similarities. The author also analyzes the reasons for a small number of extant diaries and memoirs, and provides examples of their classification. Likewise the article describes current approaches to the collection of personal papers within the frames of the Moscow Glavarkhiv project “Moscow – with care for history” and the Ministry of Defense project “The Memory Road”.

Basing on the study of the Internet publications of archival documents, the article considers the issues of publishing digitized copies of archival documents in the electronic environment on the website of the Federal Archive Agency and the “Archives of Russia” portal. The publications were prepared within the framework of the state programs “Patriotic education of the citizens of the Russian Federation” in 2006–2020, approved by the government of the Russian Federation. The present research is the analysis of the virtual exhibition “Stalin-Churchill-Roosevelt. A joint fight against Nazism”; the publications “How and for what we are fighting with the Poles. The anti-Polish program of the OUN in archival documents”; “Ukrainian nationalist organizations during World War II”; “How the Polish underground ‘helped’ the Red Army to defeat Nazi Germany. 1944–1945. Marking the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw uprising of 1944”; “General Vlasov. The story of betrayal”; “Victory. 1941–1945”; “Stalingrad. Commemorating the 75th anniversary of the defeat by the Soviet troops of the German-fascist troops in the battle of Stalingrad”; “Before and after Munich. Archival documents tell the story. Marking the 80th anniversary of the ‘Munich agreement’ ”; “1939: from ‘appeasement’ to war”; “Nuremberg trial documents from Russian archives”; “Documents of the Soviet era”; “Tempered in the Great Patriotic War...”; “Voices of the outstanding Soviet commanders of the Great Patriotic War”; “Officers of the First World War – generals of the Great Patriotic War”. The main attention is paid to the investigation of the composition and the content of publications, their reference-search engine and finding aids, the advantages and disadvantages of that method of publication. The scientific novelty of the article consists in the study of the Internet publications about the Great Patriotic War, in the development of a new research direction – Archeography in the electronic environment (Digital Archeography).

The article is based on an analysis of the Bryansk region State Archive’s documents and deals with the mobilization measures of the authorities, public organizations and residents of the Bryansk, Karachev, Sevsk and Trubchevsk uyezds of the Oryol Governorate, aimed at the organization of health care for sick and wounded combatants during the First World War. The significance of the city of Bryansk as an important railway junction and an evacuation point is highlighted. 18 hospitals were additionally organized by joint efforts in Bryansk at the very beginning of the war in addition to the already existing military hospital (a total of 1300 cots). At the same time, the key role of the All-Russian City Council for helping sick and wounded combatants in financing and maintaining a number of medical institutions is shown. The activities of the Bryansk Committee of the Red Cross, which coordinated the activities of all government and public organizations in the territory of the above-mentioned uyezds, are also characterized. The author mentions the Committee’s information concerning the hospitals that came up after the war outbreak. The activities of the Ladies’ Circle, which was engaged in both medical and charitable assistance, are especially noted. The article pays particular attention to the documents of the Bryansk military hospital as the main medical institution in the wartime conditions.

The present article describes the phono documents of the Russian State Archives of Sound Recordings related to World War II. The work covers the specifics of these documents and their value for the war history research as well as for understanding of the war-time atmosphere and its reflection in people’s minds during and after the war. The paper analyses the audio recordings made both during World War II and the following years. The examples of most important documents are presented. The existence of phono documents created before the start of World War II and after its end is indicated. The article informs on the sound recordings created during the years of World War II. It also states the existence of captured phono documents created by Nazi Germany and sound recordings of war criminals court processes. The author describes the work done by archivists to provide easy access of the public to phono documents. The article specifies the thematic catalogues of war history documents dating from 1929 to 1946 that can be found on the RSASR’s website. The titles and the short descriptions of the Internet projects that include fragments of the World War II history audio recordings are also given. The article notes a presence in the Archives of the numerous artistic recordings pertaining to the War and indicates their importance.