Based on the study of archival materials (primarily from the funds of the Yusupov princes), the article considers the issue of the realization by the largest landowners of the Russian Empire in 1890–1914 of their right to the subsoil in order to increase the profitability of their estates. As it turns out, that economic strategy was characteristic not only of a small group of Ural owners, but also for many other titled aristocrats whose possessions were located in the central provinces and especially in the regions of Southern Russia (Donbass and the Caucasus), where huge reserves of mineral raw materials were discovered. The analysis of the relevant sources shows what significant opportunities for increasing revenue were provided by coal and oil deposits, and primarily, by the initiative and economic pragmatism of private landowners in organizing extractive production. As a rule, most aristocrats managed to increase their cash receipts immediately due to minimal organizational efforts. But in the future, with the expansion and complication of extractive production, landowners faced a lack of available funds. The way out of that was seen in selling their lands or in the corporatization of the enterprise, which guaranteed the aristocrats a certain dividend from profits, but transferred most of the capital and income of the estate into the hands of industrial or banking companies. In any case, the entry of the Russian economy in 1890-1914 in the “industrial” period turned out to be extremely profitable for the largest landowners, not only for purposes of developing their agricultural estates, but also in terms of the diversification of their economy, including through the active exploitation of mineral resources.

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.

In the early 1930s, the cultural policy of Mexico in relation to the rural population was finally adopted and the main instruments for the consolidation of the post-revolutionary state were determined. The first priority in post-revolutionary Mexico was to carry out a large-scale education reform among the rural Indigenous population. The article considers the key points of the rural schools project in Mexico in the 1930s and the characteristics of its practical implementation in the state of Yucatan. The study of the issue was made possible due to the wide involvement of the archival materials that constitute the fund of the “Department of Rural Schools” of the Historical Archives in the Ministry of Public Education of Mexico, in particular, the methodological works written for missionary teachers, the reports of school inspectors and rural schools directors. The analysis of the office documents from the Mexican Ministry of Public Education demonstrated a discrepancy between the expectations of the education reform as part of the strategy for the integration of the indigenous population, and its practical results. The study of the educational policies of the post-revolutionary Mexican government in the state of Yucatan made it possible to conclude on the passive resistance of the rural population to the new socio-cultural elements in the country, as well as to understand the specifics of the interaction between the different levels of government in the region in the field of education policy.

The article about evaluating the importance of the memoires as a source of the history of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1917–1921. Under the conditions of the Civil War, those sources that appear to be more “objective” than those of personal origin lose some of their significance. The normative documents were often a “declaration of intent” and the actual policies were often very different from what was proclaimed in the laws. The old system of office work was destroyed together with the old state apparatus, the new one was just beginning to be created, which could not but affect the quality of information reflected in official documents. In such circumstances, the information contained in sources of personal origin acquires special meaning. They give us the opportunity to see the events through the eyes of their immediate participants and witnesses, to understand their motives and feelings. Of interest are both the memoirs of archpriests, priests and laymen, and the memoirs of those who implemented anti-religious policy. The comparative analysis of various narratives in sources of personal origin and comparison of such memories with the data of archival documents allows specifying important details of the history of the Russian Orthodox Church at the beginning of the 20th century. The memoirs are an important source on the history of the repressions against believers; they also provide valuable information about the political stance of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The article reviews the main publications of 2011–2020, published in the journals “Otechestvennye arkhivy” and “Herald of an Archivist”, concerning the issues of keeping electronic archival documents, their entry into state safekeeping, as well as the experience of the archival institutions practical work in the field of digital records. Based on the historiographical material, the main directions discussed in the professional community on the pages of those journals are identified. In the period from 2011 to 2014, the issues of creating a digital fund for the use of archival documents and digitization of archival records in general were actively discussed. Theoretical aspects of digital records management were studied by the authors on the pages of periodicals in 2014-2015. In the period from 2016 to 2020, the key topics of the theory of digital records were the issues of creating a digital reference apparatus, as well as those of ensuring the digital records keeping. The analysis of the articles made it possible to draw conclusions about the regular advance of archival thought in the direction of theoretical and practical development of the problems of acquisition and preservation of digital records, and also to correlate the frequency of publications in those journals with the publication of key normative and methodological documents in the field of archives and records management.

The paper deals with the issue of forming a system of local archives in Russia on the example of functioning of district (city) archives of the Sverdlovsk region from 1934 to 1991. The subject of the study is the network of the lower level archives in the Middle Urals. Based on the historical-institutional approach, an attempt is made to reconstruct the state policy in the field of archiving. The article provides a comprehensive analysis of archival policy, the institutional system of the local archives management and the activity areas as well as the dynamics of the change in the number of archival institutions. Separate consideration is given to the special role of the departments and branches in the regional archival systems. The stages of creating an archival network are dealt with sequentially: the search for a model of a local archival system in Soviet Russia, its implementation (1919–1934), the beginning of the formation of local archives in the Sverdlovsk region (1934–1938), the subordination of the archives to the NKVD-MVD (1939–1956) and their reassignment to the district executive committees (1956–1991). The article concludes on the specific features of the information culture in the USSR, the essential principles of the Soviet archival system and the contradictory trends in the development of the key element of the Russian archival system. The research was carried out on the basis of the documents from the State Archives of the Sverdlovsk Region.

Archiving research of scientific and technical documentation is traditionally is considered in scientific and methodological works, as well as training courses as an equal part of general archival studies. But at the same time, the definition of the term “scientific and technical documentation” has not been fixed yet in the regulatory documents, in historiography, as well as in the terminological standards, where we observe different interpretations of this term. Obviously, the main issue in defining the term “scientific and technical documentation” is its cross-system nature, and likewise its polysemantic use in various fields of science. It is typical that different methodological documents and draft regulations include different documentation systems in this concept. At the same time, the terms “scientific and technical document”, “electronic scientific and technical document” are now actively used. The article analyzes the terminological controversies of the archival studies of scientific and technical documentation. The main issue considered by the author is the definition of the terms “scientific and technical documentation” and “electronic scientific and technical document”. The paper scrutinizes the history of the use of the terms, their historiography. The issues of the relationship between management documentation and scientific and technical documentation are also touched upon. The author of the article formulates and justifies the definitions of the terms “scientific and technical documentation”, “scientific and technical document”, “electronic scientific and technical document”.

The Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation developed a list of documents generated in the course of its activities and the activities of its subordinate organizations in accordance with the Federal legislation and the instructions of the Government of the Russian Federation. This article presents approaches to drafting such a list of documents. The authors show how the current legislation to regulate the activities of higher educational institutions and scientific organizations for the preparation of that list is applied. Historical, comparative and technical legal methods were used as the main research ones. The article gives the historical overview of the adoption of such lists of documents in the USSR and Russia. Also, the authors review the cases of listing documents in some CIS countries. The technical legal method was used to illustrate the relationship between the content of the legal and regulatory statutes of the current legislation and the documents that are included in the draft list of the documents under development. Scientific and methodological approaches to the formation of a section in the list of the documents related to the implementation of educational activities are demonstrated as an outcome of the discussion. The discussion results were used to create a draft listing and can be used when compiling the lists of documents for specific subordinate organizations.

The article deals with the results of studying the documents from Fund no. 3 of the State Archives of the Republic of Buryatia – the “Balagan Steppe Duma”, the main source on the history of the local government of the Balagan Buryats in the 19th century. The three-tier system of the local self-government bodies of the Buryats (Steppe Dumas – intertribal councils – clan administrations) was established in accordance with the Charter on the management of foreigners of 1822 by M.M. Speransky. The charter provided for the creation of that system among the nomadic peoples: Buryats, Yakuts, Tungus and Khakass. The Balagan Steppe Duma was one of the 12 Buryat Steppe Dumas, and the largest in number in the Irkutsk province. The Balagan Buryats were a complex ethnic group, which included the Bulagat and Ikinat clans. The fund of the Balagan Steppe Duma, which consists of 2063 files for 1809–1903, fully reflects the history of the Balagan Buryats in the 19th century. The article briefly describes the history of the Balagan Steppe Duma, as a local government body of the Balagan Buryats, and also talks about the sources on the history of the Balagan Department, the history of the fund, the variety of the documents that are kept in the State Archives of the Republic of Buryatia.

The article analyzes some personal funds of the scientists, inventors and educators, kept in the National Archives of Uzbekistan. The research raises the question of the place and role of the funds of personal origin as archival historical sources. The article highlights the issues related to the funds of major scientists, technicians and educators kept in the National Archives of Uzbekistan. It also provides a brief description of a number of the funds, connected with the scientists in the field of natural and exact sciences, medicine; specialists in the field of historical and philological sciences and, in general, in social and humanitarian spheres, including historians, archaeographers and librarians. The article draws attention to some funds, for example, the funds of F.M. Mauer, E.K. Betger, or to the more studied ones, such as the fund of academician R.R. Schroeder, A.H. Babakhodzhaev, and also to a number of others (including family funds). The paper highlights, for example, the availability of the funds reflecting the creation and testing of the first electronic television system in Tashkent in 1928 – those funds pertaining to the creators of the so-called “telephoto” and the participants in the tests of that device – B.P. Grabovsky, K.K. Slivitsky, Aziz Niallo (A.V. Stanishevsky). The research features the presence of the personal funds of major scientists in the field of history, such as L.V. Gentschke, A.P. Savitsky, G.V. Parfenov, etc. The article aims at attracting the attention of historians to the usage of vast and interesting historical material on the history of science and technology in Uzbekistan, which is provided by the prominent scientists’ personal funds kept in the National Archives of Uzbekistan (as well as in a number of other archives of the country).