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ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia: B-6

Last update of repository: 3 December 2020

Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ekonomiki (RGAE)


Holdings

Total: 2,320 fonds, 5,617,534 units, 1898–2018
institutional records—1,834 fonds (3,432,121 units); personal papers—398 fonds (84,931 units) (1822–2012; a few 18th–19th cc.); personnel files—88 fonds (1,787,201 units); scientific-technical documents—315,451 units; photographs—2 fonds (1,518 units)

An annotated list of fonds and opisi in the archive is available on the RGAE website at: http://opisi.rgae.ru/scripts/uis/rgae....
        RGAE retains the records of central administrative agencies responsible for the national economy of the USSR from 1917 through 1991. At the same time, it is the repository for unique economic reports and statistical materials of organizations at different levels of the economy–from local offices and trusts to the people's commissariats (narkomats) and ministries and state committees throughout the USSR. The archive has accumulated a large complex of personnel files and personal papers, including those of leading functionaries in all branches of the national economy. The holdings are organized in a series of large complexes.
        First are the fonds of agencies that operated across the entire economy, that is to say, planning and financial agencies, people's commissariats, ministries, and state committees involved with the general planning and administration of the national economy and its branches–industry, agriculture, construction, trade, transportation, and communications, together with the records of their subordinate departments. Most important in this complex are fonds of the State Planning Committee of the USSR (Gosplan SSSR, 1921–1991), the Supreme Councils of the National Economy of the RSFSR (Vysshii sovet narodnogo khoziaistva—VSNKh, 1917–1922) and the USSR (1922–1932), the People's Commissariats (after 1946—Ministries) of Finance, Agriculture, and Foreign Trade, and the State Bank of the USSR (Gosbank SSSR, 1921–1991). RGAE stores the records of analogous central organs of RSFSR state administration (before the establishment of the USSR in 1923) that were involved in economic management for the entire country.
        The major complex of fonds containing planning and statistical sources includes the records of the Central Statistical Administration of the USSR (Tsentral'noe statisticheskoe upravlenie—TsSU) and its predecessors (1918–1987), Gosplan SSSR, and the State Committee on Statistics (Goskomstat), together with their subordinate agencies and research institutes. These fonds include statistical and demographic materials from the all-union population censuses of 1926, 1937, 1939, 1959, 1979 and 1989, including data from all former Soviet union republics.
        Inter-branch ministerial-level agencies for management of industrial enterprises are represented by records of the People's Commissariats of Heavy Industry of the USSR (Narodnyi komissariat tiazheloi promyshlennosti—Narkomtiazhprom SSSR, or NKTP, 1932–1939), Ferrous and Non-Ferrous Metallurgy, Mechanical Engineering, and the Gas and Coal (Peat) Industries. These fonds include documentation from both the industrial complex as a whole and industrial branches in different regions of the USSR.
        The agricultural sector of the Soviet economy is represented by fonds of the People's Commissariats of Agriculture of the RSFSR and of the USSR, the Ministry of Agriculture of the USSR (Minsel'khoz SSSR, 1947–1953), the Ministry of State Farms (sovkhozy) of the USSR (1947–1957), the All-Union and All-Russian Associations (unions) of Agricultural Collectives of the RSFSR (Kolkhoztsentr RSFSR, 1927–1929) and of the SSSR (1929–1932), and the Council for Collective Farms of the USSR (1946–1953).
        The development of trade and scientific relations with foreign countries is represented in records of the People's Commissariats (Ministries) of Foreign Trade of the RSFSR and of the USSR (1917–1991), and the State Committee for Science and Technology of the USSR (from 1965), along with fonds of other agencies. The fond of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Sovet ekonomicheskoi vzaimopomoshchi—SEV, 1949–1990) documents the role of the USSR in this coordinative organ of economic assistance and cooperation between the member East European countries within the Socialist Bloc.
        Soviet scientific and technological developments are revealed in fonds of the Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh) (1917–1932), the State Committees of the USSR for Technological Innovations in the National Economy, and New Technological Inventions, the State Committee for Science and Technology, and also the fonds of the Committees for Lenin and State Prizes.
        The second large complex of records in RGAE combines fonds of manufacturing organizations, namely all-union trusts, associations, and joint-stock companies that were under the authority of the central administrative agencies for the national economy.
        The third complex of records is represented by fonds of scientific research institutions (NII), such as the V.I. Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VASKhNIL), the Academy of Construction and Architecture, and various branch scientific research institutes (NII).
        The next complex comprises fonds of central administrative organs for producers' cooperatives and consumers' cooperative societies. Chief among them are the records of the Council of the All-Russian Congresses of Cooperatives, the Central Council of Cooperatives, and Branch All-Union and All-Russian Centers for Agricultural Cooperation (Sel'skosoiuz, 1921–1929, Khlebotsentr SSSR, 1926–1930).
        Personal papers constitute another complex of fonds. RGAE retains approximately 300 fonds of personal papers from individual leaders of high-level state agencies (L.N. Bogdanov, G.M. Krzhizhanovskii, A.M. Lezhava, and G.K. Ordzhonikidze), outstanding figures of science and technology (V.R. Vil'iams, N.D. Kondrat'ev, L.B. Kafengauz, Iu.V. Kondratiuk, K.E. Tsiolkovskii, A.V. Chaianov, and A.N. Iurovskii), functionaries in the fields of industrial production, agriculture, transportation, and other branches of the economy, and even the famous polar pilots M.S. Babushkin and I.T. Spirin. These fonds include official and non-official documentation about the operation and evolution of Soviet economic administration and the highest echelon of Soviet economic functionaries.
        Since 1991, in addition to continuing state records in the economic sphere, RGAE has begun to accession records of additional federal-level non-state institutions and organizations of new economic types within the profile of the archive, such as stock companies, associations, consortiums, corporations, holding companies, commercial banks, joint ventures, and so forth.


ABB ArcheoBiblioBase Archeo Biblio Base Patricia Kennedy Grimsted