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ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia: D-15

Last update of repository: 7 December 2020

Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Sankt-Peterburga (TsGA SPb)


Holdings

Total: 4,760 fonds, 3,451,782 units, 1917–to present
institutional fonds—4,121 (2,138,531 units); personal papers—42 fonds (7,179 units); personnel records—189 fonds (725,966 units); archival collections—12 fonds

An annotated list of all fonds and opisi in the archive is available on the TsGA SPb website at: https://spbarchives.ru/infres/-/archi....
        The archive houses fonds of local executive and administration authorities—the executive committees of the guberniia, oblast, and city soviets of deputies, and those of the raion (within the city), uezd, and volost soviets. There are a number of fonds of agencies of the Provisional Government—boards of the city and regional Dumas, and local militia—and the records of the Petrograd Soviet after October 1917. Fonds of agencies of the Union of the Communes of the Northern Oblast, and those of the Central (oblast) Executive Committee, the Council of Commissars, and the Commissariat of Internal Affairs contain documentation about the economic and political conditions of the Northwest region in 1918. Also from the Civil War period are records of military sections of soviets, recruiting offices, the Committee for the Defense of Petrograd, and the Emergency Revolutionary Troikas.
        From the early years of Soviet rule are fonds of central and regional headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards, the Workers' and Peasants' militia, the criminal investigation office, administrative divisions of the Guberniia Executive Committee, and uezd and raion executive committees. Records of the Committees for Disenfranchisement include many files on repression in the early 1930s.
        Economic and industrial development of the city are reflected in fonds of local organs of economic administration: people's economic councils (sovnarkhozy), the Northwest Oblast Industrial Bureau, planning commissions, financial and statistical organizations, and numerous trusts. Industrial enterprises in the city include the fonds of Admiralty, Baltic, Izhora, and Kirov Plants, and the Bol'shevichka, Rabochii, and Sovetskaia Zvezda factories, among many others. Fonds of construction agencies and the municipal utility divisions of the Executive Committee contain information on the nationalization of buildings, construction of apartment houses, city planning, organization of public services, and the protection of public monuments, as well as the destruction of buildings during the siege, and postwar reconstruction of the city.
        In the sphere of transportation and communications, there are records of the Leningrad Metro, the Northwest Regional Railroad Administration, the October Railroad, the Baltic Sea and Northwest River Shipping Companies, commercial and timber ports, auto, tramway, and trolleybus agencies, and postal and telegraph offices.
        Many fonds are held of institutions in the fields of science and education. These include the records of the Commissariat of Education of the Union of Communes of the Northern Oblast, the Administration of the Representative of the People's Commissariat for Education for Institutions of Higher Learning and Workers' Schools (rabfaki), the Main Administration of Institutions of Science and Art, and the Commission for Improvement of the Living Standards of Scholars (Komissii po uluchsheniiu byta uchenykh—KUBU). The archive also houses records of almost all higher educational establishments of the city, including those of Leningrad State University, the Industrial Academy, the Polytechnic, Oriental, and Archeological Institutes, and many technical secondary schools, along with those of the Administration of Professional and Technical Education and divisions of public education.
        Local health service records remain from Health Departments, Medical-Epidemiological Stations, Bureaus of Medical Statistics, and Pharmaceutical and Sanitorium-Health Care Administrations.
        Social organizations are represented by fonds of the Northwest Bureau of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (VTsSPS), the oblast councils of trade unions, oblast committees of trade-union branches, and oblast divisions (or committees) of various societies, such as the Society of Former Political Prisoners and Deportees (1924–1935), the City Committee of the All-Union Association of Scientists and Technical Workers for Promotion of Socialist Construction (Vsesoiuznaia assotsiatsiia rabotnikov nauki i tekhniki dlia sodeistviia sotsialisticheskomu stroitel'stvu—VARNITSO), the Society for the Union of Town and Country, Voluntary Society for Aid to the Army, Air Force and Navy (Dobrovol'noe obshchestvo sodeistviia armii, aviatsii i flotu—DOSAAF), the Society of Knowledge (Znanie), and the Society of Friends of Children, among others. Church life of the city is represented by the records of the Council of Representatives on the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church and Religious Cults.
        There are many materials from the period of the siege of Leningrad, including the Headquarters of the Aerial Defense, the Commission for Determining and Investigating Crimes Perpetrated by the Nazi Invaders, the Commission for the Labor Conscription, and the Commission for Evacuation, as well as the City Committee for the Red Cross.
        The archive is now appraising and preparing documents of the so-called “filtration” camps and other groups of records (under the former KGB) for transfer from the archive of the Administration of Federal Security Service for St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast (i.e. camps following World War II for interrogating Soviet citizens who lived in territories occupied by German troops).
        Personal papers remain of many participants of the revolutionary movement; the Head of the Society of Former Political Prisoners D.A. Trilisser; Civil War veteran P.A. Smirnov; the historians V.G. Briunin, G.V. Efimov, and N.A. Kornatovskii; and the physicians G.A. Ivashentseva and V.V. Smirnov, among others.


ABB ArcheoBiblioBase Archeo Biblio Base Patricia Kennedy Grimsted