THE ARCHIVE OF THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

The Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), established in 1728, presently enjoys the status of a scientific research institution of the RAS. Main objectives of its activity are the creation and the provision of safety of the RAS Archive fund, scientific development of issues of the history of science and culture, history of the Academy of Sciences, source studies, archival science and archaeography based upon documentary sources of the departmental archive fund. The RAS Archive provides permanent public storage of documents of the RAS institutions system, compilation of the funds of institutions and organizations as well as materials of personal origin (Full Members and Corresponding Members of the RAS and eminent personalities of science and culture).

The RAS Archive supervises the activity of the RAS archives, organization of record management in the RAS institutions system, and renders RAS institutions scientific and methodological assistance.

The RAS Archive carries out scientific research work, publishes the body of scientists' work, issues collections of documents, reference books, and organizes the use of documents, in particular, carries out exhibition activity.

The RAS Archive provides the RAS executive bodies with retrospective information and carries out reference collection work to meet topical, social and legal inquiries of institutions and personals.

The RAS Archive has a wide network of international contacts.

The volume figures of the RAS Archive are as follows:

The volume figures of the RAS Archive (including the funds of the Saint Petersburg branch of the RAS Archive) as of January 1, 2009 are as follows:
     1,800 funds - 1,011,633 units of issue for the period between the 16th century and 2007.

The volume figures of the RAS Archive (Moscow) as of January 1, 2009 are as follows:
    1,027 funds – 480,689 units of issue (in public use) – 16,782 units of issue (indoor storage)
    595 funds of personal origin - 424 funds of institutions - 8 categories (collections)
    Registry of inventories of the RAS Archive (Moscow) includes 2,599 fund inventories.

The volume figures of the Saint Petersburg branch of the RAS Archive as of January 1, 2009 are as follows:
    773 funds – 481,428 units of issue (in public use) – 32,734 units of issue (indoor storage)
    558 funds of personal origin- 199 funds of institutions- 16 categories (collections)
    Registry of inventories of the Saint Petersburg branch of the RAS Archive includes 2,065 fund inventories.

The RAS Archive comprises:
    - the Saint Petersburg branch of the RAS Archive
    - the Laboratory of Documents Conservation and Restoration (Saint Petersburg city)
    - the Department of Insurance Documentary Fund (Borok city, Yaroslavl region)

Fund composition of the RAS Archive (Moscow)

In depositories of the RAS Archive in Moscow are stored documents built up due to the activity of the back office of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences, its sections, divisions by fields of scientific knowledge, directories, scientific councils, permanent commissions, committees, associations and the like.

There are represented funds of Moscow institutes and scientific societies acting in the field of physics and mathematics and natural sciences - V.A. Steklov Institute of Mathematics, N.D. Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry, A.N. Bakh Institute of Biochemistry, M.V. Lomonosov Institute of Geochemistry, Mineralogy and Crystallography and others; documents of scientific societies - All-Union Society of Astronomy and Geodesics, All-Union Society of Biochemistry, All-Union Society of Hydrobiology, I.P. Pavlov All-Union Society of Physiology and others.

Funds of human sciences institutions are represented by materials of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Institute of General History, Institute of USSR History, K.N. Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnography, Institute of Latin America, Institute of Economics, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature and others, the Archaeography Commission, Chief Editorial Office of Oriental Literature of Nauka Publishers, etc.

In 1936, to the RAS Archive have been transferred the funds of the Communist Academy at the Central Executive Committee of the USSR (1926-1936) and those of the scientific research institutes that have been a part of the same: the Agrarian Institute, the Institute of Economics, Institute of Agricultural Economics, Institute of Natural Sciences of Red Professorship, Institute of Soviet Construction, Institute of State and Law, Institute of Philosophy, Institute of History, and Institute of Literature, Art and Language; funds of scientific societies that had united Marxist scientists (biologists, physicians, mathematicians, economists, Orientalists, regional ethnographers and others.) In the Archive are also collected many personal funds of scientists who have been members of the Communist Academy or elected to the Academy of Sciences after 1928-1930.

In the funds of personal origin is reflected the development of domestic science in the period before the revolution and the Soviet period. In the RAS Archive are stored the funds of the greatest scientists of the 19th and 20th centuries - mathematician P.L. Chebyshev, physicists P.P. Lazarev, D.V. Skobeltsyn and I.E. Tamm, geochemist V.I. Vernadsky, chemists N.D. Zelinsky and A.N. Nesmeyanov, physiologist I.M. Sechenov and microbiologist I.I. Mechnikov, biologist K. V. Timofeev-Resovsky and others, as well as historians V.O. Klyuchevsky, М. А. Dyakonov, V.I. Semenovsky, M.M. Bogoslovsky, S.B. Veselovsky, Yu.V. Gotier, N.M. Druzhinin, М.В. Nechkina, V.T. Pashuto, M.N. Pokrovsky, S. D. Skazkin, and Slavonic scholar F.E. Korsh.

In Moscow are stored the personal funds of the Presidents of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR: V.L. Komarov, S.I. Vavilov, A.N. Nesmeyanov, and M.V. Keldysh.

The RAS Archive has compiled large archive collections (categories). Therein are concentrated scientific works, documents to biographies and those about the activity of some scientists, relative photographs, cartographic materials, orders, commemorative medals and signs.