Making friends with archives

The first Summer School-Laboratory "Archival impulse" that was held on the basis of JINR in cooperation with the Higher School of Economics and the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences in early July this year, started to justify its name: according to the results of the School, on 22 July, the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences hosted a meeting of the employees of the Historical Archive of JINR Anastasia Goldstein and Elena Malaya with Moscow colleagues.

The Historical Archive came to the ARAS to learn about the experience of archivists that has been accumulated for centuries. Suffice it to say that in three years, the 300th anniversary of the ARAS will be celebrated, since it counts from the date of establishment of the Archive of the Conference of the Academy of Sciences, established in St. Petersburg, in 1728.

In August and September, in 1935, the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences decided to transfer the Archive of the Academy of Sciences to Moscow. Since April 1936, the Moscow Branch of the archive has been provided a basement in the building of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences and started work on 29 April.

At first, the archive of the Academy of Sciences was distributed and was located in several different rooms. But in the mid-1980s, it occupied the building at 34 Novocheremushkinskaya, where we were invited to visit Ivan Nepryakhin, a researcher at the Department of Acquisition. At the "Archival impulse", Ivan conducted several master classes and also supervised the work of the school participants to analyze the archive of theoretical physicist A.L.Kuzemsky.

The Moscow colleagues said that today, in the ARAS the whole range of activities on the acquisition and preservation of documents is carried out. Today, 1116 funds are stored here and 657 of them are personal, this is more than half a million storage units. In collaboration with these often unique and invaluable documents, archivists develop a reference and information apparatus, prepare materials for publication, publish scientific papers... Exhibition activities are also of great importance, allowing a wide audience to learn about the documentary heritage of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In recent years, the ARAS has been actively cooperating with the Roscosmos State Corporation and provides materials for joint exhibitions and media projects. And there was a lecture at the Summer School delivered by Deputy Director Olga Selivanova, in which she talked about international cooperation in the Intercosmos programme and its archival heritage.

The historical archive at the Museum of History of Science and Technology of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research stands at the very beginning of the journey, slowly but surely increasing in materials, funds and experience. And the more valuable for archivists is the support of colleagues and cooperation. We will be friends with archives - this is a summary of the meeting of Dubna and Moscow archivists that became one of the results of the work of the Summer School "Archival impulse".

Anastasia YAROVAYA