Novye Issledovaniâ Tuvy (Jun 2020)
The history of archival work in Tuva: a social and philosophical study
Abstract
This article presents a social and philosophical analysis of the rise and development of archives as a social institute and archival work in Tuva. In this process, the key role belongs to the National Archives of the Republic of Tuva (prior to 07.04.2020 known as the State Archives of the Republic of Tuva, SA RT). In 2020, the institution will celebrate its 90th anniversary. Our article sketches out four stages in the prehistory and history of this social institution. The earliest, prehistorical, stage covers the period from mid-18th century to 1921. Tuva was then ruled by the Manchurian house of Qing, and its various institutions had differing policies on preserving documentation. The second stage (1921-1944) saw the introduction of archival practices in the newly-declared republic. Its statehood mandated setting up new institutions, which started accumulating the bulk of records to be kept. The third stage (1944-1990) started with the accession of Tuva in the USSR. Throughout those years, archival work in Tuva became a full-fledged social institute with a set of functions of its own within the general social structure. It was now a part of the Soviet system of archival work and faced the problems thus entailed. The fourth, Post-Soviet, stage began in 1991 when the archival service of the country underwent structural reorganization. Rethinking history became a priority in this period, which endowed archives with new functions and gave them a new meaning. Each of the stages traced in the article had its own characteristic features found in published records and documents from the Archives’ collections. Copies of some of the documents are used as illustrations in our article.
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