Review of the inventories of the collection of the 5th Section of His Imperial Majesty's Chancellery of the Russian State Historical Archives and their impact on historiography, 1836-2025

Scientific article

doi 10.28995/2073-0101-2025-4-971-988

For citation

Popova, Marina D. (2025). Review of the inventories of the collection of the 5th Section of His Imperial Majesty's Chancellery of the Russian State Historical Archives and their influence on historiography. 1836-2025, Herald of an Archivist, no. 4, pp. 971-988, doi 10.28995/2073-0101-2025-4-971-988

Popova, Marina D., Russian State Historical Archives, St. Petersburg, Russia

Review of the inventories of the collection of the 5th Section of His Imperial Majesty's Chancellery of the Russian State Historical Archives and their impact on historiography, 1836-2025

Abstract

This article examines the influence of archival practices on the formation of historical narratives using the research and reference apparatus of the collection of the Fifth Section of His Imperial Majesty's Chancellery (SEIVK), housed in the Russian State Historical Archives (RGIA). Drawing on concepts developed by researchers during the "archival turn," the author analyzes changes in approaches to the collection and description of archival documents and their impact on the production of historical knowledge. An important part of the study is the history of the SEIVK's Fifth Section archive, its transfer, and its incorporation first into the general archive of the Ministry of State Property (MGI), then into the Unified State Archival Collection (USAF). Attention is also drawn to changing approaches to document collection within the Central State Historical Archives of the USSR (TSGIA USSR). This examination of the collection's history allows us to answer questions about the current preservation of documents and the state of the research and reference apparatus. As of April 2024, the documents of the 5th Department of the SEIVK (including 2,075 storage units) constitute Collection 1594 of the Russian State Historical Archives. This article focuses on the state of the collection's inventories and their differences. The first inventory is a printed book edition published in 1887. The remaining three inventories were created by staff of the Central State Historical Archives of the USSR in the 1960s from documents allocated from various collections. At the same time, Collection 1594 was isolated from the general body of documents of the "Predecessor Institutions of the Moscow State Historical Archives" collection. This article consistently argues that inventories not only perform the functions of recording and systematizing documents but also significantly influence the formation of authoritative archival knowledge, scholarly interpretations, and the direction of research. Refunding of files not only affects the accessibility and retrieval of documents but also reflects archivists' understanding of the origin of documents and records the commonality of storage units combined into a single collection. The preservation of pre-revolutionary inventories and the compilation of new ones, in accordance with current requirements, change or consolidate the method of document description at the linguistic and "ordinal" levels. The conclusion is that the methods of describing and grouping archival files directly influence the development of historical knowledge. Studying the history of collections can not only expand our understanding of the history of archival affairs and the activities of collection creators but also refine archival heuristics.

Keywords

Archival turn, scientific reference apparatus, archival collection, archival inventory, Section V of the SEIV Chancellery, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of State Property, historical sources.

Download the article: popova_doi

References

Amosov, A. A. (1975). Archival inventory as a source of information on lost documents, Soviet archives, No. 1, pp. 61–66.

Blouin, F., Rosenber, U. (2017). The origin of the past: "authenticity" for historians and archivists, St. Petersburg, European University at St. Petersburg publ., 375 p.

Voronov, I. I. (2013). The 5th Section of His Imperial Majesty's Chancellery as a structure for the operational management of the Ministry of State Property, Bulletin of St. Petersburg University, History, No. 2, pp. 135–140.

Petrovskaya, M. F. (1959). Systematization of documentary materials in Soviet archives, Ed. by prof. A. V. Chernov, Moscow, [b. i.], 77 p.

Raskin, D. I. (2015). Archive of the Russian Empire, The Fate of the Documentary Heritage of the Highest and Central Institutions of the Russian Empire, Saarbr?cken, Palmarium Academic publ., 668 p.

Raskin, D. I. (2021). Prerequisites and Paths to Reconstructing Lost Documents in the Russian Archival Tradition, Otechestvennye Arkhivy, No. 2, pp. 17–24.

Foucault, M. (2020). Archaeology of Knowledge, St. Petersburg, Humanitarian Academy publ., 416 p.

Khorkhordina, T. I. (2024). Archives of Personal Origin in Russia, Moscow, Ves' Mir publ., 808 p.

Khorkhordina, T. I. (2020). Domestic Archives and the Global Archival Community, A History of Cooperation, Otechestvennye Arkhivy, No. 5, pp. 3–16.

Yumasheva, Yu. Yu. (2016). Archival inventories as a historical source, Historical journal, scientific research, No. 5, pp. 525–534.

Beattie, H. (2009). Where Narratives Meet, Archival Description, Provenance, and Women’s Diaries, Libraries & the Cultural Record, № 1 (44), pp. 82–100.

Callahan, S. (2024). When the Dust Has Settled, What Was the Archival Turn, and Is It Still Turning? Art Journal, № 1 (83), pp. 74–88.

Derrida, J. (1995). Archive Fever, A Freudian Impression, Diacritics, № 2 (25), pp. 9-63.

Ketelaar, E. (2017). Archival Turns and Returns, Research in the Archival Multiverse, Clayton, Monash Universiry publ., pp. 228-268.

MacNeil, H. (2005). Picking Our Text, Archival Description, Authenticity and the Archivist as Editor, The American Archivist, № 2 (68), pp. 264–278.

Manoff, M. (2004). Theories of the Archive from Across the Disciplines, Libraries and the Academy, № 1 (4), pp. 9–25.

Milligan, I. (2022). The Transformation of Historical Research in the Digital Age, Cambridge, Cambridge University publ., 78 p.

Rawson, K. J. (2018). The Rhetorical Power of Archival Description, Classifying Images of Gender Transgression, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, № 4 (48), pp. 327–351.

Sabbagh-Khoury, A. (2024). Settler Colonialism and the Archives of Apprehension, Current Sociology, № 1 (72), pp. 25–47.

Schorkowitz, D. (2023). Echoes from Russia’s Colonial Past, The Pre-revolutionary Files of the Kalmyk National Archive, Berlin, Boston, De Gruyter Oldenbourg publ., 1812 p.

About authors

Popova Marina D., Russian State Historical Archives, Scientific Reference Department, Leading Specialist, St. Petersburg, Russia, 8-921-437-97-49, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

The article was received in the editorial office on 4.11.2024, recommended for publication on 20.09.2025.