FROM THE HISTORY OF THE ARCHIVE OF THE HERALDRY DEPARTMENT OF THE GOVERNING SENATE OF RUSSIA

Abstract

The article is devoted to the history of archiving in Imperial Russia using the example of the archive of the heraldic service of the Governing Senate. The author analyzes the service of archivists of the Heraldry Department and their efforts to preserve one of the most important repositories of noble documents. In particular, the work tells about the service of V.V. Kondratyev, N. Ya. Kitaev, V. S. Ring, V. V. Rommel, V. E. Rudakov and S. V. Sudakov in the archive. Their service activities had their own characteristics and are worthy of a separate story about each of them. Thus, within the framework of the article, the author had to dwell only on the main points of their service, noting the contribution of each to the preservation of documents in the archive of the Heraldry Department. Undoubtedly, the most striking and fruitful were the activities of V.V. Romel and his successor V.E. Rudakov, to whom the archive owes not only its safety, but also its professional organization. The author also dwelled on the peculiarities of storage and acquisition of documentary materials in the mentioned Department, noted the difficulties that the archive experienced during the 19th – early 20th centuries. In particular, the article describes the procedure for transferring the archive of the Heraldry of the Kingdom of Poland to the Senate in the 1890s. These documents were kept in the funds of the Heraldry Department until the 1920s, when they were again returned to Poland in accordance with the Treaty of Riga on March 18, 1921. Unfortunately, the archive of the Heraldry of the Kingdom of Poland has not survived, having died in 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising.