• The Korean Journal of Archival Studies
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• no.12
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• pp.237-272
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• 2005

This paper aims to research the historical development of the archival systems in the Primorskii Krai of the Russian Federation. The history of the archives in this region might be divided into the three periods. The first period extended from the territorial acquisition of the Far East to 1938, when the international situation reached the crisis. From then to the end of the Second World War the history of the archives of the Primorskii Krai underwent the second period. The third period has ranged from 1945 to the present day. As the imperialistic countries, including England, Germany and Russia, claimed and conquered the lands in China in the last decade of the nineteenth century, the Russian government was forced to produce a lot of records, which resulted in the establishment of the several archival institutions in the Far East region. Although the Soviet government issued "Decree On the Reorganization and Centralization of Archival Affairs in the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic" in 1918, the political turmoils prevented the Primorskii region from constructing the archival system. However, A. P. Georgievskii and his colleagues made desperate efforts to arrange the archival administration. Thanks to their struggles, the Far Eastern Republic, a buffer state, which existed from April 6, 1920 to November 14, 1922, passed the autonomous regulation, which defined the organization of the committee for the archival administration in the Primorskii region. The Primorskii Krai Archive originated from the committee. As the international situation became aggravated in the East Asia, the Soviet government made a decision to evacuate the records from the Far East region to the western Siberian cities like Tomsk, Omsk and Minusinsk. It was on August 1943 that the Central National Archive of the Far East of RSFSR was established in Tomsk. After the end of the Second World War, the main archival institutions of the Primorskii Krai, that is, the Central National Archive of the Far East of RSFSR and the Primoskii Krai Archive have played an important role in the archival administration in this region. The archivists have not only prepared the catalogues, but also proceeded the descriptions of the archival collections. Furthermore, the archival institutions of the Primorskii Krai have published a series of archives and contributed to the development of the archival system in the Far East of the Russian Federation. It might be concluded that the archives of the Primorskii Krai, reaching were the products of the desperate efforts which the archivists of this region made from the 19th century to the present day, regardless of the political changes.