Sonderband 2. International Council on Archives. Dritte Europäische Archivkonferenz, Wien 11. bis 15. Mai 1993. Tagungsprotokolle (1996)

2. Session /Séance. Regional (trans-border) Cooperation / Coopération régionale (transfrontaliere) - Discussion / Interventions

2. Session/Séance: Discussion - Interventions

Ich habe den Eindruck, daß die jetzige Diskussion sehr viele Vorschläge und Ideen hervorbringt, vielleicht aber sollte man doch den Weg der kleinen Schritte überlegen. Ich will damit keineswegs eine Provokation verbinden, aber ich hätte doch an die rassischen Kollegen eine Bitte. Wenn Sie vielleicht, Herr Anderson, kurz die Situation schildern könnten, die von finnischer Seite und auch von rumänischer Seite angesprochen worden ist - und ich möchte ergänzen, die auch von slowakischer, tschechoslowakischer, polnischer und ukrainischer Seite angesprochen werden könnte. Könnten Sie grundsätzlich ein paar Bemerkungen machen, wie sich die russische Archivverwaltung die Zusammenarbeit auf der Ebene der Archive der nächsten Jahre vorstellen kann.

Kirill Anderson: So, I guess it’s a provocative question. I am only the director of one of the federal archives, that’s why I can’t speak as representative of the Ministry of the Archives. Regarding the problem of the restitution and especially of our relations with the former republics of the Soviet Union, you know, several republics have signed an agreement saying that they have no claims to each other’s documents. Such an agreement has been signed with Bjelo Russia, with Kazachstan, Kyrgyzstan, etc. You see, some times it is impossible to divide the archives of the former Soviet Union. For instance, some enterprises where located in the Ukraine or in Bjelo Russia, but they worked under the auspices of one and the same Ministry, and the Ministry was located in Moscow. Because of the centralization it is impossible to divide or to take a part of the archives of the Ministry of Heavy Industry and send it to the Ukraine or Bjelo Russia or vice versa.

As to the archives of Baltic republics, I can say that for example in the COMINTERN archives, that’s my archive, there are some empty places. Because the archives of the Lithuanian communist party of the pre-war period, of the Latvian communist party, of Estonian communist party, were given back to these countries in the 50s and 60s. In my archive, for example, we have almost no papers on communist movement in the Baltic republics before the war. I

I think that the problem of restitution is very complicated when we speak about Russia because it is really impossible in some cases to separate the documents, but I know there are some claims or there might be claims from parts of Russia to the Baltic republics or to other republics, because the former territory of the Soviet Union was quite divided, not objectively, by some political reasons, and that creates a lot of border problems. The same thing was done with the archives: Somebody for example in the Central Committee thought, why are these documents kept in Kazachstan? Or somewhere else, probably that these documents were relative to the history of Bjelo Russia. And the documents were sent to Kazachstan. Without any explication, because nobody ever asked for an explanation from the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Of course this problem cannot be solved immediately, it requires a lot of patience, a lot of goodwill and it requires a lot of time. If we were to separate, well artificially without any logic but political rationalism, we would create a New Karabach or something like this. It will be our archival

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