A new archive repository has been opened in Vitebsk
A new archive facility with a design capacity of 400,000 files has been opened in Vitebsk. The reconstruction of the building for the archive took almost two years and was funded by the regional budget.
The commissioning of the facility will allow for the acceptance of permanent storage documents for 40 years and fully resolves the issue of free space deficit. In total, as of the beginning of the year, the State Archive of the Vitebsk Region stored 1.3 million files from 1917 to 2022.
The documents reflect the most important events and stages of socio-economic development, public administration, and socio-political life of the region.
The Chairman of the Regional Executive Committee, Alexander Subbotin, congratulated the staff of the State Archive of the Vitebsk Region on the new location and noted that their work is very important for people interested in the history of both their families and the region. The head of the region expressed hope that the employees of one of the largest archives in our country will be comfortable working in the building, the prospects of which are calculated for several decades.
The Minister of Justice of the Republic of Belarus, Yevgeny Kovalenko, stated that this is not just a technical facility. It is designed to fulfill the strategic tasks of our state for preserving historical truth and memory of the feat of the Belarusian people during the Great Patriotic War. Archives are not only a documentary treasury but also the main source of information for conducting public work, legal education, organizing exhibitions, and other events within which the statehood and patriotism of our citizens are formed.
The Deputy Director of LLC "Prof NK", Alexander Drabo, handed over the symbolic key from the builders to the Director of the State Archive of the Vitebsk Region, Tatyana Svistunova.
By the way. The pre-war Vitebsk Regional Archive was the largest in the BSSR in terms of the volume and value of stored documents. After liberation, 80,000 files were found in the institution's premises. About 700,000 storage units, taken away by the German occupiers, were discovered in the former women's monastery in the city of Vilno (Vilnius). The total number of archival materials destroyed by the invaders amounted to 1.18 million storage units.
As part of the event, Sviatoslav Kulinkov, Deputy Director of the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus, Candidate of Historical Sciences, presented a unique publication – a collection of documents and materials titled "Nazi Punitive Operations Against Partisans of the Polotsk-Lepel Zone. April – May 1944".
Source: vitebsk-region.gov.by