St. Petersburg branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (PFARAN)

• University

Established in 1728, the first scientific archive in Russia served as a repository for documentation of the Conference (General Assembly) of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and its Chancellery. In 1922 the archive was expanded to house all Academy records and named the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences. After the archival reform within the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1931, which immediately followed the so-called "Academy Affair" (akademicheskoe delo) (1929-1931), the archive accessioned many personal papers of Academy members, as well as of other scientists and scholars associated with the Academy. These were previously held in the Manuscript Division of the Library of the Academy of Sciences (BAN) and other Academy institutions, most of which no longer had the right to preserve documents on a permanent basis. After the Academy moved its headquarters to Moscow in 1936, a Moscow branch of the archive was established. The Moscow branch became the central Archive of the Academy in 1963, while the Leningrad archive remained a Division. Since 1991 it has been known as the St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences with the preferred acronym SPbB ARAS.
In December 2004 St. Petersburg Laboratory of Scientific-Applied Photography and Cinematography of the Russian Academy of Sciences (LAFOKI) was abolished, and its fonds (mostly administrative and personnel records and photograph archive) were transferred to the St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive RAN.
N.B. During the Soviet period, institutes under the Academy of Sciences in Leningrad were required on a regular basis to transfer their records designated for permanent retention to the Leningrad Branch of the Archive of the Academy of Sciences. However, with the lack of RAN archival storage facilities in Leningrad, no records after 1973 were transferred, and in some institutes earlier records, even those already formally designated for transfer, physically remain in the producing institution.

Entry prepared on January 2017-01-25

http://ranar.spb.ru/eng/ http://www.saint-petersburg.com/buildings/academy-of-sciences-building/

Author(s) : Open Jerusalem http://www.openjerusalem.org/