Party archive

I recently went to this standard archival building in this part of the world (note those small windows which usually covered with dark glass):

It houses the former Sverdlovsk Communist party archive (currently titled “Center of the documentation of public organisations”

The place has a very large holdings of 1950s-1990s history of the region. And the  quiet proud history of keeping it.

“It was around 1991, when the Communist party was dismantled, and we receieved, within a month or so, 31 truckload of documents of the closed regional party bodies. They came unsorted, yes, it was bags full of papers… And we spent the next 10 years sorting and reviewing those documents”…

And they have something to be proud — digitized finding aids which you could search and find very rare views of the historical events which are less than 50 years old, something you could not easily find anywhere else…

I am very thankful to local archivists for all the help they provided me with.