Abstract
AbstractThe chapter discusses the production of digital archives in Russia as part of a complex political economy of historical knowledge. Several high-profile digital archives have been produced within the framework of grant funding provided by international agencies and commercial content providers and have reflected the priorities of the funding organizations by focusing on state violence in Russia and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), international Communist movement, as well as other politicized or easily monetized content. At the same time, national and regional archives in Russia also engaged in the digitization of their collections by soliciting federal and local funding. These latter projects emphasized complexity and objectivity as the two key categories of the digitization of archives while pursuing an underlying political agenda to restore epistemic sovereignty over Russian history.
Highlights
In March 2016, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation examined a recent decision by the Ministry of Culture, the parent body of the Federal Archival Agency (Rosarhiv), to ban personal use of cameras, smartphones, and other technical devises for copying documents in Russian archives
This chapter starts with a discussion of the early digitization efforts during the 1990s and early 2000s that were largely funded by international funding agencies, most prominently the Open Society Institute, whose activity is presently banned in Russia
The examples discussed above show that the Russian state has sought to use digital archives to firmly re-establish itself through its institutions as the main authority in the production of knowledge of Russian history, especially during the Soviet period, which remains extremely contested
Summary
In March 2016, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation examined a recent decision by the Ministry of Culture, the parent body of the Federal Archival Agency (Rosarhiv), to ban personal use of cameras, smartphones, and other technical devises for copying documents in Russian archives. A representative of the ministry argued that free and unlimited digitization without supervision by professional archivists would likely cause increased wear and damage to historical documents She argued that the current ban did not violate the right of free access to archival documents and to historical knowledge. Using its new legal status, in September 2017, the agency introduced a new regulation that allowed the use of personal cameras for copying, but only by permission (that could take days or even weeks) and for a fee This regulation was challenged in the Supreme Court as well, but this time the court ruled that Rosarhiv did not violate any law and the practice of charging archive users for making digital copies with their own devices was legal (Kurilova 2019).
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