Influence of the Riga Peace Treaty on the fate of the Belarusian archives

Abstract

The author investigated the history of the development of the main provisions of the XI article of the Riga Peace Treaty, which regulated the delimitation of archives between the contracting parties. They were extremely unfavourably formulated for the Belarusian-Russian-Ukrainian side both because of the defeat of the Red Army in the Polish-Soviet war, and because of the internal problems that arose in Russia, the most important of which was the uprising in Kronstadt in February – March 1921. This article reveals the role of the future first rector of the Belarusian State University V. I. Picheta, who worked as the chief inspector of the Glavarchive of the RSFSR and took part in the peace negotiations in Riga in the fall of 1920 as an expert. The author comes to the conclusion that in the course of the implementation of the provisions of the XI article of the treaty, the Belarusian archives suffered significant losses. This explains the so-called «archival sabotage» that took place, the essence of which was to show the Polish side as non-existent certain archival complexes that were subject to transfer to Poland under the terms of the treaty.