University Archivists as Archive Policy Agents in Nineteenth-century Russia

This article examines the role of archivists in shaping the capacity and the structure of a university’s memory. Drawing on sources such as laws and ministerial instructions, the authors analyze the government’s archive policy with regard to universities and how professors and archivists were taking part in its implementation. Their participation included sorting documents and attributing them to individual ‘cases’, destroying some of the ‘unnecessary’ documents and preserving others that were designated for destruction. Based on information from service records and university reports, the article tracks changes in the corporate status of university archivists in nineteenth-century Russia.