Previous Names

• 1941-VI.1992 - Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov SSSR (TsGADA)
  [Central State Archive of Early Acts of the USSR]
• 1931-1941 - Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv feodal'no-krepostnicheskoi epokhi (GAFKE)
  [State Archive of the Feudal-Serfdom Epoch]
• 1925-1931 - Drevlekhranilishche Moskovskogo otdeleniia Tsentral'nogo istoricheskogo arkhiva RSFSR
  [Repository of Antiquities of the Moscow Central Historical Archive of the RSFSR]
• 1919-1939 - Tsentral'nyi Mezhevoi arkhiv
  [Central Land-Survey Archive]
• 1869-1920 - Moskovskoe otdelenie Obshchego arkhiva Ministerstva Imperatorskogo dvora
  [Moscow Division of the General Archive of the Ministry of the Imperial Court]

About RGADA

In 1992, the Central State Archive of Early Acts (TsGADA SSSR) was renamed Russian State Archive of Early Acts (RGADA). RGADA retains documents dating from the eleventh through the beginning of the twentieth century, consisting of the records of central and regional agencies of the Russian Empire and its precedessor states up to the time of the administrative reforms of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (with the exception of the records of the Admiralty, Foreign, and Military Collegiia). RGADA also holds the fonds of central land-survey agencies of Russia from the eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries; records of monasteries and other religious institutions; personal papers of state and public figures, men of science and art; archives of major landowners and gentry families; collections of historical documents and manuscript books; and collections of Russian and foreign incunabula, early printed and rare books dating from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries.

Access

All of the archival holdings are open to researchers.

Working Conditions

There is a large reading room for work with original documents, but readers are required to use microfilms for many older and unique documents in a special microform reading room. Orders for documents normally take three days for Moscovites and two day for others (limited to 10 files per day).

Recent General Guides

Recent Specialized Microform Series with Finding Aids

• "Archive of the Moscow Printing House, 1620-1700." Leiden: Inter Documentation Company (IDC), 2004. 907 microfiches. Microfiche edition. (Lib: MH[mf]) [IDC-MPH-1]
  Electronic version of Guide to the microform publication: http://www.idc.nl/ead/428faid.html.
  The present collection contains 104 items (books detailing income and expenditure, inventory lists, etc.) that furnish meticulous information on the workers' wages, and the amounts paid for equipment and other material in the period 1620-1700. Most of the documents from this unique archival collection, which is held in RGADA (fond 1182, opis' 1), are previously unpublished. In the near future, IDC will make available archival materials from the eighteenth century, as well as the priceless library of the Moscow Printing house, which contains books printed by such trailblazers as Ivan Fedorov, Andronik Nevezha, and Nikita Fofanov.
  CONTACT: http://www.idc.nl/.

• "Freemasonry in Russia." Leiden: Inter Documentation Company (IDC), 2004. 158 microfiches (32 titles). Microfiche edition. Texts in Russian, English, German and French.
  Additional information is available electronically at the IDC website: http://www.idc.nl/.
  The collection is based on the collection of Fedor Fedorovich Mazurin (1845-1898) and Ivan Perfilevich Elagin (1728-1794). Materials from Elagin's collection are currently kept as part of the following fonds: fond 8 (Gosarkhiv [State Archives]); fond 146 (Rozysknye dela [Investigation cases]); fond 154 (Zhalovannye gramoty [Charters]); fond 168 (Snosheniia russkikh gosudarei s pravitel'stvennymi mestami [Relations of Russian sovereigns with state institutions]). Materials of Mazurin's collection are now kept in fond 196.