Abkhaz State Archive

The Abkhaz State Archive (Abkhaz: Аҧсны Аҳәынҭқарра аҳәынҭқарратә архивтә усбарҭа, romanized: Apsny Ahwynthqarra ahwynthqarratº arhivtº usbartha; Russian: Государственное архивное управление Республики Абхазия, romanized: Gosudarstvennoye arkhivnoye upravleniye Respubliki Abkhaziya) is the main archive of Abkhazia, a disputed territory in the South Caucasus and breakaway republic of Georgia. It is located in Sukhum, the capital of Abkhazia.

History

The precursor of the Abkhaz State Archive was established in March 1929, when the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the Socialist Soviet Republic of Abkhazia adopted a resolution about the "Organization of archival Affairs". In October 1992, during the War in Abkhazia, fire destroyed the archive building; on both sides of the conflict many believe that the archive was burned down intentionally by the Georgian forces.[1][2][3][4][5] About 95% of the archived documents was destroyed.[2] On the Georgian side, many people refute the idea that the archive was deliberately burned down.[1] The same day as the Abkhaz State Archive burned down, the Abkhazian Scientific-Research Institute of Language, Literature and History (ABNII, founded in 1922 as the Abkhazian Scientific Society, Абхазское научное общество, АбНО/ABNO) burned down, too.[6]

In the course of the Geneva International Discussions, the Georgian central government provided the de facto authorities of Abkhazia with important archival documents in 2015.[7] Additionally, one year later a meeting of the head of the Abkhaz State Archive with the director of the National Archives of Georgia was planned.[8]

In recent years, material has been preserved with the help of Czech historians from the Czech National Archives.[9][10]

References
  1. Patrik Salat: How Abkhazia is trying to restore its historic archive which burned down 27 years ago during the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict, jam-news.net 28 January 2020.
  2. "Abkhazia's archive: fire of war, ashes of history". OpenDemocracy. Retrieved 6 July 2021.
  3. "Abkhazia: Cultural Tragedy Revisited". Institute for War and Peace Reporting. Archived from the original on 2006-10-20.
  4. Abkhazia's archive: fire of war, ashes of history. YouTube.
  5. Neal Ascherson: Ein Staat für sich allein, monde-diplomatique.de 16 January 2009.
  6. Rachel Clogg: Documents from the KGB archive in Sukhum. Abkhazia in the Stalin years, in: Central Asian Survey, Vol. 14 (1995), No. 1, pp. 155–189 (here: p. 158). Available here. Free version here.
  7. "De-facto Abkhazian Government Receives Important Archival Documents, georgiatoday.ge 8 October 2015". Archived from the original on 1 July 2020. Retrieved 10 October 2019.
  8. The restoration of the incident prevention mechanism will be discussed at the forthcoming round of the Geneva Discussions, apsnypress.info 4. March 2016.
  9. History on fire: how to restore the state-archive of Abkhazia, abkhazworld.com 23 October 2019.
  10. David X. Noack: Kriege und Geschichtspolitik – Das Abchasische Staatsarchiv, portal-militaergeschichte.de 22 June 2020.
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