Zonal State Archives in Polotsk

Historical background

The Archives was established in September 1924 as the Polotsk Okrug Division of the Central Archives of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR).

In 1927 the division was made the okrug archive.

With the liquidation of the okrug territorial division in 1930 the Polotsk Okrug Archives was liquidated, and its holdings were transferred to the Vitebsk Division of the Central Archives of the BSSR.

In 1937 a district state archives was established in Polotsk.

During the Second World War the archives was destroyed.

In January 1945, in Polotsk, then center of the Polotsk Region, a regional state archives was established, which was located in the building of St. Sophia’s Cathedral from 1949.

On April 14, 1954, following the liquidation of the Polotsk Region, the regional archives was reorganized as the Polotsk Municipal State Archives, and in 1957 a district state archives was again restored in Polotsk.

On November 11, 1963 the Branch of the State Archives of Vitebsk Region was established in Polotsk on the basis of the abolished Polotsk municipal archives and the abolished Verkhnedvinsk, Lepel, Polotsk, Rossony and Ushachi district archives. 

In September 1996, the branch was reorganized as the Zonal State Archives in Polotsk.