The National Archives of the Republic of Belarus hosted the First International Scientific and Practical Conference “Archival Dialogue. The Legacy of Party Archives (to the 95th anniversary of the National Archives)
On 26 May 2022, the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus hosted the First International Scientific and Practical Conference “Archival Dialogue. The Legacy of Party Archives (to the 95th anniversary of the National Archives). More than 50 speakers from Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan and Kirghizia took part in the conference, which was held in a mixed offline/online format.
In his opening speech, Director of the National Archives A. K. Demyanyuk noted the significance of the corpus of Party documents for the study of the modern history of Belarus, as well as their high scientific and informative potential.
The conference participants were greeted by V. L. Lakiza, Director of the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Ph.D. Associate Professor; A.V. Burachenok, Deputy Dean of the History Faculty of the Belarusian State University, Ph.D. Associate Professor; M. N. Skomoroshchenko, Deputy Head of Organizational Work, Information and Use of Document at the Department for Archives and Records Management of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus, Chairman of the Belarusian Association of Archivists.
The conference included a signing of the cooperation agreement with Polotsk State University. A number of exhibition projects concerning the preservation of historical memory about the events of the Great Patriotic War have already been implemented with the scholars and historians from Polotsk.
The speakers at the plenary session were Dr. S. N. Khodin, Head of Source Studies Department of Historical Faculty of Belarusian State University; M. F. Shumeiko, Professor of Source Studies Department, Ph.D. Associate Professor; E. A. Makarenko, Head of Information Retrieval Systems Department at the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus and Dr. E. E. Krasnozhenova, Professor of Social Sciences Department of Peter the Great Polytechnic University of St. Petersburg.
The work of the conference continued in two sections: “Issues of Preservation, Accounting and Use of Party Documents and Archive Business in the Republic of Belarus” and “Party Archives on the History of the Occupation and Partisan Movement in Belarus during the Great Patriotic War (to the 80th anniversary of the Central and Belarusian Headquarters of Partisan Movement).
The international component of the speakers was represented by fellow archivists from the Archives of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Central State Archives of the Historical and Political Documents of St. Petersburg, the Perm State Archives of Social and Political History. The conference was also attended by employees of the state archives of the Brest, Vitebsk and Gomel regions and the State Archives of Public Associations of Gomel Region.
The employees of the National Archives took an active part in the conference. The first section included the reports by T. N. Ageenko, O. N. Borovskaya, I. A. Vishnevsky, V. G. Mazets, V. Yu. Monzul, Yu. N. Petukh, V. D. Selemenev, O. V. Skomoroshchenko, and M. V. Tozik. The speakers at the second section were V. K. Voznesensky, S. V. Kulinok and N. A. Shimanskaya.
All the reports aroused lively interest and constructive discussions. It is planned to publish a collection of materials based on the results of the conference.
