Keepers of Time: 40, 30, 20 Years of Serving History

This year, declared the Year of Belarusian Women, the Zonal State Archives in Babruisk hosted a roundtable discussion on «Keepers of Time: 40, 30, 20 Years of Serving History», where our female colleagues shared their invaluable experience in the field. Aleksandr Kazak, a correspondent for the Babruisk Life newspaper, was a guest at the event. Archive Director Elena Zayats told him about the staff who have dedicated many years to archival work.

The chief custodian of traditions at our archive is Natalia Vladimirovna Kuraptsova, a veteran of the field and recipient of the title «Great Archivist of Belarus». In 1982, she graduated from the Moscow State Historical and Archival Institute (today the Historical and Archival Institute of the Russian State University for the Humanities) and, as a young specialist, was sent to the Bobruisk branch of the Mogilev Region State Archives, where she took up the position of second-category archivist. Since then, her work record has included only one job—the archive. Natalya Vladimirovna’s experience is unique: she remembers what is not recorded in inventories, remaining a living guide to the collections for an entire generation of employees. «You won’t find in any card what is stored in her memory».

For three decades, Svetlana Feliksovna Leonova, who has mastered the highest levels of restoration and archival sewing, has been hearing the rustle of time. In December 1996, she was hired as a senior custodian of the collections. Svetlana Feliksovna graduated from the Faculty of History and Archives at BSU (1999). By day, she teaches young people not only how to file and restore documents, but also how to carefully preserve history. In her work, as in the music she sings in the evenings, there’s no room for error: both the archival code and the musical note are impeccable.

Over twenty years of service, Ekaterina Vladimirovna Kuznetsova has learned to understand not only documents but also the people behind them. After graduating from A.A.Kuleshov Mogilev State University in 2004, she dedicated herself to fulfilling socio-legal, thematic, and biographical inquiries. Ekaterina Vladimirovna admits: every inquiry represents someone’s fate, an unresolved question, or a hope. She explains to her young colleagues that the most important thing in the profession is the ability to listen between the lines, to be both a detective and a psychologist, searching for clues in half-erased handwriting. After all, an archival certificate isn’t just a piece of paper, but the key to a pension, an inheritance, or the restoration of a lost family tree. For twenty years, she has been listening to other people’s stories and helping them take on documentary form.

In the Year of the Belarusian Woman, this connection across time is revealed through the lives of three keepers of history, whose combined service to the profession amounts to 90 years. Thus, the continuity of tradition is preserved across the decades: not simply preserving documents, but hearing living human voices behind their rustling.

1. Archive staff

2. Natalia Vladimirovna Kuraptsova

3. Svetlana Felixovna Leonova

4. Ekaterina Vladimirovna Kuznetsova

5. Alexander Konstantinovich Kazak interviewing

6. Archive staff