The National Historical Archives of Belarus in Grodno celebrates 70 years since its foundation
On 11 February 2010, the National Historical Archives of Belarus in Grodno celebrates 70 years since its foundation.
To celebrate this event, the Archives prepared a series of radio and television programmes, periodical publications, exhibitions, and a jubilee brochure titled “The National Historical Archives of Belarus in Grodno. 1940-2010”.
11 February 2010
11.00 – Scholarly conference “The National Historical Archives of Belarus in Grodno: history and present time”
12 February 2010
12.00 – Excursion to the archives
13.00 – Celebration meeting
The Grodno Archives was founded following the formation of Grodno Province in 1801 and the establishment of the provincial administration in 1802. The Archives contained act books initially held in the local courts of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita) dating from the 16th through the 18th centuries, as well as records created by the provincial institutions.
The area of Belarus was often a site of military activity, thus resulting either in the direct destruction of documentary materials (as in 1812 and 1915) or their dislocation to the adjacent countries (in the course of evacuation to the East or taken as a war booty to the West).
In the time between the wars, when Western Belarus was part of Poland, the Grodno State Archives (Archiwum Państwowе w Grodnie) was located in Grodno, which was formed in 1922.
On 11 February 1940, the Grodno Archives was reorganized as a historical archives (the branch of the Central Historical Archives of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic. In 2001, following a number of previous reorganizations, the archives was renamed the National Historical Archives of Belarus in Grodno.
Currently the Archives holds documents of regional, provincial and district authorities, economic and financial institutions, police agencies, courts, educational, cultural and other institutions in Grodno Region, as well as a portion of documents for Vileika, Disna, Lida and Oshmiany districts of the Vilno province of the Russian Empire.
The Archives now holds over 1,200 fonds with over 411,000 files dating from the 16th to the first half of the 20th centuries.
Of especial interest are the following documents: the 1511 Charter from the Polish King and Great Prince of Lithuania, Sigmund I, confirming the right of the Catholic church in Volkovysk to tithe income (the 1528 copy); Tadeusz Kosciuszko’s testament of April 4, 1817 on emancipating peasants in the village of Sekhnovichi, Kobrin district; pages from the artist Napoleon Orda’s diary about his staying in Paris from September 1833; parish records of the birth of A. Pashkevich (Tetka), I. Lutsevich (Ia. Kupala), the marriage and death of E. Ozheshko, the death of N. Orda; records relating to the life and activity of noted political and public figures and men in the realm of science and art (P. Bagrim, E. Ozheshko, I. Domeiko, Iu. Krashevski, M. K. Oginski, A. P. Storozhenko, M. Bogdanovich, L. Zamengof, S. Vrublevski, A. O. Makovelski, etc.); inventories, plans and drawings of churches, monasteries, estates and towns (inventories of the Basilian Monastery in Lyskovo (1716, 1758), the Farny Church in Grodno (1825), the 1912 map of Grodno); documents relating to the history of architecture and art (descriptions of castles in Lida and Mir (1827), and more.