Identity and Loss of Historical Memory

Historians and Archivists, after a meeting held in Moscow in 2006, analyse in this book the contempt, damage and destruction that documentation usually suffers from revolutions. It is devoted special attention to the French Revolution, the 19th century upheavals, the Russian Revolution and the evolution and end of Soviet period.

Archives are the documentary memory of each society and so they become one of the pillars of its identity. Its destruction is sometimes accidental, but it is often deliberate in order to remove the ties with the past. The new times that revolutions attempt to reach usually involve forceful and symbolic ruptures with former identity, including the destruction of the economic, administrative and historical documentation. This book collects updated texts written by outstanding researchers from an initial Congress held in Moscow in 2006 in order to analyze the causes and consequences of the destructive violence against archives boasted during revolutionary turmoils. The studies pay special attention to the first important contempt and destruction of documentation, during the French Revolution; continue studying the damages to archives during 19th century; and culminated analyzing the effects of Russian Revolution over the documentation and the evolution until the end of the Soviet period.

Autorentext

Igor Philippov is Professor of Medieval History at the Moscow State Lomonossov University, former director of the Russian State Library (1992 1996) and author of The Mediterranean France in the Early Middle ages (PhD Dissertation, 2001). Flocel Sabaté is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Lleida, ICREA researcher, doctor honoris causa of the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo (Argentina) and director of the research journal Imago Temporis. Medium Aevum.

Inhalt

Igor Filippov: Destruction of Archives and the Historical Science - Flocel Sabaté: Historical Archives: Function and Destruction - Françoise Hildesheimer: La gestion archivistique de la Révolution française - Bruno Delmas: Bouleversements administratifs et transmission des archives. Un aspect de la Révolution française - Pierre Santoni: La Révolution française, les archives et la « théorie mimétique » - Serge Aberdam: À propos des origines de la sous-série B II des Archives nationales (Votes populaires, Constitutions de 1793 et 1795) - Igor Filippov: Through the Veil of Revolutionary Fires: What can we Say about Medieval France despite the Mass Destruction of Archives during the Revolution of 1789 - Stanley Fiorini: The survival of the Maltese Inquisition Archives during the French Occupation: 1798-1800 - Christine Maria Grafinger: Le transport des manuscrits vaticans et l'exportation des Archives à Paris sous Napoleon - Flocel Sabaté: Medieval Documentation and Archives in Catalonia after the 19th Century Unpheavals - Evgueni Vassilievitch Starostine: Revolution and Archives: the experience of the French Revolution of the late 18th century and the Russian Revolution of 1917 - Zinaida Peregudova: Political investigation and the Romanov family archives during the revolutionary days: 1917-1920 -Iryna Matyash: Archives during the Ukrainian revolution of 1917 - 1921- Leonid Borodkin: Economic Dimensions of GULAG: Evidence of the «Archival Revolution+ - Jan Rychlik: **The Split of the State and Archives - the case of Czechoslovakia - William G. Rosenberg: Revolutionary archives and the «archival turn»