Russian Holidays - Day of Archives

On March 10 (February 28, old style), 1720, Peter the Great, in the process of creating the office of the collegiums, invented a new position The ancient Romans knew it and called the corresponding specialists actuaries From Latin actum est is translated as “done,” “done,” “fulfilled” This is exactly how the word “Act” is used in Russian - fixation of something completed, done And the person who was involved in registering these acts was called an actuary It all started not with colleges, but with courts In ancient Rome, the actuary served as a stenographer in the hearing and analysis of the case The same employee was called to meetings of the Senate, he was entrusted with keeping the minutes of the meeting and keeping this protocol with him in order to provide it if required The Russian Tsar, calling the new workers by the old term, ordered them to restore order in the letters received in the name of one or another board Moreover, the job description of the actuary included not only sorting, classifying, registering and storing letters (diligently collecting dispatches, repairing the register, numbering sheets of letters), but also supervising the condition of office supplies The actuary had in his charge feathers, candles, ink, paper, sealing wax, seals, wax and even firewood Everything so that the work of the clerical part of the board is streamlined and does not stop due to technical malfunctions But still, letters remained the main function They had to be put in accordance with the registration book, otherwise - the register These registers at one time grew into gigantic repositories, in which order and classification were also necessary The repositories were called archives, and the archive workers were called archivists Until the early twentieth century, these positions, actuary and archivist, were not interchangeable Gradually the line was erased and smoothed out Nowadays, the employee performing the original functions of an actuary would be more likely to be called a stenographer, secretary, or clerk However, Russian archive workers celebrate their professional, albeit unofficial, holiday on the day the position of actuaries was created, when Peter the Great signed the “General Regulations or Charter” Every year on March 10, specialists from Russian archives hold ceremonial events designed to draw attention to the tasks and achievements of archival affairs The public receives a lot of interesting information related to the repositories, such as: where the longest archival shelves are located, in what century the first archives began to be collected; as well as the fact that the sum of the lengths of all shelves in the archives of the Russian Federation is more than 85 thousand kilometers Archives workers in our time are highly qualified specialists with deep knowledge of historical, legal, and linguistic issues These are people who know how to think structurally and literally sort information into shelves