RGIA began moving to a new storage facility

The Russian State Historical Archive (RGIA) has begun transporting its funds from the Senate and Synod buildings, where the Constitutional Court is soon to move, to a new storage facility on Zanevsky Prospekt. The special event started in high secrecy, and very modest security measures were taken. With details - ANNA PUSHKARSKAYA. The move began on February 7, but literally on the eve of the first flight, all official participants in the special event received a strict ban on communicating with the press. “This is not a 'Mask Show,'” said RGIA director Alexander Sokolov, refusing to allow Kommersant correspondents into the storage facility. At the same time, a completely serene atmosphere reigned around the secret facility, and workers in bright red uniforms, scurrying between the numerous service exits of the Senate and the Synod, willingly shared with journalists the details of the loading of the armored transport and forecasts regarding the time of its departure from the gates. A lone traffic police officer lazily watched what was happening.
The armored "column" consisted of two blue courier trucks with a white stripe and an accompanying "gazelle". They shuttled between Senate Square and Zanevsky Prospekt in the usual flow of cars, standing idle in traffic jams and at traffic lights - traffic was not blocked even when the trucks were taxiing from under the cramped arch of Galernaya Street onto Senate Square.
The movers willingly told the Kommersant correspondent that it is almost impossible to turn around in the archive itself due to the cramped conditions, so for now only full-time employees of the EMU carrier company are packing archival documents, clearing the field for future reinforcements verified by the special services. Some of them have to change into clothes without pockets in the most dangerous areas.
Even more exotic for the “operation of the century” looked a couple of young workers with plywood carts filled to the brim with numbered archival folders, which they rolled off the snow-covered porch of the Senate and transported directly along the sidewalk to the neighboring Synod building. The excited archive employees accompanying the procession refused to comment to Kommersant on the details of the contents of the carts, or to assess the quality of the moving process taking place behind closed doors. “Is it really that bad?” — the Kommersant correspondent asked sympathetically. “No comment,” the archivists replied.
Aleksey Kovalev, a member of the Legislative Assembly’s commission on culture, assessed the situation more sharply: “The move of the archive is managed by people in uniform and security officers, with a complete lack of independent control by specialists even over the climatic conditions of the new building, which can in two or three years lead to contamination of documents with fungus.” . In turn, the head of the EMU, Nikolai Lebedev, violating the declared moratorium, assured Kommersant that everything is proceeding in full compliance with the safety regime, which will gradually strengthen along with the increase in the volume of work.

The cargo will be moved "from shelf to shelf"
The unique archive consists of 7 million storage units, including 360 thousand highly valuable documents, and its value is estimated at billions of dollars. For the first time, these values will have to leave the walls of the Senate and the Synod - both buildings have already been transferred to the balance of the Presidential Administration for reconstruction for the future residence of the Constitutional Court. About 400 million rubles have been allocated from the federal budget for these purposes. The Ministry of Culture sent the former head of the North-Western Directorate of Gosstroy, Mikhail Novikov, to supervise their development. The tender for the transportation of the archive was won by the St. Petersburg JSC "EVS" (specializing in security and logistics systems), and for the maintenance of the new storage facility - LLC "Neviss Complex" (a participant in the reconstruction of the Konstantinovsky Palace and the general contractor for the construction of the third stage of the Mariinsky Theater). At the request of the Presidential Administration, the archive should be located in a new building by the end of this year. A large-scale logistics operation includes all stages of moving invaluable cargo from shelf to shelf. The difficulty is that in a historical building, documents occupy several tiers of shelves up to 8 m high. Each file (weighing from 1.5 kg to 100 kg) must be dust-free, registered, packaged, provided with bar codes and sealed under the supervision of archive staff.

Newspaper "Kommersant St. Petersburg" No. 26 dated February 14, 2006, p. 1

The archive is classified