The initial period of the history of the State archival service of Russia, when it was headed by the scientist and politician D.B. Ryazanov, is covered.

The key milestones and forms of interaction of the Archives of RAS (Russian academy of sciences) with the academic archives of other countries since their establishment to the present time are identified.

The history of creation, the current state and the first experience of the archives are covered.

The results of analysis (availability, formats, etc.) of archival finding aids placed on the websites of state and municipal archives, of the authorized executive bodies of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation in the sphere of archives, and on the portal «Archives of Russia» are set forth.

The author elucidates the structure, composition and the most important provisions of normative legal acts and methodological recommendations on appraisal of documents and organization of acquisition policy of state, municipal and other archives.

The author formulates theoretical positions clarifying the established concepts of accounting units for archival audiovisual documents which differ by their composition and content.

The procedure and the results of the work of archivists on preparation of a two-volume collection of photographs of the wartime for publishing are described.

The results of the experiments carried out by the employees of the Russian state archive for scientific-technical documentation and the State research institute for restoration within the Federal program «Culture of Russia (2012–2018)» are set forth; recommendations on use of sublimation chambers for environmentally safe processing of documents are given.

The article provides an overview of the composition and the content of the personal funds of archivists who have made a significant contribution to the establishment and development of archives in the region.

The author describes the composition of the personal archive of the memoirist in the Library of contemporary international documentation in Nanterre (France), the origin and the content of the memories, and also the results of the analysis of their reliability as a historical source.

The contents of the documentary evidences about the war written by the cavalry officer, stored in the State archives of the Saratov region in the fund of the Saratov provincial scientific archival commission, are analyzed.

The most important stages of the history of Krasnoyarsk and of the city archives, organized in 1992, are elucidated; their achievements in preservation and use of archival documents are presented.

The memoirs of the bolshevik, worker of the Petrograd factory «Red weaver», controller of the foodrequisition team A.S. Lepikov (Spiridonov) about his involvement in the labor movement and corn requisition in the countryside, recorded in 1926, preserved in the collection of the Central state archive of historico-political documents of St. Petersburg, are published for the first time.