History of archives of Lithuania

The Tsar Administration was willing to store documents in one place, to safeguard them against forgery or destruction in order to meet the needs of state institutions as well as private persons, especially the nobility.

As a matter of fact, the selection of such documents for publication was rather slanted as they mainly served the purpose of leaving no doubt about the “North-western Krai” as an inherent part of Russia.

After the Soviet army occupied Vilnius, during the period of 14–22 October 1939, approximately 14–18 railway vans loaded with archival documents left for Minsk.

The damage that the Archives suffered was immense as it lost its most valuable and most significant sets of documents including approximately 20 thousand old record books and packages.

After the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania in June 1940, the Archives were transferred under the jurisdiction the Commissariat of the Interior on 26 August 1940.

When the World War II broke out and Lithuania was invaded by the German army in the summer of 1941, the remaining archival documents were in great danger again.

The newly appointed authorities were mainly focused on the selection of the loyal employees, handling inquiries of “operational bodies” about private persons, restricting access to historical sources for the public, and absolutely irresponsibly destroyed a certain amount of documents “of little value”; besides, they exported some archival fonds to Belarus without any justification whatsoever.

The Central State Historical Archives of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic as a separate institution were established on 1 January 1957.

During this period, a fair amount of the microfilms of historical sources dating back to the 13th to 19th centuries and of great significance to Lithuania (including the Lithuanian Metrica) were added to the fonds of the Archives.

The documents kept in the Lithuanian Archives comprise 8 large sets: As of 2013[update] the total amount of the items preserved is 1,360 million, or over 17,500 linear metres and shelving space.