Information Technology and Culture: Online Services of the Moscow's Main Archives allowing "looking into the past"

Moscow's Main Archives keeps millions of documents related to the history of the capital and its residents. Today, it is not necessary to come to the reading rooms to study them. The online services of Moscow's Main Archives will help make a virtual trip through the pages of historical volumes and look into the past.

All documents from the archival collections are valuable. Archives keep the most precious and original items - the single examples of documents with unique information. These documents are available on the website of Moscow's Main Archives in the Unique Documents section. For example, it contains registers of the XVIII-XIX centuries with records of the place of birth, baptism and marriage of famous poets, writers, historians and scientists.

Also, last year, Moscow's Main Archives and the State Realty Inspectorate created a project to distinguish unique documents related to the historical origins of the capital.

Besides the unique documents, the website of the archival department provides information about the great but not realized architectural projects of the Soviet era - the eighth Stalinist skyscraper, the pantheon and the kolkhoz people's house on Kalanchevskaya Street.

Other unique documents are the XVIII century prints by Jacques-Philippe Lebas, Tommaso Piroli and Giovanni Piranesi. They received the status of the unique artefacts after the research by specialists from the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.

For those who are keen on family history, Moscow's Main Archives created the My Family online service. Users got access to metric books from more than 1400 churches in Moscow and Moscow Province. In pre-revolutionary Russia, the churches performed the functions of modern registry offices. The online service includes about five million pages of metric books. They provide data of people who lived from the middle of the XVIII century to 1917.

In 2020, marking the 75th Victory anniversary, Moscow's Main Archives and the My Documents centres of state services launched a virtual museum Moscow. Taking Care for History. All this time, the online project has been actively developing. It is a real encyclopedia of military and post-war Moscow life.

It is also possible to contribute to the historical chronicle of the capital with the help of the Life Line club. The project is a product by Moscow's Main Archives and the city Department of Labour and Social Protection on the initiative of My Social Centres participants.

The club brings together residents who want to share their life stories and learn how to write memoirs. Many older Moscow residents have lived a rich life and have something to remember.