Archives abroad: Ministry of Culture is ready to exchange the Polish archive for the documents of the Red Army

The issue of exchange the archives with the Republic of Poland was discussed on June 28 during the meeting at the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation between the head of the Ministry, Vladimir Medinsky and his Polish counterpart, the Minister of Culture of Poland, Bogdan Zdroevsky.

First of all the the parties discussed the matter of the archives of the Institute of Jozef Pilsudski, which was taken out by the Red Army after the World War II. First the Germans took the archive out from Warsaw, and then the Red Army took it to the Soviet Union, capturing it near Gdansk. The archive includes many unique documents from the history of the Second Polish Republic. All 72 fonds are held by the Russian State Military Archive (RSMA).

“We are ready to discuss this possibility, but then we will raise the question of the return of the Russian archives that happened to remain in Poland”, said Deputy Culture Minister Andrei Busygin.

Russia is interested in the documents of the Red Army’s units which had been captured during the war with Poland in 1919-1921, as well as in the German documents on the history of Kaliningrad up to the year of 1945, which are stored in the archive in Olsztyn.