Российский государственный архив социально-политической истории

State Archives of the Socio Political History was created in October 1991 on the basis of former Central Communist Party Archive. Archive history begins with the formation of the Archive of Russian Social Democratic Movement and its library on emmigration. After the 1917 documents referring to the history of pre 1917 revolutionary movement and revolution itself were collected by the various Soviet archives and research centers. In 1920 these tasks were centralized in the History of the Party Institute, that until 1928 was the branch of the Central Party Committee. This Institution directed the Archive of the October Revolution. At the end of 1920s it had more than 60 000 documents. Other important institution was Marx and Engels Institute, established in 1921, that collected various documents concerning the life and activity of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, as well as other important European socialists. These two institutions were united with the Lenin Instutute in 1928. In 1929 of the basis of these three instututions Central Party Archive was established. At the end of the Second World War archive acquired"trophy material", among them the personal archive of Ferdinand Lassalle, and other materials refferring to the XIX and early XX century revolutionary movement, Marx and Engels. In 1959 Archive had received all the documents of 1943 dissolved III Communist International (Comintern). In 1993 it had received documents from the dissolved Marx and Engels Museum.  

On 01.01.2011 archive held 691 Research Groups, holding oldest document from 1617 and newest from 2005, 2 147 000 archival folders, 1825 000 photograph folders, 140 000 museum materials Documents of the Archive can be divided into three main subject groups: social and political history of the Western Europe (from XVII century- until the beginning of XX century), political and social history of the Soviet Union and Russian Revolution (from the end XIX century), socialist and communist movement from the 1860s until 1980s. These documents are produced by various political parties, movemements, personalities- all the important figures of european socialist and communist movements- and state institutions.  

Archive contains documents mainly referring to the history of XIX and early XX century european revolutionary movement, as well as 1917 revolution in Russia and history of the Soviet State.