English Translation

3V - 2 - in the hope that it will find a safe place of storage until the time when it can become a general national property. And we, the scientific staff of the archive, together with the archival staff, let ourselves be guided by the same motives that made the archive dear and expensive to us and embellished the measurable work of the material collection in all parts of the world by the knowledge that this work is done in the name of a great cultural and national area. For this reason, neither we nor those who have been involved in building up this cultural idea of the Russians abroad can be indifferent to the further fate of the Institute. The collection from the archive collection of an important part of the book and document stock will, according to our deep conviction, represent an irreparable blow to the archive, as not only the most valuable part of it is lost, but also the remaining part loses its value. The distribution of the material in m i l i t i t e s and n i t m i t a r e s can be very arbitrary in our time, since the front, hinterland, war, politics and economy are closely linked and the concept of total war prevails. Most of the collection of the Russian History Archive bears just such a mixed character, so that the separation of the military material " par excellence " is very difficult. As an example I want the notebook of the General E.W. In addition to his purely operational plans, Alexeyev also noted thoughts about the decline of the post-revolution front and his correspondence with the politicians of the Provisional Government. This notebook represents both a military and a political document and is not only a source of study for the history of the world war, but also a study source for the story of the revolution. These arguments are even more convincing in relation to the documents from the period of the civil war, which are both numerically and qualitatively the main stock of the archive collection.