Making archives accessible is a significant challenge in many post-totalitarian states, including those with experience of communist regimes. "De-Sovietization", the transition to a democratic system of governance and a critical understanding of the Soviet past, took place in the former Soviet republics with different standards, means, and pace.
One of Georgia's obligations in the first action plan of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) was to promote the openness of state archives. In 2013, the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI) successfully advocated for the Ministry of Justice and the National Archives to abolish the monetary fee for access to digital and paper-based archival material.
To assess the openness of archives, identify needs, and advocate, in 2017, IDFI, together with international researchers, started the implementation of the project - "Assessment of the Openness of State Archives in the Former Soviet Republics". In 2017-2018, within the framework of the project, a methodology for evaluating the openness of state archives was created and 20 archives of 10 former Soviet countries were evaluated. The project was continued in the following years (2019-2020) and 8 new countries of Eastern and Central Europe were added to the rating. As a result of the project, 2 archives were evaluated in each country.
One of the findings revealed within the project was that researcher-oriented archives allow the use of electronic versions of documents in the researchers' hall (hereinafter "the hall") and the virtual (online) space; Also, among 5 out of 6 archives with the best rating - the Czech Republic, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine - it is allowed to use your camera in the halls.
Unfortunately, the evaluated state institutions in Georgia—the National Archive of Georgia and the departmental archive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia—did not belong to the above-mentioned number of archives. Despite the changes and international advocacy aimed at the mentioned issues, the fees for purchasing digitized copies of documents in the halls are still high, and photography is still not allowed, as IDFI pointed out in another article.
However, the situation in this regard is even worse in the case of the Archive Division of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara (hereinafter "Adjara Archive Division"), where a fee is imposed even for interested persons and researchers to view the documents.
The Adjara Archival Division is a sub-departmental institution of the Government of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara, and it is under its authority to manage the archival work in the region, ensure the efficiency of proceedings, and develop the archival fond. The division consists of the central archive located in Batumi and territorial sub-divisions in the municipalities of Adjara: Kobuleti, Khelvachauri, Keda, Shuakhevi, and Khulo.
Document collections, film and photo material, personal fonds - more than 550 thousand documents are preserved in the Adjara Archive Division.
For the researcher who comes to the archive hall of the Adjara Archival Division, a fee is set to order the documents of the XIX-XXI centuries at the reading rooms: 5 GEL for issuing 1 case the next day, and 10 GEL for issuing it on the day of the order. Acquaintance with transferred (scanned) cases to electronic sources is free; however, neither on the website of the institution nor in the hall is it indicated, and information about the number of cases scanned at this stage is not available. In addition, another problem is created by the fact that, despite the presence of scanned documents, there is no appropriate infrastructure (computer equipment, appropriate software, and other electronic resources) in the archive hall to familiarize them. The mentioned situation makes sense in subparagraph "d" of the first article of the decree cited by us above and makes it impossible for researchers to get to know the case for free.
IDFI requested statistical information from the Adjara Archives Division on the number of documents scanned by researchers and archives in the hall from 2013 to the present day. As it turned out, in terms of scanning, the Adjara Archives Division is actively working and since 2016, it has been steadily scanning up to 2 million pages annually and creating corresponding files.
Despite this, the problems we have already mentioned are still relevant: researchers in the hall cannot access copies of the case for free. Moreover, it is unclear how they describe already digitized documents.
What caused the fact that in the halls of the state archives in Tbilisi, it is free, and in Adjara - it has a substantial price?
According to Resolution No. 506 of the Government of Georgia, dated December 29, 2011, the amounts of fees for services provided by the National Archives of Georgia, the manner of payment, and the service terms were defined. On December 3, 2015, changes were made to the aforementioned resolution through Resolution No. 643 of the Government of Georgia, which included the amendment of subparagraph "d" of paragraph 8, regulating the use of documents and archival material depicting new and recent history. In the case of issuing 1 case of XIX-XXI century text documents within 24 hours, the fee was determined to be 5 GEL, and for issuing a document transferred to an electronic carrier 24 hours after the application (if available), it was determined to be free of charge.
With the change mentioned in the resolution, the researchers found themselves in a difficult situation, because by 2015, the number of documents transferred to the electronic source in the National Archives of Georgia was still very small, and the fee - 5 GEL - was very high. In the resolution, there is also a record that students enjoy the benefit of paying 50% of the fee for the service in the Researchers’ Hall. The 2.50 GEL set as a preferential amount for students, pensioners, and people with a scientific degree is also not small.
The third article of the "Rules for using the documents of the National Archival Fond preserved in the National Archives of the State of Georgia" defines the conditions for issuing the document as follows: 3.1. The National Archives provides the researcher with the document's original or its electronic version, as well as a scientific reference tool - a guide, a description, a thematic list, a catalog, or an electronic database. 3.2. Terms of delivery of an electronic copy: a) In the absence of an electronic copy, it is delivered within three working days after filling out the order form. According to subparagraph "c" of the same article, if, for reasons known in advance to the National Archives, the National Archives cannot provide the researcher with an electronic copy within the period specified by subparagraph "a" of the same article, a copy of the document will be issued to the researcher free of charge on the next working day after filling out the order form.
The mentioned record more or less eliminated the problem of archive accessibility, as the largest part of the files preserved in the archive have not yet been digitized. If, after the request of the applicant, the archive fails to deliver the case in electronic form within the set period (for example, due to the volume of the case, it cannot attend its digitization within the set period, or for some other reason that could not be known in advance), the archive provides the opportunity for the applicant to familiarize himself with the case file in the archive hall free of charge.
As we have already mentioned, the changes were not successfully implemented in all archival institutions. The archival department of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara is an exception in this regard and the study of archival cases there is still associated with substantial funds. Work as a researcher in the halls of the Adjara Archives Division located in Batumi is regulated by the Decree No. 18 of the Government of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara dated February 11, 2016 - "A sub-departmental institution of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara - the number of fees established for the services provided by the Archives Division and its territorial bodies, the manner of payment and on approval of service terms". The decree is practically identical to the decree of the Government of Georgia No. 643, the fees and principles are automatically repeated from the normative act of the central government - in the normative act of the autonomous republic. The fact is that later, the National Archives of Georgia, which is concerned with the implementation of Resolution No. 643, by the order of the General Director, additionally determined the rules of using the documents of the archival fond, while the Adjara Archival Division did not do this. Accordingly, familiarization with cases in the institution remained paid.
As already mentioned, IDFI requested information about the admission of researchers and their work from the Adjara Archives Division. According to the letter, it was determined that in 2018, the most, 62 researchers used the services of the Batumi archive. The number of researchers was halved (31) in the following year, 2019, and from 2020 the number of researchers was minimal, which was probably due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It should be noted here that since 2013, for 9 years, the income received by the Adjara Archives Division from researchers was 8,859 GEL.
Therefore, it is likely that one of the reasons for the low activity of researchers may be the high fees charged for document review. Taking into account that the descriptions of the cases in the state archives of Georgia (catalog data) are scarce, often the researcher has to get acquainted with several cases to find the necessary information. Ultimately, practice shows that to write one, even a small, article, a researcher may need to use dozens or even hundreds of cases. In the absence of funding, it is difficult to find a researcher in Georgia who would pay tens or hundreds of GEL just to read archival documents, especially because the catalogs are incomplete or disorganized. Accordingly, we get an empty reading room in the archive.
The importance of archival fonds preserved in the Adjara archive in terms of the study of the Soviet past of the autonomous republic and the repressions carried out by the Soviet state is the greatest - the archive contains several interesting fonds, cases, and individual documents, which are the most important source for the study of Soviet repressions in Adjara:
- Fond of the Central Executive Committee of the Adjara ASSR;
- Documents of the primary party bodies of various organizations - In 1937 and 1938, party meetings discussed the detection of spies within the organization and the measures taken to expose them - which the said fund describes. Particularly interesting are the documents of the primary party body of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (НКВД), whose participants at each new meeting were gradually reduced due to shootings, and the day before, colleagues were left with the epithets - "enemy of the people", "rotten element".
- Material depicting the work of state institutions, where it is easy to find the cases of those repressed who were engaged in one or another state activity in the 1920s and 1930s: for example, the personal case of Raisa Shishlo-Sabashvili, a well-known doctor shot in 1937, from 1922 has been preserved. in the fond of the People's Commissariat of Health;
- Fond of the Adjara District Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, Party Control Committee, City Committees and other fonds
Despite the legal problems, the friendliness and professionalism of the hall's employees should be noted, they try their best to support the researchers. Employees of the hall are researchers and historians themselves, therefore they understand the content of the problem and the "value" of the research at the current fee.
IDFI believes that for the availability of information and the encouragement of science, the Adjara Archive must regulate the delivery of files to researchers in the hall, taking into account the existing minimum standard, or to set an even higher standard. The archive should be able to provide archival files in the hall free of charge in electronic or physical form.
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