“I Was Especially Affected by a Rumor about Some Large Warehouse of Old Cases at the Site of the Abolished Fortress of St. Dmitry Rostovsky.” From the I.D. Popko’s Note on the Archives on Don and Astrakhan, 1875

The problem of historical sources preserving in the context of producing knowledge about the Caucasian outskirts of the Russian Empire is actively developing in modern historiography. A special place in it is given to the position of local archival institutions, the analysis of their materials and the role of the imperial administration in ensuring their safety. The “Note on the archives on Don and Astrakhan” is a valuable
document that sheds some light on this problem in relation to Caucasian historiography. Major General I.D. Popko wrote it as a part of his assignment to prepare the history of the Cossacks in the North Caucasus, in autumn, 1875. Its content includes characteristics of
the military archives of Rostov-on-Don, Astrakhan and Novocherkassk. The original note is currently stored in the State Archive of the Stavropol Krai. The document is an important source of information about the archival works in the south of Russia in the last quarter of the 19th century and the peculiarities of research practices in the Russian provinces of the late imperial period. The current publication includes an introduction and the first part of the Note focused on the reasons for the I.D. Popko archival research, as well as the composition and conditions of storage of files in the archive of the former fortress of St. Dmitry of Rostov (the so-called Rostov military archive).