Initially part of the pre-Petrine Posolskii Prikaz, this archive changed buildings several times according to the intentions of the various tsars who wanted it organized, or at least have the documents spared from the flooding of the Moscow River when they were in a basement in the Kremlin. When Napoleon invaded Moscow in 1812, they were moved to Nizhnyi Novgorod. In 1874, the archive finally had its own professionalized building, which, in Stalin’s time, became the Lenin Library.
Institution Type: Archive
The archives of both the Moscow Ministry of Justice and that of Foreign Affairs are today combined into Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA). Both were reconsolidated with other relevant collections throughout the 19th century, and are especially rich in the files relevant to Muscovy.