From the shelves to the scrap: how the Pension Fund deals with the archival files of Russians

There is an urgent destruction of valuable historical sources all over the country right now.

Lyudmila Butuzova

Award lists of veterans are thrown into the furnace, letters from the front and funerals are sent to waste paper, sacks with thousands of work books, diplomas, certificates are prepared for disposal. The stories of people who have encountered an incomprehensible phenomenon in the archives are one more tragic than the other, and the worst thing is that it is not clear to whom to complain and how to stop it.

Bitter loss

From a letter to the editor of Tatyana Filenko , p. Shevchenkovskoe, Krasnodar Territory:

“In April of this year, the payment case of my great-grandfather, Nikolay Vasilyevich Makarenko, a participant in the Second World War, was destroyed by the Pension Fund. Thus, ten great-grandchildren lost a part of themselves. This fact has been strangling me for a month now. I, the first great-granddaughter, was almost eleven years old when he passed away, and some were not even born yet. Now we all honor his memory by participating in the "Immortal Regiment" action. But is it possible to remember and be proud of the photo and dates on the pillar? Not! You need to be proud of a person, and for this you need to know at least something about him! How do you know if everything is being destroyed?"

Tatiana Makarenko's great-grandfather Nikolay Vasilievich (05/22/1924 - 05/21/2000) retired in the village. Shevchenkovskoe, Krylovsky district, Krasnodar Territory. The great-granddaughter turned to branch of the Pension Fund in the village of Kushchevskaya:

“Please send copies of personal documents from my great-grandfather's payment file. Of particular interest are documents containing autobiographical information (about work experience, education, characteristics, certificates), documents about the spouse, children, handwritten documents drawn up by the great-grandfather, other preserved information. Copies of documents from the payment file of my great-grandfather, I request only for the family archive and further researching my family history. I am attaching documents confirming the relationship".

They waited for an answer with emotional trepidation, and received this from the deputy head of the department Garkushin:

"According to Act No. 1 of March 29, 2021" On the allocation of documents not subject to storage for destruction ", the payment case of your great-grandfather N.V. Makarenko, who died on 05/21/2000, the payment of the pension for which was terminated from June 1, 2000, was allocated for destruction ... According to the certificate dated 13.4.21, issued by OOO Paper Mill, the documents were accepted and destroyed by dissolving the waste paper in a pulper to individual fibers at the paper machine of OOO Paper Mill. In case of disagreement, you have the right to file a complaint..."

Where to? To whom? The deed has already been done ... The whole family of Nikolai Makarenko is in deep shock. Why should the payment case of the great-grandfather have to be destroyed, and not transferred to the family for safekeeping, after all, the application in the pension fund lay for several months?

And the second blow. Do you know what a pulper is? It is part of a paper machine. And what does this machine do, you know? That's right, toilet paper...

“It was not always like this”, - said Olesya Valerievna Khavanova, who lives in the Urals, to Novye Izvestia. - When I received a copy of the payment case for my great-grandmother Feoktista Grigorievna, I was ready to sob with happiness! They moved from Ukraine in 1910. What happened to her, starting this year, we more or less knew. And before? Where are they from? Where are the roots? And suddenly we see an extract from the passport, which indicates the year and place of birth! Do you know what it is for a family history writer to find out a place? It's all. In the same case, there was a funeral notice for her youngest son Alexey, who was killed at the front. Attached are the minutes of meetings of the village councils and her application for the appointment of a pension. Another very valuable and one-of-a-kind document that was there is a certificate issued to Feoktista Grigorievna as the mother of Alexei's son from his place of work before being drafted into the army. Yes, he worked as an accountant for a whole year. Why is this document valuable? Yes, because I found where the archive of this enterprise is stored, but they told me that without proof of kinship they would not issue documents. Proof that Aleksey Trofimovich is the brother of my grandmother, Elizaveta Trofimovna, and that they have the same parents, I did not have: I did not find the year of his birth in 1921 either in the registry office or in the archive. And in this little reference, Aleksey Trofimovich is indicated as the son of Feoktista Grigorievna. But isn't this proof of kinship? So we found almost the whole family anew".

But there is also bad news. On May 28, a reply came from the UPFR of the city of Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk region. It turns out that two weeks ago, without notifying the family and without satisfying our request, the payment cases of the great-grandfather and great-grandmother of her husband Olesya Khavanova were destroyed. And all because of the order to reduce the archival space.

MAKULATURE CASES

- If you think that pension files of veterans are destroyed only in the Russian darkness-cockroaches by ignorant clerks who are unable to distinguish a genuine historical document from yesterday's electricity bill, then this is not so. Negligence, ignorance and obscurity are enough in the advanced capital as well, - the historian-researcher, the author of the reference book “Scientific reference apparatus of the archives of the Russian Federation. Monitoring 2020 ” Tatiana Maksimova. - The capital sets the “tone”.

In addition to pension cases, they were the first to destroy the second copies of the books of the registry offices (and the copies are not at all identical, there are discrepancies in dates, in the spelling of surnames,), to get rid of personal files of university students, from personnel documents. The personal files of the students who had gone to the Moscow militia were the only source of information about them. Lists of the militias and their photographs have not survived. Many surnames are absent on the site "Memory of the People" and "Exploit of the People", tk. they died in the encirclement and the list of names of losses was not compiled. Universities and institutes destroyed the files of their student soldiers of the Great Patriotic War. Further, they will destroy the affairs of students - participants in the Komsomol construction projects. Time will tell which of the graduates will become the pride of Russia, and this will happen, perhaps, in 50 -70 years. And documents - an important source for future historical databases - are being destroyed now...

Frankly speaking, from time immemorial it was customary in our country to destroy documents, the value of which was currently assessed by the state as low. And after 100-200 years, it turned out that they had destroyed it in vain. Now our archives are tears compared to European ones. Registers of births and deaths of famous people, revision tales, confession statements, sheets of all censuses were destroyed. These were potential sources for studying history and creating historical databases, by which we could better understand the economy, demography, and other aspects of the country in retrospect.

The most devastating were the waste paper companies of 1929 and 1931, in many archives several wagons of cases were destroyed. And what was not destroyed then, they made up at the turn of the present century. For another 20-30 years, the second copies of church registers from the registry offices were literally thrown out into the street, even in Moscow it was. They were collected in museums, churches, houses of culture, just kind people. As long as 5-10 years ago, documents from the First World War were burned in the backyards of military registration and enlistment offices due to the "expiration of the storage period", now this happens with regards to the registration books for 1918-1923 in the registry offices.

- It's hard to imagine that century-old documents go under the knife... Why?

- It so happened that the story of one person has dubious historical value from the point of view of the state, says Tatiana Mikhaleva. - If in Europe people are restoring their ancestry, and hence the history of the country up to the 15th century and deeper along the lines of "commoners", then in Russia it is believed that a simple peasant or ordinary militia, killed in the first battle - insignificant units and could not play any role in epoch-making events.

The worst thing is that this situation does not cause any concern among the professional community - archivists and historians.

DIVERSION OR IDIOTISM?

Muscovite Igor Radovsky wrote a complaint to the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation against employees of the Main Directorate of the PFR No. 8 in Moscow and the Moscow Region. Since 2000, for every next request for the issuance of a payment case to his relative, he received formal replies that it was deposited in one or another department, and no one even reached the shelf where it lay all this time. At the end of May 2021, the case was “safely” destroyed, this time promptly informing the applicant that there was no need to go to them anymore.

“Considering that my great-grandmother is a home front worker, a mother of three children who lost her breadwinner during the Great Patriotic War, I consider the destruction of documents and the negligence committed by employees to be a significant violation of my rights in obtaining information about my ancestors, as well as a direct denial of the statements of the President of the Russian Federation about the need to preserve historical memory, - the victim Ryadovsky writes to the head of the Pension Fund of Russia. "I ask you to investigate, discipline employees and report the results to me".

- Sorry for such a comparison, but to demand from the head of the Pension Fund of Russia to punish employees for negligence and disposal of archived pension files that are destroyed on his own order, this is the same as appealing to the order of a wolf who has just had fun with a flock of sheep, - said historian, member of the commission for the perpetuation of the All-Russian public organization of Veterans of war, labor, armed forces and law enforcement agencies, chairman of the interregional public organization "Archive Watch" Vitaly Semyonov to Novye Izvestia. - On April 1, 2021, the Order of the Ministry of Labor of Russia of December 22, 2020 No. 936n1 "On Amendments to the Regulations on the Storage Time of Payment Files and Documents on the Payment and Delivery of Insurance Pensions, Funded Pensions and State Pensions by order of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Russian Federation of September 3, 2014 No. 602n "What does this mean for ordinary mortals? The retention period of pension files has been reduced from 40 to 20 years, starting from the date of termination of the payment of the corresponding pension.

In order No. 803 of the head of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation, it is clearly stated: in 2021 to achieve the release of the area by 30%, in 2022 - by 60%, in 2023 - to completely vacate the area. Already from March 2021, as part of the implementation of this order, the indiscriminate destruction of payment cases for deceased persons began, in the complete absence of the work of the expert evaluation commission, which determines the value of these cases, and I would say - in complete secrecy from historians and the general public.

Now at the disposal of the "Archival Patrol" there are hundreds of videos and photos from regional FIUs sending bags for recycling, there are confirmations from the field about the destruction of cases in April, May 2021. In particular, the cases of persons born in 1890-1950 are under destruction, including the cases of war veterans, family members of the victims, home front workers, workers of defense enterprises. For historians, this is a shock and a complete disagreement with the official policy of the state.

An updated Constitution was adopted a year ago. Let me remind you Part 3 of Article 671 - “The Russian Federation honors the memory of the defenders of the Fatherland, ensures the protection of historical truth. Diminishing the significance of the heroic deed of the people in defending the Fatherland is not allowed. Only, literally on May 20, 2021, President Vladimir Putin made a policy statement about his attitude to the Victory and the people who suffered it:

“With all the importance of large mass anniversary events, priority should be given to systematic work. It is necessary to continue declassifying and... To provide citizens with new opportunities to establish the destinies, the front-line combat path of their relatives..."

In response, the archives offer citizens to hand over documents about the participants in the war from the family archives. And at this time, the same documents are destroyed in tons as part of a departmental order. At the same time, information that these documents, allegedly, are not valuable, is provided by representatives of regional FIUs, who do not have archival education, cannot assess the historical significance of these documents.

-Your organization is public. And why are those who are responsible for the archival policy of the state silent? There is Rosarchiv, is it not able to stop the departmental bacchanalia?

- The FIU and social security authorities are not sources of recruitment for regional and federal archives, Rosarchiv turns a blind eye to what is happening with the documents of the pension fund, and this was taken into account by the initiators of the current robbery. When initiating it, the leadership of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation clearly hoped that “inertia” would work for ordinary employees: “We have destroyed it before, so what has changed? Why is there such a noise?!"

And the very action to destroy the docks was well thought out. It was “hidden” in the general direction of digitalization and reducing the retention period of paper files in other areas, for example, in health authorities and registry offices, deliberately “leaving behind the scenes” that only the bodies of the FIU and the Ministry of Labor have such a valuable amount of information as payment cases.

And that is typical. The positive experience of some regions where the sane branches of the PFR are located was deliberately not taken into account. In the Pskov region and the Republic of Kalmykia, the archival pension files of the Great Patriotic War participants were transferred to the municipal and state archives for storage, and a fund of documents about the defenders of the Motherland was formed. Due to the situation, not by a thoughtless order to clean up, the offices of the Pension Fund of the Khabarovsk Territory and the Irkutsk Region arrived. Perpetual campaigns "News from the Past - Into Own Hands" and "Memory" are held here. Documents from archival pension files with an expired storage period are transferred to relatives confirming the relationship, or donated to local history museums.

At the same time, the legislation does not prohibit transferring pension documents to the state archives, and this opportunity was used in the Nizhny Novgorod, Chelyabinsk Yaroslavl regions.

Thus, we see that this problem, if officials turn on their heads, is solvable.

"Archdozor" is not thirsty for blood, we are in favor of stopping the irreparable, We ask you not to destroy the cases, to introduce a moratorium on their disposal, not to add blank pages to the history of our homeland. And we really count on the help of civil society: ask before it's too late for payment cases for your relatives, draw up family genealogies, transfer them to museums, to the Memory of the People - OBD-Memorial database, or just keep them at home until better times.