Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Kyiv

Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Kyiv (Центральний державний історичний архів України, м. Київ or ЦДІАК України; Tsentralnyi derzhavnyi istorychnyi arkhiv Ukrainy, m. Kyiv, or TsDIAK Ukrainy). The main repository for general (ie, excluding western Ukrainian) prerevolutionary Ukrainian records of national significance, established in Kyiv in 1943 and functioning under the jurisdiction of the State Archival Service of Ukraine. Founded as the Central State Historical Archive of the Ukrainian SSR with later branches in Kharkiv (in 1944; abolished in 1970) and in Lviv (in 1946; since 1958 functioning independently as the Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Lviv), the Kyiv archive preserves documentary materials from the 16th century to 1917. The basis of its collection comprised prerevolutionary records held earlier by the Kyiv Central Archive of Old Documents (established in 1852). In 1944 it incorporated 152 fonds containing 99,500 documents from the Kyiv Oblast Historical Archive (today State Archive of Kyiv Oblast) and the Central Archive of the October Revolution in Kharkiv (today Central State Archive of Higher Organs of Government). In 1970–71 it moved from a location adjacent to the Saint Sophia Cathedral to its present site in Kyiv’s Solomianka district and absorbed the collections of it former Kharkiv branch (circa 150,000 units). It has assumed its current name in 1992.

The TsDIAK has enormous holdings, containing circa 1,618 fonds with over 1,300,000 units. It has by far the most extensive collection of pre-19th century documents relating to both Left-Bank Ukraine and Right-Bank Ukraine and a range of material from as early as the 14th century. The chronology of the archive’s documents covers the period from the time when the Right-Bank Ukraine was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (14th century) to the February Revolution of 1917 in the Russian Empire. This includes extensive records related to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Cossack period, and the Hetman state. The TsDIAK has particularly rich collections of materials related to Ukrainian social, economic, and political life in 19th and early 20th centuries, although general gubernial records have remained in the state oblast archives found in former Ukrainian gubernia centers (ie, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Chernihiv, Poltava, Kherson, Zhytomyr, Kamianets-Podilskyi, Odesa, and Simferopol). The archive also has fonds of many of Ukraine’s prominent families, among them the Galagan, Lukashevych, Passek, Skoropadsky, Storozhenko, Tereshchenko, and Khanenko families, and individuals, such as Volodymyr Antonovych, Dmytro Bahalii, Vladimir Ikonnikov, and Oleksander Potebnia. The highlights of the collection includes the Greek-language Gospel on parchment (13th century), documents from the collection of Kyiv Archeographic Commission (privileges of Lithuanian dukes and Polish kings, universals of Ukrainian hetmans, and charters of Muscovite tsars), two thousand books of acts (aktovi knyhy) issued by or addressed to various institutions (courts and municipalities) of Right-Bank Ukraine within the Polish Kingdom, dating from the 16th to 18th centuries, and collections related to the Hetman state and Zaporozhian Cossacks, including those of the General Military Chancellery, First Little Russian Collegium, General Military Court, and Kish of the Zaporozhian Sich.

In the 1950s and 1960s the archive published such collections of documents as Ukraïna pered vyzvol'noiu viinoiu 1648–1654 rr. (Ukraine before the Liberation War of 1648–1654, 1946) and Ukraïns'kyi narod u Vitchyznianii viini 1812 roku (The Ukrainian People in the Patriotic War of 1812, 1948) and co-published Revoliutsiia 1905–1907 rr. na Ukraïni (The Revolution of 1905–1907 in Ukraine, 2 vols, 1955), Vossoedinenie Ukrainy s Rossiei: Dokumenty i materialy (The Reunification of Ukraine with Russia: Documents and Materials, 3 vols, 1953), Dokumenty Bohdana Khmel'nyts'koho: 1648–1657 (Documents of Bohdan Khmelnytsky: 1648–1657, 1961), and Haidamats'kyi rukh na Ukraïni v XVIII st. (The Haidamaka Movement in Ukraine in the 18th Century, 1970). In the 1970s and 1980s, the subject matter of documentary publications was limited almost exclusively to collections of documents on peasants’ and workers’ movements in Ukraine at the beginning of the 20th century, and a number of reference works such as descriptions of legal books, indexes, and catalogues. In the second half of the 1980s and early 1990s, the focus of archaeographic publications was on the early modern period: Torhivlia na Ukraїni XIV–seredyna XVII st.: Volyn' i Naddniprianshchyna (Trade in Ukraine, 14th to the middle of the 17th century: Volhynia and Dnipro Ukraine, 1990), Opysy Kyїvs'koho namisnytstva 70–80 rokiv XVIII st.: opysovo-statystychni dzherela (The Descriptions of Kyiv Vicegerency of the 1770s–1780s: the Descriptive-Statistical Sources, 1989). Since the 1990s the archive’s documentary publications have focused mostly on the early modern period: Arkhiv Kosha Novoї Zaporoz'koї Sichi: korpus dokumentiv, 1734–1775 (The Archive of the Kish of the New Zaporozhian Sich: A Corpus of Documents, 1734–1775, 9 vols, 1998–2024), Rus'ka (Volyns'ka) Metryka: rehesty dokumentiv Koronnoї kantseliariї dlia ukraїns'kykh zemel' (Volyns'ke, Kyїv'ske, Bratslavs'ke ta Chernihivs'ke voievodstva): 1569–1673 (The Ruthenian [Volhynian] Metrics: Registers of Documents of the Royal Chancellery for the Ukrainian Lands [Volhynia, Kyiv, Bratslav and Chernihiv Voivodeships]: 1569–1673, 2002), Natsional'no-vyzvol'na viina v Ukraїni: 1648–1657: zbirnyk za dokumentamy aktovykh knyh (The War of National Liberation in Ukraine, 1648–1657: A Collection of Documents from the Registry Books, 2008), “Pakty i Konstytutsiї” Ukraїns'koї kozats'koї derzhavy (do 300-ricchia ukladannia) (Pacts and Constitutions of the Ukrainian Cossack State: to the 300th Anniversary of their Composition, 2011), and Hryhorii Skovoroda, Izraїl's'kyi zmii (The Serpent of Israel, 2012).

In 1971 Kataloh kolektsiï dokumentiv Kyïvs'koï arkheohrafichnoï komisiï 1869–1899 (The Catalogue of the Collection of Documents of the Kyiv Archeographic Commission 1869–1899) was published by the Kyiv archive. The archive has also developed a series of specialized catalogues for its collections, some of which (including the list of all fonds and those fonds that have been digitalized) are now available online at the TsDIAK official website: https://archium.cdiak.archives.gov.ua/.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Apanovych, O. et al (comps); Bondarevskii, A. et al (eds). Tsental'nyi gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv USSR v Kieve: Putevoditel' (Kyiv 1958)
Grimstead, P. Archives and Repositories in the USSR: Ukraine and Moldavia (Princeton, NJ 1988)
Altukhova, O. et al (comps); Onyshchenko, O. et al (eds). Arkhivni ustanovy Ukraïny (Kyiv 2000)
Kyivs'kyi tsentral'nyi arkhiv davnikh aktiv: 1852–1943: Zbirbyk dokumentiv, vol. 1: 1852–1921 (Kyiv 2002)
Tsentral'nyi derzhavnyi istorychnyi arkhiv Ukraїny, m. Kyiv, in Arkhivni ustanovy Ukraїny: Dovidnyk, vol. 1: Derzhavni arkhivy (Kyiv 2005)
Natsional'nyi reiestr vtrachenykh ta peremishchenykh arkhivnykh fondiv. Vol. 1: Arkhivni fondy Ukraїny, vtracheni v period Druhoї svitovoї viiny (Kyiv 2007)

Serhiy Bilenky

[This article was updated in 2025.]