Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Lviv

Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Lviv (Центральний державний історичний архів України, м. Львів або ЦДІАЛ; Tsentralnyi derzhavnyi istorychnyi arkhiv Ukrainy, m. Lviv, or TsDIAL). The central repository for historical documents dealing with pre-Soviet Western Ukraine, located in Lviv and overseen by the State Archival Service of Ukraine. It is one of the largest and oldest archives in Ukraine. It is housed in two of the city’s famous historic landmarks: the former Bernardine monastery and the Royal Arsenal.

The archive was established in November 1939 under the name Central Archive of Ancient Documents in Lviv and incorporated the holdings of several Lviv archives that had existed before the Second World War II, including the Archive of Ancient Documents of Lviv (magistrate), State Archive in Lviv, Land Archive, as well as a number of departmental, corporate, and private collections. It kept materials of Lviv’s municipal self-government, starting from the 14th century, as well as the books of acts of city courts and land court from eastern Galicia dating from the 15th to 18th centuries (more than 6,500 books in total). Initially, it was subordinate to the archival department of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR in Lviv oblast. On 24 June 1941 the archive was reorganized into a branch of the Central State Historical Archive of the Ukrainian SSR (today Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Kyiv), but due to the outbreak of war this decision was not practically implemented. During the Nazi occupation, the archive continued to function as the Lviv City Archive and was subordinated to the Archival Department of the German governor-general in Cracow (see Generalgouvernement). In the period of 1943–44 the most valuable documents of the archive were taken to Germany. After the Soviet comeback, in 1944–45, the archive existed as the Department of Ancient Documents of the Lviv Oblast State Archive. Most documents were returned to Lviv in 1946–47, when the archive began to operate again as a branch of the Central State Historical Archive of the Ukrainian SSR (TsDIA URSR) in Kyiv. During several subsequent years the documents were divided between the two institutions: the Lviv branch of TsDIA URSR and the Lviv Oblast State Archive. The former received documents from the 13th to 18th centuries, as well as the collections of Austrian and Polish institutions in Galicia. In 1958 the Lviv branch became a separate institution and in 1992 it acquired its present name. As of 2025 it has over 765 fonds with over 1,119,000 storage units, from the 12th to 21st centuries.

The Archive of Ancient Documents of Lviv (magistrate) dates back to the middle of the 13th century, the time of the city’s founding (1256). The archive gathered princely charters to the city, individual churches and synagogues, and colonists; privileges of kings, lords, and palatines to Galician merchants related to foreign trade; documents of the municipal self-government; guild acts; and occasional private papers of the wealthy urban elites. Regrettably, almost all of these documents, as well as the princely archive of the Romanovych dynasty, were lost in the 1340s through the 1380s, during the struggle for Galicia between Poland and Lithuania, when Lviv was burned down in 1381. Thereafter, starting from 1382, the city’s judicial, administrative, and accounting books were systematically preserved. The magistrate’s archive also preserved parchments from earlier times, starting from 1233. From the middle of the 13th to the beginning of the 20th century the city archive of Lviv was kept in the town hall. In 1891 the Lviv magistrate reorganized its archives, which were renamed the Archive of Ancient Documents of the City of Lviv. It was considered a separate department of the magistrate, subordinate to the city presidium.

The State Archive in Lviv, established in 1913 on the basis of the earlier Archive of the Viceroy’s Office of Galicia, served as the basis for the TsDIAL collection. The State Archive holdings were particularly rich as a result of it having acquired the Lviv Land-Court Archive, known commonly as the Bernadine Archive (see below), in 1933. TsDIAL also incorporated the earlier holdings of the former Lviv Municipal Archive and other local city repositories as well as those of various Western Ukrainian associations and civic and religious institutions.

The Bernadine Archive was established in 1784 after the First Partition of Poland as a central repository for court and administrative records. Its was known officially as the Galician Archive for Early Castle- and Land Court-Records, but acquired its popular name as a result of its location in a former Bernadine monastery. In 1878 it was formally reorganized as the Provincial Archive of Early Castle- and Land Court-Records, although it remained in the same location. Similar situations occurred in 1918, when it became the Lviv Land-Court Archive, and in 1933, when it became part of the structure of the State Archive in Lviv.

The TsDIAL holdings include land court, city court, and administrative records from different historical epochs: the Principality of Galicia-Volhynia (13th–14th centuries), Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (14th–18th centuries), the crown land of Galicia government records from the period of Austria and Austria-Hungary (including census records and cartographic materials) (1772–1918), documents pertaining to the Western Ukrainian National Republic (1918–19), the Ukrainian National Republic (1917–21), official records pertaining to Western Ukrainian lands under Poland in the interwar era (1919–39), the first Soviet (1939–41) and Nazi (1941–44) occupations, postwar Soviet Union (1944–91), and independent Ukraine (since 1991). The oldest documents in the archive are represented by unique birch-bark manuscripts dating from approximately 1110–37 (discovered in the village of Vodnyky, Lviv oblast, and transferred to the archive in 1994). Among other unique materials is the collection of parchments and charters (1233–1923), which include interstate agreements, papal bulls, privileges of kings, princes, lords, voivodes, starostas, etc., which were granted to cities, villages, churches, monasteries, synagogues, and guilds, as well as real estate deals. The documents relate to the history of Austria (and Austria-Hungary), Wallachia, Italy, Moldavia, Germany, Poland, Transylvania, Hungary, and other states. Another unique collection is the fond of the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood, the only fully preserved set of documents of a Ukrainian public organization of the 16th–18th centuries. TsDIAL also has a wide selection of materials related to financial, co-operative movement, and savings and loan associations and institutions; educational and scholarly institutions such as Prosvita, Ridna shkola society, Halytsko-Ruska Matytsia, and Shevchenko Scientific Society; civic groups such as women’s, student, and sports societies; the Western Ukrainian press; religious institutions and societies; personal papers; and the like. All fonds are open for research.

The archive published or co-published a number of important collections of documents such as Sotsial'na borot'ba v misti L'vovi v XVI–XVIII st. (A Social Struggle in the City of Lviv in the 16th–18th Centuries, 1961); Pershodrukar Ivan Fedorov ta ioho poslidovnyky na Ukraïni (XVI–persha polovyna XVII st.) (First Printer Ivan Fedorovych (Fedorov) and His Followers in Ukraine, 16th–First Half of the 17th Centuries, 1975); Istoriia L'vova v dokumentakh i materialakh: Zbirnyk dokumentiv (A History of Lviv in Documents and Materials: A Collection of Documents, 1986); Selians'kyi rukh na Ukraїni 1569–1647 rr. Zbirnyk dokumentiv i materialiv (The Peasant Movement in Ukraine 1569–1647: A Collection of Documents and Materials, 1993); Mykhailo Hrushevs'kyi, Shchodennyk (1888–1894 rr.) (Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Diary [1888–94], 1997); Pryvileї mista L'vova XIV–XVIII st. (The Privileges of the City of Lviv in the 14th–18th Centuries, 1998); Mykhailo Drahomanov: Dokumenty i materialy 1841–1994 (Mykhailo Drahomanov: Documents and Materials 1841–1994, 2001); Holovna Rus'ka Rada 1848–1851: Protokoly zasidan' i knyha korespondentsii (The Supreme Ruthenian Council, 1848–51: The Records of Meetings and Book of Correspondence, 2002); Ekonomichni privileї mista L'vova XV–XVIII st.: privileї ta statuty remisnychykh tsekhiv i kupets'kykh korporatsii (The Commercial Privileges of the City of Lviv in the 15th–18th Centuries: Privileges and Statutes of Artisanal Guilds and Merchant Corporations, 2007); Mytropolyt Andrei Sheptyts'kyi: Dokumenty i materialy 1899–1944 (Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky: Documents and Materials 1899–1944, 3 vols, 2007–10); Atlas ukraїns'kykh istorychnykh mist, T. 1: L'viv (Atlas of the Ukrainian Historic Cities, vol 1: Lviv, 2014).

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 TsDIAL official website: https://archium.tsdial.archives.gov.ua/

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kataloh perhamentnykh dokumentiv Tsentral'noho derzhavnoho istorychnoho arkhivu URSR u L'vovi: 1233–1799 (Kyiv 1972)
Grimstead, P. Archives and Repositories in the USSR: Ukraine and Moldavia (Princeton, NJ 1988)
Hnievysheva, O. et al (comps). Tsentral'nyi derzhavnyi istorychnyi arkhiv Ukraïny, m. L'viv: Putivnyk (Lviv 2001); electronic version: https://tsdial.archives.gov.ua/pdf/Putivnyk.pdf
Centralne Państwowe Archiwum Historyczne Ukrainy we Lwowie: przewodnik po zasobie archiwalnym (Warsaw–Przemyśl 2005)

Serhiy Bilenky

[This article was updated in 2025.]