75% of Artsakh Archive with Valuable Documents Remains Under Enemy Control

During the war and exodus of September last year, nothing could be salvaged from the Artsakh State Archive except for a 25% digital version, which is carefully preserved in the National Archive of Armenia. Anahit Grigoryan, the acting director of the Artsakh State Archive, informed MediaHub about this.

“Given the situation, a place was prepared in the National Archive of Armenia to transfer the Artsakh Archive. However, the blockade occurred. We moved on to digitization, which was greatly assisted by our partners in Armenia. But due to power outages and the lack of scanning equipment, we managed to complete only 25% of the overall work,” our interlocutor stated.

Grigoryan also noted that this includes valuable materials related to economies. In total, 1,022 archival fonds have been archived in Artsakh, with about 167,739 documents.

“Unfortunately, we could not transfer 75% of the archive to Armenia as we faced a lack of fuel after the war, and that situation remained. Meanwhile, these are crucial documents for the preservation and use of records related to state activities, which constitute the memory of the people,” she said.

Anahit Grigoryan also expressed gratitude to the National Archive of Armenia for their methodological and practical assistance and for providing work to the colleagues from Artsakh after the displacement.

It should be noted that the Artsakh Archive has been in existence since 1930, where highly confidential documents were not kept, but the economic, political, socio-economic, legal, and personal documents were no less valuable, the majority of which are now under enemy control.