State Archive of the Russian Federation

The State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) (Russian: Государственный архив Российской Федерации (ГАРФ)) is a large Russian state archive managed by Rosarkhiv (the Federal Archival Agency of Russia). It houses documents from the highest bodies of Russian authority, including:

• some official documents relating to the history of the Russian Empire (mostly concerning the activity of police)
• personal records (including archives of some members of the imperial Romanov from the early 19th century to 1918)
• official documents of the supreme national legislative and executive institutions of the Russian Provisional Government (1917)
• records of Soviet Russia as an independent state (1917-1922) and as a territorial entity of the USSR (1923-1991)
• archives of the Soviet Union (1922-1991)
• records of the Russian Federation (since 1992)
• documents from many other sources

The State Archive, established in Moscow in 1992, acquired the collections of:

• the Central State Archive of the October Revolution (Russian: Центральный государственный архив Октябрьской революции, высших органов государственной власти и органов государственного управления (ЦГАОР СССР)) (founded in 1920)
• the Central State Archive of the Russian SFSR (Russian: Центральный государственный архив РСФСР (ЦГА РСФСР)) (founded in 1957).