ГАИО–– the archive and the experience

Today I wanted to give a little bit more of a detailed description of life at GAIO, the archive in Irkutsk, because I know when I was coming here I wish someone had described it online in advance. It definitely functions differently than I was prepared for in my preliminary research into typical post soviet archives. GAIO doesn’t give you any kind of пропуск (pass), but instead asks to see you passport and fills out a form with it... every single time you visit. The wait period for documents tends to be around 3 days (but you can put in unlimited orders), and though the reading room is small it has consistently been crowded. The archivists are very nice and tolerant with me as a foreigner and archival research newbie. I come here almost every day (it’s closed on Wednesday) to copy notes into my laptop furiously from each of the дела (document compilations) and I’m easily the youngest person working there at any given time and certainly the only foreigner. It’s been an awesome experience and I’m glad I got to first experience this type of research at a small, provincial archive.