National archives are widely understood as records of a country’s history, culture, and government activities. Though we hold ideals that these collections will be complete, neutral, and available to anyone who has an interest in them, this is rarely the case. Both national governments, and the archivists employed by them, influence the archives with their own political and cultural agendas, both on purpose and unintentionally. Examples of these occurrences are documented in Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History, a recent collection of essays by historians with experience working in national archives from around the world. The “Historians Workshop” course at the University of Richmond studied these “archive stories” alongside two UR historians who visited our class and shared their own experiences: Dr. Manuela Meyer, a historian of Brazil, and Dr. David Brandenberger, a Soviet historian. Their stories raise an important question: In what ways do national governments and archivists affect the neutrality and accessibility of national archives?

            Perhaps the most obvious influence on national archives is national governments. Because of their authority, government officials are sometimes able to change recorded history when actual history does not fit their purposes. One example of this intentional influencing of the archives occurred in Uzbekistan in the late 1990s when Islam Karimov, the Uzbek president, censored documents that addressed the country’s relationship with Russia and communism. He wanted to hide the crimes that had occurred against the people during that period in order move the country in a new direction, and did so at the expense of the neutrality of the records in the Uzbek National Archives. Another more violent example occurred about a decade earlier, when the government of South Africa destroyed countless records and documents during the apartheid. They also destroyed the people who spoke out against them, silencing their opinions and memories, and ensuring that the recorded history of South Africa was not the history that actually happened, but the history that the government said happened.

            In a much less violent manner, archivists exert power over the archives as well, but through limiting access and selective omissions, rather than physical destruction of documents. During his time in Moscow, historian David Brandenberger found the Central Party Archive (now known as the Russian State Archive for Socio-Political History) to contain a remarkable wealth of documents saved and collected by the archivists. The collection is only accessible by a select few however: those who can understand Russian, are recognized as credible Russian scholars, and are able to navigate the entirely paper archival system. Additionally, the archives have been cataloged in such a way that makes researching popular topics like communism relatively easy, but offers little assistance for topics like women’s history. By choosing to categorize their archives in this way, the Soviet archivists limit access to a select number of patrons, and even then they are still limited in the scope of their research. This control of availability can also be seen in historian Durba Ghosh’s experience in India, specifically the Calcutta and New Delhi archives and libraries. Ghosh wanted to research miscegenation during the early British colonial era, but was deterred from her topic by archivists who disapproved of her interest in what they considered a taboo topic. This tactic of selective omission also occurred in Brazilian archives, forcing historian Manuela Meyer to switch from her original topic about the role native wet-nurses in Brazilian households and to a new topic with different sources, avoiding the national archives and archivists altogether. Clearly, the influence of archivists on national archives, with methods such as limiting access or omitting culturally sensitive materials, cannot be underestimated.

            The national archives are subject to both the influences of national governments and the archivists themselves. While national governments tend to take a more active approach in influencing the archives by editing them to suit their purposes or destroying them completely, archivists also have strong effects on the archives by deciding who is allowed into the archives, which records they can access, and how they can access them. These assertions of power undercut the idea of neutrality in the archives. While it is important to recognize that complete neutrality is not an easy or simple goal to achieve, perhaps, as archives expand, digitization of records advances, and popular demand for neutral, complete, accessible records of national history, culture, and government activities increases, these influences will diminish and bring us even closer to our lofty ideals of national archives.