The article covers the history of the preparation of the new Regulations which deal with the issues of work with documents in the archive, including electronic ones, describes their main provisions, and shows the differences from the previous Regulations of 2007.

The main milestones in the history of the RGVA and the directions of its activities after its merger with the Special archive in 1999 are outlined (transfer of documents displaced during the Second World War to the countries of origin, implementation of projects with foreign partners, publication and exhibition activities); the problems that need to be solved are named.

The history of the confrontation of the USSR Academy of Sciences Archive, Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the State Hermitage for the right to store the documentary collection of the scientist is presented based on the documents from the personal fonds of the long-standing permanent secretary of the USSR Academy of Sciences S.F. Oldenburg, stored in the St. Petersburg branch of the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ARAN).

The composition of personal files of Russian and Soviet scientists of the XVIII–XX centuries stored in the archive of the French Academy of Sciences, the work of French archivists with them (acquisition, including buying documents at auctions, exchange of information with Academies of Sciences of other countries, access procedure), and the use of documents by Russian historians of science are shown.

The work of the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics of Lomonosov Moscow State University on digitization of documentary collections and database design, which results in the creation of a Confederate database on students with the ability to update an integrated list of basic data (from annual databases), is presented on the example of the fonds «Moscow University».

The main provisions of the law on the National archival fonds and archives of the Republic of Kazakhstan (1998) are described, its transformation in specific areas is shown, and the prospects for the development of legislation in the field of archives in connection with the introduction of information technologies are determined.

The history of the loss of a significant part of the archive of one of the oldest Orthodox monasteries in Russia – Nikolo-Shartomsky, the fonds of which is stored in the State Archive of the Ivanovo region, is analyzed; an attempt of archive’s reconstruction is made based on a number of inventory documents which were kept in the monastery.

The prehistory of the Urmian mission to Persia, which led to the accession of several thousand Nestorians to the Russian Orthodox Church and was one of the greatest successes of the Russian Church policy in the Middle East in the second half of the XIX century, is shown based on the correspondence of Russian diplomats related to the activities of Protestant and Catholic missionaries in Urmia and other districts of Persian Azerbaijan, which is being introduced into scientific circulation.

The documents on the history of Russian Orthodoxy in America, deposited in the Referentur USA fonds, about attempts of the Moscow Patriarchate and the Soviet state apparatus to resolve the issue of the reunification of the Russian Orthodox Church and the American Metropolis are characterized. An ambiguous attitude to these attempts in the American Metropolis and in the Exarchate, as well as the aggravation of the problem with visas for religious figures in both countries are shown.

The results of source analysis on thematic, chronological and quantitative features of 670 theological and jural Arabic manuscripts that made up the Middle Asian collection of the Oriental manuscripts fonds of this scientific institution are presented. Most of them were rewritten in the XVIII–XIX centuries; two works belong to the XIV century.

Some of the unknown facts of the early biography of the eminent thinker and pioneer of the Russian cosmism philosophy N.F. Fedorov, including his place of residence in the years 1852–1854 are revealed based on documents identified in the Manuscripts Department of the National Library of Russia in the family fonds of the Evstafievs (the head of the family was the teacher of Russian literature); the questions to be answered are raised.

The main milestones in the history of the town and its archives since the creation of the Kovrov county archival bureau in 1928 are elucidated; the composition and contents of fonds, the main directions of archivists’ work and its achievements are presented.

The main events in the history of the town and the archive are named; the conditions of storage of documents are shown, their composition, the use of digital technologies, work on acquisition and use of documents, including those on the history of the Great Patriotic war, during the actions which were organized by the Archival Department of the Leningrad region are shown.

Letters and claims of the historian-archivist, MGIAI professor I.L. Mayakovsky, identified in the ARAN, shedding light on the circumstances of his dismissal from the post of Deputy head of the IRLI Archive against the background of the «Trotskyist-Zinoviev block» trial, and his attempts to recover at his former place of service are published for the first time.