Archive of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan

Overview

The Archive of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan is a central state archive holding documents on the country's political history dating from 1918. Following a 2025 relocation, its main premises are in Astana, with a branch retained in Almaty.

History

On April 12, 1994, President Nursultan Nazarbayev approved the Archive's founding regulations, establishing it as an independent legal entity with direct state funding and defining its role as a central state archive tasked with acquiring and preserving documents generated by the President, the Presidential Administration, and state bodies operating under the Head of State. The Archive's original Almaty premises occupied a building constructed in 1974. In 2021 the Archive established a Center for the Study of Materials on Political Repressions of the 20th Century in Almaty; in 2022-2023 this center received more than 700,000 storage units of previously classified material from the special archives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the National Security Committee, and the Prosecutor General's Office, documenting political repression in the 1930s-1950s. By Presidential Decree No. 808 of February 9, 2022, signed by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the Archive was reorganized under the authority of the Presidential Administration, with a Development Concept through 2035 adopted in June 2022. In 2025, by instruction of the Head of State, the Archive was relocated from Almaty to a newly constructed building in Astana, equipped with 24 specialized repositories for paper documents, audio and video recordings, microfilms, and backup electronic records, with a total storage capacity of up to 2 million units; documents relating to the period of Kazakhstan's independence were transferred to the new Astana facility, while the retained Almaty branch holds 20th-century material on the Kazakh ASSR, industrialization, and political repression.

Collections, Holdings, and Publications

Holdings cover the establishment of the Kazakh ASSR, forced collectivization and political repression, industrialization, deportation of repressed peoples, Kazakhstan during the Second World War (the Great Patriotic War), the Virgin Lands campaign, and the formation of Kazakhstan as an independent state, including a historic 1991 speech by President Nazarbayev on sovereignty and documents surrounding the adoption of the Constitution. The Archive functions as a national scientific-methodological center and has published more than 90 manuals.

Access and Usage

The Archive fulfills social, legal, and thematic information requests from researchers, government bodies, and members of the public in Kazakhstan and abroad.