Foreign Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Embassy and Consulates, Union...

FO 181

1801-1970

This series contains general correspondence of the British embassy and consulates in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (formerly the Russian Empire). There is no correspondence for the period 1921 to 1937.

The early part of this series has been re-arranged and those papers previously described as 'loose papers' but which had been sorted into years (FO 181/635-671; 756-941) have been identified and described, while those which were un-dated and shown as"loose papers, un-arranged" have been dated, sorted, and placed in other boxes in accordance with their date and character. A small residuum will be found at the end of the series as FO 181/1065-1066.

Throughout the catalogue for this series, papers described as being 'to' Ambassadors or their deputies are originals; those 'from' are drafts or copies of despatches sent.

Before the embassy staff were withdrawn in 1918, many post 1908 papers of certain types were destroyed. Another serious loss of embassy archives occurred in 1941 when, with the advance of the German armies, all records, confidential and otherwise, up to and including part of 1941, were burnt by embassy staff before they left for Kuibyshev.

Public Record(s)

English and Russian

• Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Embassy, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1968-1991
• Foreign Office, Consulate, Russia, 1800-1854
• Foreign Office, Consulate, Russia, 1856-1918
• Foreign Office, Consulates, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1924-1968
• Foreign Office, Embassy, Russia, 1800-1854
• Foreign Office, Embassy, Russia, 1856-1918
• Foreign Office, Embassy, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1924-1968

1262 files and volumes

Subject to 30 year closure unless otherwise stated

(recent accessions) Foreign and Commonwealth Office Pre Soviet era records were transferred to the Public Record Office in 1926.

Many of the records are unfit for production.

Topics

International

Asia

Europe and Russia

A Foreign Office letter dated 17 March 1926 (PRO 1/92) contains an account of how, in 1925, the records of the pre Soviet era embassy were discovered in a store closet in the Petrograd Embassy, in a very poor condition and without any protective bindings. The records had been in the hands of the Soviet authorities for six or so years.

Series is accruing

In 1941, as German forces advanced, all British embassy staff in Moscow (with the exception of a few personnel) left for Kuibyshev. It was not until 1943 that the embassy was fully staffed again.