Central State Historical Archive in Lviv
Central State Historical Archive in Lviv (Tsentralnyi derzhavnyi istorychnyi arkhiv, m. Lviv, or TsDIAL). The central repository for historical documents dealing with pre-Soviet Western Ukraine, located in Lviv and overseen by the State Archival Service of Ukraine. It was established in 1944 as the Lviv Branch of the Central State Historical Archive of the Ukrainian SSR (see Central State Historical Archive in Kyiv) and incorporated the holdings of several exisiting Lviv archives. In 1958 it became a separate institution and in 1992 acquired its present name. In 2000 it had over 650 fonds with over 1,090,000 storage units.
The State Archive in Lviv, established in 1912 on the basis of the earlier Archive of the Viceroy’s Office in Galicia, served as the basis for the TsDIAL collection. The State Archive holdings were particularly rich as a result of it having acquired the Lviv Land-Court Archive, known commonly as the Bernadine Archive (see below), in 1933. TsDIAL also incorporated the earlier holdings of the former Lviv Municipal Archive and other local city repositories as well as those of various Western Ukrainian associations and civic and religious institutions.
The Bernadine Archive was established in 1784 after the First Partition of Poland as a central repository for court and administrative records. Its was known officially as the Galician Archive for Early Castle- and Land Court-Records, but acquired its popular name as a result of its location in a former Bernadine monastery. In 1878 it was formally reorganized as the Provincial Archive of Early Castle- and Land Court-Records, although it remained in the same location. Similar situations occured in 1918 when it became the Lviv Land-Court Archive and in 1933 when it became part of the structure of the State Archive in Lviv.
The TsDIAL holdings include court and administrative records from even before the establishment of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Galician Crownland government records from the period of Austria-Hungary (including census records and cartographic materials), documents pertaining to the Western Ukrainian National Republic, and official records pertaining to Western Ukrainian lands under Poland in the interwar era. It also has a wide selection of materials related to financial, loan, and co-operative institutions; education institutions; civic groups such as women’s, student, and sports societies; the Western Ukrainian press; religious institutions and societies; personal papers; and the like. All fonds are open for research.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Grimstead, P. Archives and Repositories in the USSR: Ukraine and Moldavia (Princeton, NJ 1988)
Hnievysheva, O. et al (comps). Tsentral’nyi derzhavnyi istorychnyi arkhiv Ukraïny, m. L’viv: Putivnyk (Lviv 2001); electronic version: <http://www.archives.gov.ua/Publicat/Guidebooks/Putivnyk-CDIAL.php>