The Office of the Arzamas District Military Commander was a pre-revolutionary military-administrative institution that operated Arzamas from the 1870s until 1918. It was established in connection with the military reform under the regulation of 26 August 1874 and the military service statute. The institution's records are held at the State Archive of the Nizhny Novgorod Region) as part of Fund No. 21, Inventory No. 1, covering the period from 1865 to 1918.[1]
Functions and Activities
The Office was responsible for conducting call-ups of military-eligible men, their assignment and dispatch to the armed forces, as well as Nizhny Novgorod Militia. The exact date of the institution's establishment has not been determined; however, the fund's documents contain information relating to the pre-reform period, including service records and personal files of enlisted men and junior commanders with service dating to 1855, data on regiment and battalion designations, and records of military personnel's participation in various campaigns.[1]
The core of the fund consists of orders and circular directives from the Main Staff of the Ministry of War, imperial decrees, orders from the Staff of the Moscow Military District and the Moscow Local Brigade Command, as well as the Office's own orders. The orders contain information on the transfer of infantry and cavalry divisions, rifle and engineer brigades between military districts, lists of those decorated for combat and other distinctions, statements of forage prices for horses of the Moscow Military District, data on the numbers of sick, deceased, escaped, and discharged as unfit for service, and information on railway station commandants.[1]
Documents on Conscripts
A special place in the fund is occupied by notebooks of intake service records for recruits — both from Arzamas Uyezd and from districts of various governorates of Russia. Recruits were directed to Guards units, cavalry, the navy, and local military detachments throughout the country. The notebooks recorded each recruit's route to his place of service, with precise dates of departure, stops, and overnight quarters, an account of expenditures, an assessment of conduct en route, and health status as checked by physicians at medical points.[1]
The service records themselves contain information on the recruit's year of birth, the Village from which he was called up, as well as his surname, given name, and patronymic (or nickname), height in arshins and vershoks, chest circumference, marital status, wife's name, and details about children. Also recorded were social status (peasant, meshchanin, artisan, son of a merchant or nobleman, son of a clergyman), level of education, profession or occupation, religious confession, and the branch and type of forces, regiment or battalion number, and date of arrival for service.[1]
Archival Fund
The documents of Fund No. 21 are held at the state-funded institution "State Archive of Nizhny Novgorod Region" in Arzamas. Inventory No. 1 of permanent-retention files for 1865–1918 has been introduced into scholarly circulation and published in electronic form by Otkrytiy Tekst (Open Text portal).[1]
Sources
- opentextnn.ru — Fund No. 21 "Office of the Arzamas District Military Commander". Inventory No. 1 — OPEN TEXT
- notarc.org — Fund No. 21 — Nearkiv — avqqqg — The fund covers documents for the period from 1855 to 1918; in addition to orders and service records, it includes an alphabetical register of lower ranks, recruit records…