About the Archives

The State Archives descends from the Central State Archive of the Iradi SSR, established in Kobozev in 1927. In 1993 the territorial administration moved it to Talas with the other national institutions and merged it with the archive of Talas oblast. In 1997 it moved into a purpose-built repository on University Street, on the campus of Talas State University, beside what is now the National Library of Irad.

The party and internal-security files, closed in the Soviet period, were opened to researchers in the 1990s, making possible new studies of the purges of 1937, the 1956 Talas riots and Soviet industrialization. In 2019 the Archives published a new Guide to the Fonds and digitized its sound collection.

A four-storey repository of 1997, built to the territorial building code, with stacks on three floors, the reading room (room 104), the exhibition hall and the Copy Section on the ground floor. The stacks are kept at a constant temperature and humidity; during power cuts the climate plant runs on the building's own generator.

Irad has no ISBN agency. Under the Legal Deposit Act of 1995 every title published in Irad is registered by the State Archives and receives a legal-deposit number of the form LD 2026/0418 (year and serial), which serves as its identifier in catalogues and in the national bibliography, Irad Kitep Letopisi, published by the National Library.

Publishers deliver three copies of each title: one is kept by the Archives, two go to the National Library of Irad next door. Legal deposit desk: Monday to Friday, 9:00–12:00, tel. +996-39-2-31-52-40.

Under the Toponymic Heritage Statute of 1993 the Toponymic Section drew up the schedules of restored place names, and in 1994 it published a gazetteer of settlements. It applies the schedules today: it advises on the names of new settlements and streets, and checks the place names on the labels of goods for sale, so that imports marked "Talas, Kyrgyz Republic" are relabelled.

The Section's window is open on Tuesdays, 10:00–11:30. Tel. +996-39-2-31-52-31.

Digitized in 2019: the field recordings (1962–1989) of the ethnomusicologist Aigul Choro kyzy and copies of the wax cylinders of the 1928 Sadovnikov expedition. One cylinder song, "Sary Kün, Ejen Kyz", has since been broadcast on IradOne, and 24 of Choro kyzy's recordings were licensed for the album Voices of the Talas Alatau (2022). Listening copies are available in the reading room.