Kauno Regioninis Valstybės Archyvas

The State Archives were established in Kaunas on 19 October 1921 by the order of the Minister of Education. On 13 March 1941, it became the Kaunas Branch of the Central State Archive of the Lithuanian SSR.

The archives have been reorganised several times and, as a consequence, their name and profile have changed: Between 1957 and 1963, they were known as the Kaunas City State Archives, then they became the Kaunas Branch of the Central State Archives of the Lithuanian SSR on 1 January 1964. As of 23 March 1978, they were called Central State Archives of the Lithuanian SSR in Kaunas; 25 July 1990, the Kaunas State Archives; 28 May 1993, the Kaunas County Archives (Kauno apygardos archyvas); 7 March 1997, Kaunas County Archives (Kauno apskrities archyvas); 1 January 2017, the Kaunas Regional State Archives.

The Kaunas Regional State Archives hold 2,421 fonds, which consist of 1,306,440 units. These documents take up 10,216 linear meters of shelving space.

The oldest documents in the archives are the documents of the Pažaislis Monastery, which date back to the 17th century though the majority of the documents relate to later periods. The fonds of the Kaunas Archives are also a source of information on the historic and architectural heritage of the Jewish communities of Lithuania.

The fonds can be divided into four major groups:

• Fonds of the institutions relating to the Russian Empire period comprise a set of documents created by the institutions which were functioning on the territory of the Kaunas Governorate (made up of Kaunas, Panevėžys, Raseiniai, Šiauliai, Telšiai, Ukmergė and Zarasai counties): the Kaunas Civil Governor’s Chancellery; the Administration Board of the Kaunas Governorate and its divisions; the Kaunas Governorate Drafting Office; the State Property Administration Board of the Kaunas Governorate; the Kaunas Governorate and the county commissions on courts, land planning, national service, peasants’ matters, townsmen’s matters, crafts, activities of societies and associations; also the fonds of the Kaunas Duma (City Council) and the Administration Board as well boards of administration of the other towns of the Kaunas Governorate, as well as police offices, and other fonds.

• Fonds relating to the period of the Republic of Lithuania (1919–1940) and the Nazi occupation period (1941–1944) comprise a set of documents of the institutions which were functioning in Kaunas and in the Kaunas County at that time: municipalities and local self-government institutions; educational, health care and provisional institutions, also documents of private companies; documents created by the Kaunas Municipality and the Kaunas County Administration as well as its subdivisions: departments of quartering, finance, passports, construction, social security, health care, education, provision, property, maintenance, water supply and sewerage; Kaunas and the Kaunas County tax inspections, Kaunas Elementary Schools Inspector’s Office, some public and private schools in Kaunas, health care institutions, manufacturing and trading companies, etc.

• Fonds relating to the Soviet occupation periods (1940–1941) and (1944–1990) comprise a set of documents of the institutions which were functioning on the present Kaunas County territory (i.e. Kaunas City and Jonava, Kaišiadorys, Kaunas, Kėdainiai, Prienai, Raseiniai districts): state institutions and local self-government institutions, courts, notary’s offices, agricultural and manufacturing institutions; educational, cultural, scientific, health care institutions; public institutions including the largest industrial enterprises, planning and design institutes, scientific research institutes, and universities of Kaunas.

• Fonds relating to the Independence period (since 1990) comprise a set of documents of the state and public institutions which were and still are functioning on the Kaunas County territory, including documents of the Kaunas Council of the Lithuanian Reform Movement Sąjūdis and personal collections of the Independence Act signatories Egidijus Bičkauskas and Algirdas Patackas.

Various finding aids, indexes and catalogues are available in the Kaunas Regional State Archives' reading rooms.

Information on the fonds of the Republic of Lithuania (1919-1940), Soviet (1940-1941, 1944-1990) and German occupation periods (1941-1944) was published in the Lietuvos TSR centrinio valstybinio archyvo Kaune fondų žinyne (Foundations Directory of the Central State Archives of the Lithuanian SSR in Kaunas) in 1986.