The commissar of the Provisional government in the Russian Far East: reflections on the archival documents

The article presents an overview of the archival documents from the funds of the Provisional Government’s Commissar in the Russian Far East (Russian State Historical Archives of the Far East, Vladivostok), the access to which had long been restricted for researchers. The business correspondence of A.N. Rusanov with the center and local authorities made it possible to outline the rights and possibilities of the commissar and to reconstruct the course of the revolutionary reforms of 1917 in a remote region of the Russian Empire. Based on the analysis of the archival documents, the author revises the evaluation of Rusanov’s personality and his role in the revolutionary events.