A great part of the original Russian records have been lost through the ravages of time, war, accident and earthquake. But a unique collection of archive documents has been preserved, showing the consequences of conquest or annexation by the Russian Empire and details of the many boundaries which were established by Tzarist officials in the 18th and 19th centuries. At the direction of the Russian Governor-General in the Caucasus, the Archives of the Central Administration from 1802 to 1862 were gathered together and published between 1866 and 1904 in Tiflis (Tbilisi), Georgia: some 14,000 of the most important documents were published including many secret service reports about the situations in Turkey and Persia. A handlist of the contents, in English, has been prepared by staff at the Board of Scientific Editors in Tbilisi (Tiflis), Georgia as an aid to research.
