RTU MIREA Lecturer Speaks at Kazan Digital Week 2025

On September 18, Associate Professor Svetlana Vladimirovna Gorkush of the History and Document Science Department took part in the International Forum Kazan Digital Week 2025, where she spoke at the breakout session entitled “Digital Archive: AI as a Revolution in Preserving Documentary Heritage.” The section addressed the pressing challenges of the digital era that are fundamentally transforming the role of archives in today’s global information ecosystem.

Archives, serving as a kind of dialectical code linking the past, present, and future, remain the custodians of historical and social memory. Yet, in today’s rapidly changing world, they too are evolving and building a new information space to meet increasingly complex tasks.

In her presentation, Svetlana Gorkush highlighted the potential of open access to retrospective information in the digital age and emphasized how AI is breaking down barriers between archives and users, turning archives into public centers of knowledge and insight. The digital environment allows us to overcome physical and temporal boundaries, making archived documents accessible to a global audience in real time — anytime, anywhere.

Within this context, she also noted the ongoing transformation of education in the field of archival studies and history. By means of convenient digital research tools, such as online reference systems, students can access retrospective data and digital copies of documents remotely. The digital transformation of the archival sector — driven by cross-cutting technologies including artificial intelligence — is a key factor in shifting from passive document storage to active management of the knowledge derived from historical records.