The last decade of Éva Schmidt’s life was spent in Russia, in Belojarskij, a small town on the Lower Kazym, where she led the Northern Khanty Folklore Archive she had founded. The idea of the archive had been born in the mid-1980s when, together with ethnographer Nadežda Lukina from Tomsk, she drew up the plan (in Hungarian: dokumentum/01_eloterjesztes_Lukina_1984_hu, in Russian: dokumentum/02_eloterjesztes_Lukina_1984_ru) of an ethnic education and documentation center. The plan was realised much later, in the early 1990s, as a result of beneficial political changes and Éva Schmidt’s persistent work. In 1991, a letter (dokumentum/03_meghivolevel_1991_ru_hu) was sent by A. Filipenko, the governor of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District to Attila Paládi-Kovács, the director of the Ethnographic Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, in which he offered a three-year contract for Éva Schmidt. The director was pleased to receive the offer, and gave his consent (dokumentum/04_meghivora_valasz_1991_hu_ru) to Éva Schmidt’s employment abroad.

The Hungarian Ministry of Culture and Public Education provided technical (dokumentum/05_ajandekozas_1991_hu) assistance to launching the institution. The scientific basis of the archive comprised Éva Schmidt’s own research material (dokumentum/06_kiviteli engedély_1991_hu) and a collection of 114 books (dokumentum/07_konyvlista_1991_hu), most of which came from Éva Schmidt’s own library, while a smaller part was donated. During its operation, the institution continuously received funding from Hungarian government organizations, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and Hungarian and Russian private businesses. The donations were collected and transferred by Éva Schmidt personally, and she kept close accounts (dokumentum/08_elszamolas_1997_hu) of them.

Éva Schmidt regularly reported on the operation of the institution in communications sent yearly to her employer, the Institute of Ethnology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. These reports were collected and published in 2005, in Volume 1 (publications/161.pdf) of the Éva Schmidt Library. The reports cover the political and economic situation in Russia at the time, which also affected the operation of the archive. The institution was struggling with constant administrative difficulties and financial troubles, and was often at risk of closure. In the meantime, naturally, the training of staff, collecting and processing, as well as dissemination was ongoing. In the volume titled Reports from Siberia, we have compiled the parts (jelentesek_reszletek) that relate directly to the operation of the archive. The 2000 and 2001 reports have no separate chapter relating to the archive. The most important event of the year 2001 was the international conference organised by the folklore archive („Khanty Writing and Orthography”, March 26 – April 1, 2001), in which all of the institutions dealing with the Khanty language and culture in the Tjumen’ area participated. This was where Éva Schmidt gave her epochal talk on Khanty literacy and orthography (In Hungarian: publications/190.pdf in Russian: publications/69.pdf).

In order to disseminate information about the activities of the archive, Éva Schmidt published a brochure in Russian (publications/22.pdf) and in Hungarian (archivum/manuscript?id=505) in 1997, which was subsequently also published in print in English (publications/220.pdf). In the same year, she also made a 19-minute video recording (video!!), in which the staff members introduce themselves in Khanty language, and we can get a glimpse of the work going on in the institution.

In July 2022, when Éva Schmidt’s legacy was opened in Budapest, the current director of the folklore archive, Rimma Mikhajlovna Potpot reported on the situation of the institution at the time in a letter (in Hungarian: Potpot_info_hu in Russian: Potpot_info_ru). From this letter we learn that the institution operates as a branch of the Folklore Center at the Ob-Ugric Applied Research and Processing Institution in Khanty-Mansijsk, and has borne the name of Éva Schmidt since 2013. The legacy was transferred to Khanty-Mansijsk in 2006. After the original staff members retired, work has continued with a changed team – according to our latest information, in Kazym village. On the house in which the archive used to operate in Belojarskij from 2000, a marble plaque (emlektabla_SchE) commemorates Éva Schmidt today.