The article is devoted to the activities of Ivan Grigorievich Kotenev, a native of the Belgorod region, who was the manager of the Central Archival Administration of the Karakalpak ASSR in the second half of the 30s of the twentieth century. As fate would have, Ivan Grigorievich was forced to move from his native places, first to Kazakhstan, then to Uzbekistan, and ended up in Karakalpakstan. In the autumn of 1937, he was sent to the Central Archive Administration of the Uzbek SSR to the city of Turtkul, as a manager, with the aim of improving archival business in the republic. During this period, the Central Archive Administration KKASSR was going through difficult times, since the insufficient attention of the governing bodies and the allocation of the necessary funds by them, the lack of the necessary archival and technical work due to the small number of employees, the disastrous condition of archival material, both in the Central Archive and in the local places did not make it possible to establish archiving to the proper level. The article deals with the contribution of I. G. Kotenev to the development of archives in Karakalpakstan. In particular he as the manager of the Central Archival Administration of the KKASSR, helped to raise the archives to the proper level, was able to achieve an increase in staff, independence in matters of financing, did a lot of work on organizing and streamlining the archives of local institutions and enterprises. This work opens new pages in the history of studying the development of archives in Karakalpakstan.