History of Penang 1957, George Town, the capital of Penang, was granted city status by Queen Elizabeth II in 1957, becoming the first city within the Federation of Malaya, and by extension, Malaysia. George Town continued to be the only city within Malaysia (other than Singapore between 1963 and its Separation in 1965) until 1972, when Kuala Lumpur was also conferred city status. Penang, as part of the Federation of Malaya, gained independence from the British Empire on 31 August 1957, and subsequently became a member state of Malaysia in 1963. Penang's political landscape immediately after the independence of Malaya became relatively fractured.
State Archive of the Russian Federation State Archive of the Russian Federation The State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) () is a large Russian state archive managed by Rosarkhiv (The Federal Archival Agency of Russia), which preserves some official (mostly concerning activity of police) and personal (including archives of some Romanovs imperial family members from early 19th century to 1918) documents on history of the Russian Empire, official documents of the supreme national legislative and executive institutions of the Russian Provisional Government (1917), Soviet Russia as independent state (1917-1922) and as territorial entity of the USSR (1923-1991), Soviet Union (1922-1991), Russian Federation (since 1992) as