REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTS AS A TOOL IN THE
HANDS OF THE COMMUNIST AUTHORITY
Anka IGNATOVA 1
Abstract: This report marks the beginning of two previously unexplored aspects of the
history of the archive activity in Bulgaria. One is the organization of work with the
documents of the created by the Communist government in 1951 dedicated archive
section "Card indexes and Archive" in the State Security of the Ministry of Interior. Other
issue is related to the servicing of the repressive state apparatus with documents from the
state archives, established in 1952 in the structure of the same power department. Due to
the wide range of the topic, the current research is limited to the period of the late 40's -
mid 50's of the twentieth century, which is characterized by active in connection with the
search, storage and use of archival documents necessary to expose and judicial
crackdown on opponents of the ruling Bulgarian Communist Party.
Documents have various public functions for ages. One of them is legislative. Еach
document can acquire that function, when used as evidence in court. In a totalitarian state,
documents, including the archival ones that are out of operational use, can become an
instrument of persecution and repression. The Topics of the present study are the actions
of the Communist authorities for searching, storing and using of archival records by State
Security (SS) and the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) in order to investigate and
eliminate their opponents during the late 40's - mid 50 years of the twentieth century.
After the Communists came to power as a result of the Revolution of September 9,
1944, a great attention is called to the аrchival documents regarding the activities of the
Communist Party. In 1946 an archive of the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist
Party was established. In 1949 it was granted the status of Central and later became a
network of regional party archives. Officially according to the Law for collecting of
materials from the resistance movement in 1949 1 and the Ordinance on its application 2
from the end of 1950, tracing and collecting documents for the revolutionary struggle of
the Bulgarian people for the period after the Liberation (March 3 1878) to September 9
1944 was assigned to the Museum of the revolutionary movement in Bulgaria. The
museum had to transmit the original documents to the Central Party Archive and prepare
transcripts for its own needs. Using the Soviet model, a lot of completely autonomous
party archives and secret services archives were created in Bulgaria and other countries of
the so-called Eastern Bloc. Concentration and organizing of certain categories of
documents under the direct control of State Security and the BCP for the use of power
was directly related to the peculiarities of the political life in the late 40's - early 50’s of
the last century. In the terms of the internationally imposed policy of the "cold war"
1 St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria.