REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

248
Remembrance in Time
Confidential letter 306 of 21 April 1954 the Head of "State Archives" of MI 43
contained additional guidance for the work of SCRSA, CSA and CSHA. It was send
with reference to some questions raised by CSA and a meeting held in this regard.
Statements of DS had to be prepared by the secret sections. For particular information
on some raw materials the sections had to make notes on where the document is
placed during processing in order that documents could be found easily if needed.
The information was transmitted to the office. Then boxes of documents were
transmitted to the reference sections for storage. The original documents that were
provided for use by the Ministry of Interior, courts and prosecutors were subjects of
the reporting and reference section. In order to monitor the return of materials the
reference sections filled a combined log, which was a guide for both sections, and the
accountability and control is performed with introduced instruments 44 .
Some idea of the volume and type of documents of the state archives provided to
SS, was given by records stored in Archival fund records, memos and letters of the
head of the government in this regard, inventories and references attached to some of
these records and reports and the annual report the work of the secret section from
July 9, 1952 to December 31, 1952. The annual report stated that for nearly half a
year since its establishment the section provides for the use of the SS and the Party 8
folders with confidential documents and five separate confidential documents 45 . On
August 5, 1952 two folders containing 5875 sheets of paper were found in the state
economic enterprise "Waste" – Sofia were sent to the archive along with a report of
the Deputy Minister of Interior Maj. Gen. George Kumbiliev 46 . Employees of archival
management found in the same place documents submitted to the Minister of the
Interior by a report of Sept. 11, 1952, prepared on behalf of Deputy Minister Maj.
Gen. A. Tsanev and the Chief of the archive management 47 . These documents
consisted of a folder of 286 pages, mainly letters from 1920-1923 and 1931-1934 The
letters are a result of the activity of Police department, Ministry of Justice, Lovech
District Court, Lovech District Administration, Lovech District Prison, Bulgarian
Communist Youth Union, Labor Party, Bulgarian National Bank, Sofia Bishopric,
etc.. 48 . Among those sent in early 1953 by CSHA documents found in the collections
of the Supreme Chamber of Commerce and Monarchical Institute were some personal
dossiers of employees, congratulatory telegram to the tzar in 1933 by an interned
communist and some transcripts of interrogation conducted in the Department of
police in 1929 49 . Some saved reports indicated that the documents should be returned
after completion of work on them, because they were part of the National Archives.
In some cases, not originals but their copies were sent to SS. Such is the case when
SS required copies of a reference stored in the “Direction railways and harbors”
Archive about 36 affidavits of employees on their membership in organizations
banned by the Law for Protection of the State and a report of a civilian about
revealing another as a communist 50 .
On two meetings of the management staff of the archive from May and June 1953 it
was reported that a delay in the activity of the archives in relation with the search of
secret documents for MI 51 . According to a confidential letter UA 272 from June 16,
1953 by the head of the Archive Management and Head of the "Usage" department,
the work of organizing the state archives and the use of confidential documents in
support of the Party and MI till that moment was unsatisfactory. In May it was
pointed out that nine of the twelve county public archives existing at that time had
"no archive units used for this purpose". The chief of the secret archives of the central