REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

Anka IGNATOVA: Archival Documents as a Tool in the Hands of the Communist … 249
departments and the heads of regional state archives were ordered to take "serious
"measures. The letter described 26 groups of documents that persons performing
scientific and technical processing of archives had to search in order to find
compromising documents needed for the regime. It was stated that confidential
documents in support of the Party and MI can be found in all archival units. The letter
ordered the heads of all archives to "monitor and provide assistance in the regard to
avoid any document to remain undiscovered, no matter its location in the archive".
There was a requirement for all the information for this task to be registered in the
quarterly reports of the state archives. It was stated that according to these results
Archival Management "will determine the vigilance and the overall condition of the
local archives" 52 . In the report for the condition of the archival system of 1953 it was
highlighted that an important share of using archival documents was the "active
support of the Ministry of Interior with documentary materials for establishing and
proving hostile activities of individuals". According to the report, the archives were
"full of such documents" and the central and some regional state archives had
provided 185 archival units 53 . A report of the head of "Use" department concerning
State Archives in July the same year indicated that, all archives except SCRSA had
promoted an insufficient amount of documents that could be of use to the MI. The
check-up showed that the work of finding any documents in CSHA and CSA is
unsatisfactory despite these archives swimming in such files. 10,000 photographic
images labeled with a village or town, or with some special occasions noted on them
were represented as an example of strong compromising materials. The Regional
State Archives in Pleven, is also stated as an example of an archive with many
archive funds containing documents interesting for MI. Those funds were
Municipality, District Administration, Regional requisitioning commissions, etc. That
regional state archive provided only 50 archive units which are also stated as very
poor. The conclusions made after all check-ups were that more assistance and more
serious work were required to be done 54 . "Some success" of the state archives
regarding Ministry of Interior was reported in August that year. Compared with 58
archival units used in July by the MI, in August they doubled them giving 270 units
and copies to the Ministry of Interior 55 . A report by the Head of Archive Management
from August 13, 1953 showed that archive employees were poorly rated as
“neglecting, and omitting important documents" that were particularly valuable in the
operational work of the Interior 56 .
Several months later, with the official letter AU-673 of October 17, 1953, Archival
Management urged heads of the state archives in Kolarovgrad (now Shumen), Tarnovo,
Haskovo and Ruse, which didn’t provide any archive documents to the MI. They had to
"draw the attention of archives staff, particularly those engaged in scientific and technical
processing of archival materials and sharpen their vigilance for completing the task". In
addition, it is recommended "a direct connection with the MI to be maintained". These
state archives had to report the reasons for the low use of archival material held by the
Ministry of Interior and activities for improvement of that process 57 . In drawing up the
plans for the first quarter and annual plans in 1954 all state archives were required "to
plan events on disclosure of classified material" that were available in their archives
indicated by letter AU-272 on July 16, 1953 58 .
Archival institutions had to be supported by SS to cope with that hard and important
government task. For example in letter 390 of Archival management from May 15, 1954