REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

WIDENING THE PUBLIC ACCESS TO
ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTS IN BULGARIA IN
THE TIME OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION
Anka IGNATOVA 1
Abstract: The subject of this article is related to ensuring the right of public access to archival
documents in Bulgaria over the last two decades. The changes in legal regulations that led to the
declassification of the massive amounts of archived documents are presented in the context of the
recommendations of the European Union in this regard. Special attention is given to the
completion and improvement of the scientific apparatus of the archives, which involves real access
to documents.
The achieved level of public access to archival documents is one of the criteria of a
democratic society. That’s why this became an issue of great significance for the states in
the so-called Eastern Bloc after the fall from power of their communist regimes and when
these states took their path to democracy and European integration. The subject of this
article are the changes in the legal regulations and practice regarding the widening of the
access to archival documents in Bulgaria in the period from the beginning of the 90’s of
the 20 th century up to the present day.
The elimination of the Bulgarian Communist Party from the helm of the state after 10 th
of November 1989 inevitably affected the status and the activity of the party archives.
Until then they had functioned as a fully autonomous body and the access to archival
documents had been extremely restricted and strongly controlled. On 8 th of July 1993
under the growing social and political pressure the Supreme Council of the Bulgarian
Socialist Party came to an agreement with the Central Administration of Archives
(nowadays State Agency “Archives”), on the basis of which the archival documents from
the Central Party Archive (established in 1946) were placed for further preservation into
the Central State Archive, and those of the former regional party archives – into the
corresponding territorial state archives. These archival documents can be accesses on an
equal footing under the established usage of the system of state archives.
The access to the records centres of the Central Military Archive (renamed to State
Military Historical Archive in 2007), the Archive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and
the Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is also gradually widening, which is a
result of the started process of declassification of records concerning the repressive
regime of the totalitarian state or records, whose terms of information preservation have
expired. In 1997 an act was enforced that regulated the access to the records of the former
State Security and the former Intelligence Bureau of the General Staff 1 , which act was
repealed in 2002, when the Classified Information Preservation Act was enforced 2 .
1 St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria.