REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

472
Remembrance in Time
By the latter normative act, in accordance with the legislation of the member states of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the usage and the conditions are regulated that rule
the access to information that is state or official secret or foreign classified information.
General terms valid for the whole country are specified for preservation of classified
information as follows: for top secret documents – 30 years since their creation, for secret
ones – 15 years, for confidential ones – 5 years, and for official secret ones – 2 years. The
State Commission for Information Security (SCIS), which was established by this act,
could permit prolongation of these terms if the national interests require this, but not by
more than the initially defined terms. After the regulated term has expired and the
information is declassified by the agencies that have created the records or by their
successors, the records are to be transferred to the state archives. As a result of the
enforcing of this act a great number of records from the period 1944-1989, as well as
records from the Archive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs from the period 1923-1944,
are now easy of access by the citizens.
By the right of the Access and Disclosure of Documents and Announcing Affiliation
of Bulgarian Citizens to the State Security and the Intelligence Services of the
Bulgarian National Armed Services Act 3 , published on 18 th of December 2006, a
centralized records centre was established to preserve and give access to the records
of these agencies from the period 9 th of September 1944 to 16 th of July 1991.
According to the act and the Regulations of the Commission established in connection
with this act 4 everyone has the right of access to this category of records “for
research, publishing and investigation activity” in accordance with the Public
Information Access Act. The access rules are regulated in Chapter 4 of the Act and
Chapter 5 of the Regulations of the Commission.
The Public Information Access Act, the Classified Information Preservation Act and the
Personal Data Preservation Act, that have been passed in the beginning of 21 st century,
are direct result of the efforts of our state to join the European Union structures and the
resulting necessity to synchronize the Bulgarian legislation in accordance with the EU
one.
At the end of the 20 th century and the beginning of the 21 st century the access to archival
documents is one of the most discussed issues among the international archive
community. In 1997 the 32 nd International Conference of the Round Table on Archives
(CITRA) adopted Archive Access Recommendation. In its interpreting report it is pointed
out that the archives present a basic and indispensable part of the cultural heritage and
preserve the nations’ memories, and the tenacity of the mankind memory depends on the
archives to a great extent. It is stressed that this conclusion is gaining special importance
for Europe with a view to the increasing public interest to history and historical truth, the
administrative reforms taking place in the states that have taken their path to democracy
as well as because of the exceptional breadth of the changes in the field of record
creation, which is due to the expansion of the public power and the technological
development 5 . According to the Recommendation the general principles and conditions
for access to archival documents in each state should be included in its archives
concerning legislation and should be coordinated and harmonized with the acts
concerning related fields. They should guarantee free access to public records to each
citizen regardless of his or her nationality and profession, and in order to accomplish it
the catalogues should cover all the records, contained in the corresponding archive group
and mark the records with restricted access, as well.