From Archive to Archive. Comments on the Functional and Organizational Evolution of Archival Units in Voivodeship Committees of the PPR/PZPR

Abstract

The subject matter of the activities of the PPR and PZPR archives is certainly not a research tabula rasa, but many facts relating to it are quite poorly known. In particular, this applies to the organizational and functional evolution of the provincial segment in the archival division taking place between the fifth and seventh decade of the 20th century. This article aims to bring to light a lot of unknown or inaccurate information on this subject. This applies to e.g., to knowledge about the nature of the KW PPR archives – historical archives par excellence, collecting only documents recognized as valuable historical sources and intended to store them perpetually. A problem as significant as it is elusive in scientific circulation is the functioning of the voivodeship current records repositories of PZPR in the years 1949–1953, about which there is usually false information that they were created only in 1953, along with information about their different and lower grade than the archives of the KW PPR. the rank of current (transitional) archives, obliged to successively transfer the collected archives to the „central party archive” (Department, and later the Establishment of Party History of the Central Committee of PZPR). One of the most interesting, and at the same time completely unknown, facts about this matter is the failure to implement in 1956 the resolution of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the PZPR on the transformation of the current records repositories of the Voivodeship Committees of the Polish United Workers' Party into archives – contrary to the information disseminated on this subject, it did not take place until 1962. In this context, it should be clearly noted that in this case it was not only about a cosmetic change of names, but also about transforming them into administrative and historical archives, entitled to a professional elaboration of their resource, which was to be their resource stored perpetually, more widely than previously made available to historians, primarily party historians. This article, which presents many new facts, including, among others, the internal party context of delays in transforming the KW PZPR current records repositories into their archives, was primarily aimed at showing the process of the organizational and functional transformation of the „party archive service” lasting several years.