Scientific Archive at the Institute for Historical Research at the BAS

The Presidium of BAS approved of the establishment of Sources of Bulgarian History Department on 29 August 1969. The following tasks were formulated in the decision: “to search for, process and prepare for publishing the sources of the history of the Bulgarian people, to investigate theoretical problems of historical archeography”; new staff positions were opened at the department. Fourteen committees were established at the department with a view to carry out the stipulated tasks. These fourteen committees were defined as follows:

1.      Domestic Slavic sources until the end of the 17th century

2.      Domestic sources of the national-liberation movement

3.      Domestic sources of Bulgarian foreign policy (1878-1944)

4.      Domestic sources of the history of Bulgaria in 1879-1944

5.      Domestic sources of the period following 9 September, 1944

6.      Soviet sources

7.      Yugoslavian, Czech and Polish sources

8.      Greek sources

9.      Latin and Dubrovnik sources

10.  Turkish sources

11.  Travel Writings and geographical descriptions of Bulgarian lands in 15th-19th centuries

12.  French, Italian and Romanian sources

13.  English sources

14.  German, Austrian and Hungarian sources

A photolaboratory was established at the department in 1969. It was equipped with modern technology, but was transferred to the Centre for Scientific Information at BAI due to financial problems, from where it catered for the needs of the Sources department. Another change came by with the restructuring of BAS when, besides the establishment of integrated centers for science and training of specialists, the planning-and-budgeting approach of management was introduced. The formation of a Troubleshooting Task Force for Sources was approved by a decision of the Presidium of BAS from 25 July 1973. It was chaired by Senior Scientific Fellow Vl. Topalov but shortly after the chairmanship was taken over by Senior Scientific Fellow Str. Gichev in 1973 until 1987, and then – by Senior Scientific Fellow A. Raykova until 1992.

A beneficial period for the search and collection of sources of Bulgarian history in foreign archives began at the end of the 1960s. The governing body of the Institute appointed the members and the tasks of the scientific teams who had been sent to the archive centers of the countries with which the Bulgarian state and people had had continuous political, economic and cultural relations. The stock of sources started to grow rapidly, mainly in the form of microfilms of documents stored in the archives of Great Britain, Austria, Germany (GDR and FRG), the USSR, France, the USA, Hungary, Romania, etc.

As a result of the active collection of materials until the mid-1970s, the Sources troubleshooting task force received over 1 000 000 frames of archive documents. This necessitated the immediate processing of the enormous amount of source material in different languages which had to make it available for scientific work. In fact, as early as the establishment of the department, the principles, methods and rules according to which the archive would be processed, began to be specified. The team of specialists under the methodological and normative control of Str. Gichev set out to annotate the documents. Owing to the high historical and linguistic competence of Y. Kotsev, A. Rimpova, A. Soykova. Y. Kaludova, N. Popova and others, more than 700 000 pages had been annotated by 1989 (this process almost came to a halt after the dismissals in 1990-1991).

Parallel to the annotation, a card index was being compiled according to regional and chronological principle, which was a good form of archive-informational service when no computer facilities were available. A reading room was added to the archive repository, equipped with the necessary technical facilities. For the needs of printing the multi-volume history of Bulgaria, a collection of a significant number of slides with images for illustration was compiled.

 

The wealth of documents is distributed in 23 collections according to the countries where the original documents are stored. This is mainly the correspondence with the ministries of foreign affairs of the countries, which predominantly cover the periods of new and contemporary history:

1. Memoirs – 1362 sheets of memoirs and other documents of Bulgarian statesmen and social figures;

2. The Netherlands – 10 000 frames of the General Royal Archive in the Hague;

3. Austria – over 96 000 frames mainly from the Royal and State Archive in Vienna;

5. England – over 250 000 frames mainly from the Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in London;

4. German Democratic Republic – over 57 000 frames from the German Central Archive;

6. Federal Republic of Germany – over 530 000 mainly from the Political Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bonn;

7. Poland – over 20 000 frames from archives in Warsaw, Krakow and Wroclaw;

8. Romania – over 37 000 frames from the State Archive in Bucharest;

9. USSR – over 22 000 frames archives in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev;

10. Turkey – over 500 frames;

11. Hungary – over 89 000 frames from the Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Budapest;

12. France – over 30 000 frames from the Diplomatic Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris;

13. The Czech Republic – over 10 000 frames mainly from the Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Prague;

14. Yugoslavia – over 11 000 frames mainly from the archives in Dubrovnik and Zagreb;

15. Bulgaria – 15 microfilms with separate copies of documents and books from the Revival;

16. Not completed;

17. Italy – over 6000 frames from the Historical Archive in Rome;

18. Greece – 1500 frames;

19. USA – over 126 000 frames mainly from the National Archive in Washington;

20. USA – over 122 000 frames from the Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Germany;

21, 22 and 23 – Not completed.

The activity of collecting and annotating the documents was ceased due to objective reasons.

          Opening Hours: 9 a. m. - 5 p. m.