Buzási János: A Magyar Országos Levéltár fondjainak és állagainak jegyzéke I. kötet I-III. osztály (Budapest, 1996)

Bevezetés

INTRODUCTION Summary of records of the National Archives of Hungary has a past of several decades. Moreover it perhaps has a history if we consider to what extent it bears traces of historical events. The second world war, siege of Budapest, chaos and destruction were not graceful to the archives of the nation and to records kept in it, either. Winding up of consequences, exact taking into account of the holdings and the tasks took nearly ten years — partly owing to shocks of change of political system, partly due to personnel changes — and the results were already reflected in the inventories published in the first half of 1950s. Then came October 1956 with another siege of Budapest and with and even bigger destroy of the National Archives. Assessment of damages started again with determination of the stock and tasks. By this time, as a result of system creating work of Győző Ember tectonics of records preserved in the National Archives, macro structure of organic and artifical archives, fonds and subfonds had developed and are in principle still valid today. Győző Ember also created an adequate reference code system to the structure. The identification symbol system consisting of capital letters symbolizing the highest level of record groups (sections), and of figures marking fonds and sub-fonds was not received — to put it mildly — with unanimous recognition. Neverheless, this system prevailed in the first summary of fonds and sub-fonds of the National Archives published in 1959, and later it could become rooted with the always declining resistance. No wonder, since the system was not to be meant a general one. It was solely destined for receiving records of the National Archives, and it was perfect for this purpose not only at the time of publishing the summary of records but also before that when e. g. central governmental records created after 1945 could find their place in it — in the section M. There was a significant change in 1963 when the major part of records kept in the Central Economic Archives was taken over by the National Archives of Hungary. Some years before its termination, in 1959, the Central Economic Archives also published its own summary of records where identification symbos of fonds, grouped according to economic sectors, were simple serial numbers running through the whole material. This identification symbol is basically independent from the place of fonds within the system. Inserting into the system of fonds taken over by the National Archives of Hungary was made without any special problem. A new section was created fom these fonds, and was marked by the only unused capital letter Z. Within the section Z fonds and sub-fonds got into sectorial groups similar to the former ones, but in a different sequence, and they got, in addition to the section letter mark, a completely new serial number running through the whole section. An even more significant change was brought about by the Law No. 27 in 1969 as a result of which, the People's Democratic Department handling the section M became independent on June 1, 1970 under the name of New Hungarian Central Archives. Parallel with this, records created after 1945 of central agencies had took off reference codes of section M like outgrown dresses, and merged into the general management group system worked out at the beginning of 1960s. This process of merging, although it probably was not free from problems, finally was clearly successful, and the end result proves that the general management group system, which was not really tailored to the New Hungarian Central Archives (when creating it was not yet an idea) was much more comfortable than the section M. The New Hungarian Central Archives took over from the National Archives of Hungary the business records created after nationalizations in the period 1945—1949. The Hungarian archives history will probably remember the event of dividing business records as one of the most problematic activities. Mainly because in many cases division had neglected the principle of provenance; this work sometimes created barbaric cuttings, sometimes systematization queer fishes. Differences in level of competence is also problematic. In several cases the same business material can be found in two dif-