ARHIVSKI VJESNIK 42. (ZAGREB, 1999.)

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M. Kchrig, The position of military archives in the frame of archival service Independence or integration?, Arh. vjesn., god. 42 (1999), str. 113-128 the competence of the civil archival administration and are largely open to research, whereas access to the Gatchina and Podolsk archives is often considerably restricted. It is not surprising, in view of the wellknown patriotism of the Russian military, that Russian military archivists should see themselves as the guardians of the military heritage of the Soviet Union and Russia from June 1941 to the present. However, with regard to this patriotism they believe that they can avert threats to their fatherland through controls and restrictions on access to the records in their care. In the countries of the former Warsaw Pact it is a regulation that the written military heritage from the start of national independence to the present is organised in military archives which are subsumed under the Ministry of Defence; I refer primarily to Poland, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and the Federal Republic. According to the archive laws of these countries, the military and the diplomatic archives are designated as Special Archives under the administration of the respective ministries, but at the same time are subject to the state archival legislation and therefore to the professional direction of the civil state archival administration. In Poland, Hungary and Rumania the military archives see themselves as guardians of the national memory of these states, which largely derive their legitimation from from the struggles for independence against Czarist Russia, Imperial Austria and the Imperial Ottoman Empire. Particularly in Hungary and Rumania I believe to have observed a closer cooperation between the heads of the military archives and those of the state archival administration. In Hungary this cooperation is very visible in the fact that the military and civil archive administrations practically live nextdoor to each other. The heads of the military and civil archive administrations meet at irregular intervals for talks which concern current work and problems and the opportunities for mutual support. In Hungary, for example, conservation work for the military archives is carried out to a significant degree by the workshops of the State Archives in Budapest. We can see from these examples that there are many countries in which the military archives are organised separately from the state archives and are affiliated to the Ministry of Defence, but all of these military archives nonetheless see themselves as integral parts of the national memory. I would now like to turn to those military archival organisations which are in all respects a part of the civil state archival administration. Let me begin with the Swedish and German examples. The Royal Swedish War Archives were set up in 1805 by the amalgamation of the royal map collection and the records of the Fortifications Corps. However, there are predecessors of the military archives already in 1634, at a time when Sweden's military power was at its height in the wake of the 30 Years' War. In 1873 the Swedish General Staff unified the Section for Military History and the Royal Military Ar120