The National Archives of Hungary (Budapest, 2006)

NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL ARCHIVES OF NATIONAL COLLECTION - Hungarian National Archives by Géza Érszegi and István G. Vass

Transport, (1935 - 1944) and the Ministry of Industry, (1935 - 1944). The written materials of the ministries of economy and their subordinated institutions provide ample opportunity to search its different branches such as cultivating fields, live-stock breeding, development and modernization of horticulture, forrest cultivation, possession-policy regulation of water-ways, railway building and developing mining and industry and so on. The documents of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, (1919 - L section), came into being between 21

st March and 1

st August 1919 when the government was taken over by the Unified Communist and Social Democratic Party. The material contains only two so-called People's Commissariat records (agricultural and financial ones). The rest of the documents of Commissariat /reality ministry I can be found in the competent ministries mentioned above. The documents of Hungarian Labourers' Party and Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (1948 -1989 - M section), contain all of important decisions that influenced state life and which was carried out by Hungarian Labourers' Party, 1948 -1956 and its successor the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (1956 -1989) and forming the one-party system in 1948 then ratifying the constitution in 1949. Hungarian legislation decreed the confiscation of the documents of both parties for state management in 1991. Act LXXXIII. of 1991, on the basis that these parties completed state duties directly The Hungarian National Archives maintain the materials of the central organizations of the two parties. Theoretically, the most important decision making bodies of the Hungarian Labourers' Party were the Congress and the Central Board convening every third month, but the most important cases were decided on the meetings of Political Committee up to 1953 and of the Secretariat. Records were written about the meetings of leading bodies that introduced the decision making policies of the party. They also draw attention to economic life, social politics, health care and cultural life. The documents of some secretaries of Central Board of the Hungarian Labourers' Party provide important information about the internal life of the party and about the history of the whole period. The construction and decision making mechanism of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party corresponded to those of the Hungarian Labourers' Party and to other East-European state parties. We can apprehend a general idea about the condition of power of the party, political, economic, social and cultural relationships of the country and its international connections from the records of head bodies of the party, congresses and conferences, the Central Committee, the Political Committee, the Organizing Committee and the Secretariat of the Central Committee. Vitally important unique details of information can be found in the documents of the departments of the Secretariat of the Central Committee party and mass organizations agitprop/canvassing centre, Economic policy, Agricultural and Industrial and so on.