The National Archives of Hungary (Budapest, 2006)

MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES - County Archives (Regional, general public archives) by Csaba Káli

are appreciated very much. We can also find here the records of different chambers (like commercial, industrial, agricultural, engineering, medical and so on), craftsmen's association, vine-growing communities, grazing companies, water management companies, forest-owners and the documents of welfare public boards of the state. We can find mostly standing orders, founding records among these documents. Hardly any documents of political parties and unions from before World War II survived. But the documents of Hungarian Labourer's Party existing between 1948 and 1956 (Hungarian abbreviation MDP) and Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party between 1956 and 1989 (Hungarian abbreviation MSZMP) are very valuable. The documents of the Socialist Party were nationalized in 1992 and the material of its county and lower organizations were delivered into county archives. The documents of other organizations connecting to the state party, like youth, financial and other organizations (e.g. Workers' militia) got there as replacement. Sometimes we can find a great quantity of sources among the documents of companies that already worked before the year of 1945. But after this year in all of the archives and especially from 1960 to the year of the political changes we have plenty of documents. As we have already mentioned it, archives are obliged to take over the documents of the companies that are owned by the state permanently But some documents of the companies that went bankrupt had to be kept for a certain period of time by themselves. Usually the ecclesiastical documents are kept by the church archives. But a lot of documents of the former exemplified places from the orders suppressed in 1950 got into county archives. The material of family archives got into county archives with the help of preserving documents in connection with wars, with the help of deposit, donation or purchase. (The documents of bigger landowners are kept by Hungarian National Archives) Archives could get the files of certain people in the same way. All archives preserve so-called collection fonds. We can find here the already mentioned documents, charters from before Mohács and also the sometimes very valuable hand-written stock and maps. Nearly every archives have photo, poster and media collection. The collection of documents of people's power and committees with special tasks are not so big but very important. These documents mostly came into being in 1945 and in the next years due to the activity of national committees with full power at the beginning, committees examining and certifying behaviour during the war, committees preparing and observing redistribution of land and documents of different people's and works committees The documents of Patriotic Popular Front because of its abolishment in 1990 and of other 'underground' organizations connecting to the state party of socialism also got there.