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

Bevezetés

ferent level archives: before nationalization records are in central archives (National Archives of Hungary), those after nationalization can be found in regional (county, capital city) archives. This means that after separation the New Hungarian Central Archives took over from the National Archives of Hungary only distinguished categoy business records. By the independence of the People's Democratic Department the National Archives of Hungary has in principle lost its open, growing owing to competence character and turned into a closed, historic archives. In reality, however, there were greater volume — not only internal — movements ni the National Archives' records after 1970, too: transfer of still outside, before nationalization records, giving over records to branch archives, etc. Nevertheless, when the summary of records was published in 1974, it was not an unjustified hope that publishing the records according to the December 31, 1973 state would render unnecessary another publication within reasonable time, at least not for changes of holdings. The situation was absolutely different with the New Hungarian Central Archives with its dynamically changing holdings. The institution, after organizing itself, starting and making its activity a dailis routine, developing archives tectonics had got to the point by the end of the '70s that it could appear before the general public by publishing its summary of records. This summary of records published in 1981 and reflecting the January 1, 1979 situation was prepared with the clear intention and calculation that future changes will make necessary newer and newer publications. During nine years volume of records kept in the archives had increased by nearly 10 000 metres, but there were other changes, too as a result of destructions and arrangements. All these changes are reflected in the new 1988 publication of summary of records according to the December 31, 1987 situation. This edition had got quickly out of print partly owing to the keen interest, partly due to a low copy number. Thus, besides the 2000 metres new acquisition this was the main reason for the new publication which came out in 1990 and reflected the state on December 31, 1989. Starting of the process called change of economic and political system is connected to the year 1989, the expectable result of which will be a fundamental change of the whole economical, social and political system based on private ownership and market economy It was clear form the beginning that this process of changes will not be without any impact on the whole archives administration. First step in the transformaion of legal matters and practices of archives was made by the law No. LXXXIII in 1991. This law, however had only arranged the two most urgent questions. First of all, this law stipulated that the National Archives of Hungary is competent in matters of records of central government agencies — irrespective of their date of creation. It has turned out absolutely clearly from the wording of the law that the National Archives of Hungary and the New Hungarian Central Archives should again be unified, namely by July 1, 1992 determined in the law. According to the other regulation of the law the Hungarian Workers Party and its successor the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party at their time of ruling had governmental and public authority functions, thus their records — with certain determined exemptions — are qualified state archives, thus they belong to the competency of the Ministry of Culture and Public Education. In the course of the implementation of law, but still before unification, the records of central, Budapest and Pest county agencies of the Hugarian Workers Party and of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party got into the custody of the National Archives of Hungary. Implementation of the law at the same time meant that three different archival material, registered and handled in different systems before, „got under the same roof creating by this the impression as if different qualities should be added: the National Archives of Hungary has brought the section/reference number system, the New Hungarian Central Archives the management group system, while the HWP and HSWP records were kept in central systems developed for the different level party archives. Theoretical and methodological discussions and experiments on the unification of the three systems could not bring reassuring result in short term. During the debates it was strongly accentuated that record units of the individual systems (fonds, sub-fonds) and their symbol marks are well rooted in the