The principle of archival representation of the basic party organizations (BPOs) of the Polish United Workers' Party – theoretical framework and practical implementation with particular reference to the Lublin province

Abstract

The principle of representation of the basic party organizations (BPOs, organizations of the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP) members working in specific enterprises or residing in a particular area) was a solution adopted in the early 1960s in the archives of the PUWP Provincial Committees, associated with the formation of the party's growing archival holdings. Its implementation was aimed at speeding up the processing of its files and introducing them into scholarly circulation, as well as preserving the files that were most valuable in terms of information and eliminating those of low value, which, moreover, being mass documentation, could quickly become a source of storage space problems in archives. The essence of it was to select such BPOs, which, because they were located in workplaces reflecting the peculiarities of the socio-economic conditions, etc. of a given area, recorded in their documentation information that was overly characteristic of that area. In the second half of the 1980s, there were more than 7,000 of them across the country. The principle of BPOs representation was introduced in the Lublin province, among others. For circa a decade its maintenance was quite smooth, but from the 2nd half of the 1970s the system began to manifest dysfunctions, i.e. the failure to update the list of representative BPOs in accordance with the changes taking place (e.g. the total number of BPOs in the province), delays and failure to fulfill the obligation to transfer files to the Archives of the Province Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party in Lublin. As a result, in the 1980s the Archives of the Province Committee stored the files of only 69 representative BPOs, instead of about 250 that should have been transferred there, of which only 146 were actually selected. The files of representative BPOs, initially a group of fonds in the Archive's holdings, were included in the fonds of borough, municipal, and city committees in 1987 as a result of a top-down decision. Through a lack of due diligence, the Archives eventually did not receive the files of many of these BPOs at all, especially from the second half of the 1980s.