Archives of Voivodship Committee of Polish United Workers’ Party in Biała Podlaska

Abstract

Documentation generated by the communist party after World War II constituted the part of Polish archival heritage. However, Party’s archives were not supervised by national
archival network. At the beginning they were storehouses of acts, and since 1955 they had been taken over by propaganda sections of voivodship committees of PZPR (Polish United Workers’ Party) and later transformed into the archives of voivodship committees of the Party. The task to preserve documentation generated by the structures of the communist party in Poland was subsequently supervised by: Party History
Institute at KC PZPR (Central Committee of Polish United Workers’ Party), Archives of KC PZPR, and since 1971 Central Archives of KC PZPR. Together with the archives of voivodship committees the net with its own regulations, staff and archival methodology was created. This article gives a detailed description of the activity of the organizational unit,
that is the archives of the voivodship committee of the communist party. One of the smallest committees existing in Poland, a provincial Voivodship Committee of PZPR in Biała Podlaska, which operated from 1975 to 1990, serves as an example. The article discusses the reporting structure, handing-over, analysis and preservation of acts, means of recording, premises, system of training and control as well as characterizes the role of a supervisor of the Party’s voidovdship committee Archives played in the archives and chancery.