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General Context – the Organization and Functioning of the Romanian Public Archive System

Roxana Cheschebec

Institutionally, the creation of the public archive system in Romania corresponded to a long process of centralization and modernization of the existing institutional or personal collections containing official and unofficial documents. The starting point of the establishment of nowadays’ centralized system of Romanian archives can be traced back to the organization of the first archives of Romanian Principalities that have been established due to the implementation of one of the first modern administrative laws prescribed by the Organic Regulations (1831 in the principality of Muntenia and 1832 in the principality Moldavia). Previously, archives have been held by the existent state and religious institutions (especially monasteries) as well as by the diverse functionaries (boyars) that held positions in the governing system.

Between 1831/1832 and 1862, the archives as specialized institutions functioned with clear regulations or methodologies concerning the archival work per se (the selection or the evaluation of documents). In 1862, in the context of the creation of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Muntenia, the Moldavian archives became subordinated to those of Muntenia and a new archival methodology is implemented in the sense of making the distinction between documents of historical and of practical importance. In the same year the institution of archives became subordinated to the Ministry of Justice, Religious Cults and Education and within the institution was created a specialized library with publications meant to help the archivists in their work. With time, this library became an important source of official and administrative documents, rare manuscripts and books (many times donated by institutions or private persons) for the archives themselves. More libraries of this type have been established within the regional/district units of the centralized system of national archives and nowadays each archival unit possesses a library. In 1864, due to the secularization of religious institutions’ properties, an important number of these institutions’ archives and documents were transferred to the property of the state and moved to the state archives.

Before 1918, when the provinces of Transylvania, Bukovina and Banat became incorporated into the new Romanian state, the archives of these provinces functioned within the centralized state archive system of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, many of the old collections of these provinces being kept either in Budapest or Vienna. After 1918, national archives subordinated to the central body located in the capital city of Bucharest are established in the new provinces of the Romanian state in Cluj (Transylvania, 1920), Cernauti (Bukovina, 1924) and Chisinau (Bessarabia, 1925). In 1925, “The Law for the Organization of State Archives” regulates the principal categories of documents that diverse state, religious or military institutions had the obligation to transfer to the Archives, documents that had to be transferred 30 years after their creation. Some of these regulations have been kept by the laws that organized the functioning of the archives in the communist and post-communist period. Under the communist regime, two laws for the organization of archives have been issued in 1957 and 1971 and starting with 1951 the archive system is organized following the Soviet model. According to the laws issued during the communist regime, socialist party and state central organizations had to transfer their documents 30 years after their creation, the other organizations and institutions 20 years after their creation, the photographs 15 years after their creation, and civil documents 100 years after their creation. The access to these documents was highly conditioned: theoretically, any Romanian citizen, who was member of the party system or of the institutions that created those documents, could consult documents 30 years after their creation, if their request was approved, foreign researchers or citizens needed a special approval to consult documents in the archives.

After the fall of the communist regime, the public archives functioned for a long time under the same legislative regime and only in 1996 a new law regulating the organization of the public archive system was issued and renamed the institution from “State Archives” to “National Archives”. According to this law, all state or private institutions, with the exception of those involved with state security issues (such as the Defense Ministry, Foreign Affairs Ministry, or the Romanian Information Service) or the Romanian Academy, have the obligation to transfer their documents to the National Archives 20 to 100 years from their creation. Also, compared to the previous period, the access to these archives was relatively liberalized in the sense that both Romanian and foreign researchers could get access to archive documents 30 years after their creation with the exception of those corresponding to the category of “documents that affect national security or citizens’ rights and liberties”. Thus, for example, personal archives can be researched only 75 years after their creation or 40 years after the death of their creator. A new archive law that will incorporate stipulations relative to the modernization of the archive system and its concordance with other European archive laws is expected to be issued at the end of 2007.

Currently, there are 41 district units plus the central units in Bucharest. Out of the 43 units of the public archive system, only two of them have a web page – those located in Bucharest and Cluj. The web-page of Central Archives in Bucharest (http://www.arhivelenationale.ro/) offers a list with the names of the archive collections that can be consulted by researchers, yet there is no description of these collections (apart from the localization in time of the documents and the name of the collection). The web-page of the district unit of the National Archives located in Cluj (http://www.clujnapoca.ro/arhivelenationale/) has a catalogue of its collections grouped according to the type of the institutions that issued them. Yet again the description of these collections is not detailed enough (it mentions only the name of the institution/person family whose collection is kept and the localization in time of documents).

Nevertheless, most central and district units of National Archives are interested in and try to gather funds for designing electronic catalogues for their collection. Following my discussions with Romanian archivists, this means the translation of the existent catalogues into an electronic form while keeping the existent cataloguing features – collections are preserved and catalogued according to their creator, each collection catalogue containing a description of the institution/person/family that created and donated the documents, a description of the main problematic dealt with by the documents and of the time span covered. Transferring this information into an electronic format necessitates important financial and personnel efforts due to the huge amount of information contained by these catalogues, yet it will certainly help researchers to easier identify the collections and documents they need. At the moment, the only way to identify the needed collections or documents is talking directly to archivists or researchers working on a connected subject and reading each catalogue description of all collections that might contain relevant information.

1. Separate archive institutions for documents of women and minority groups: how they were organized? It will be interesting to know stories of such collections. How are such documents ordered and separate in the national, regional and municipality archives, in private archive and collections? For example: personal archive of women, archives of women, charity, minority societies etc.

In Romania there are almost no specialized archive institutions for documents of women and minority groups. An exception in this sense are the collections held by the Romanian Jewish Community that also has an important online archive of historical information on the Jewish communities from Romania, on Anti-Semitism, mini-monographies of Jewish personalities, and a database of the documents held by the Arhiva Centrului pentru Istorie a Evreilor din Romania (The Archive of the Center for the History of Jews from Romania”), (http://www.romanianjewish.org/ro/mosteniri_ale_culturii_iudaice_02.html). The online archive has been organized as part of a project initiated in 2002 by B'nai B'rith International in collaboration with the Federation of the Jewish Communities from Romania and funded by USAID.

Another important online source of information on the history of ethnic and religious minorities in Romania is offered by the digital library designed by the Foundation Aspera (from Boston and Brasov) in 2000. This digital library (www.memoria.ro) deals mainly with the oral history sources and contains, among others, a selection of interviews with members of various ethnic communities from Banat (an old multicultural region of Romania).

The researchers interested in the history of women or minority groups usually use the collections held by the central and district units of the National Archives following the research methods exposed above. An important indicator of where one can found such documents are the collections of documents and articles describing collections of documents published by diverse researchers or the archives themselves. The majority of these collections of documents deal with the larger minority groups in Romania (Hungarian and German) but also with others such as the Gypsy minority. An important example in this sense is are the three volumes of documents dealing with the Hungarian (1945-1955), Jewish (1945-1965) and Gypsy (1919-1944) communities in Romania edited under the coordination of Lucian Nastasa and the three volumes of documents dealing with the ethnic minorities in Romania between 1918 and 1938 edited by Ioan Scurtu. Usually the documents on ethnic and religious minority groups are to be found in the diverse collections of documents coming from local and regional authority bodies (city halls, police, prefectures, gendarmerie, etc), churches and other religious institutions and organizations, and the diverse civil society organizations the members of these minorities formed in time. For example, in the case of a smaller ethnic and religious minority in Romania, such as the Muslim minority, documents about this minority group for the period between 1878 and 1945 can be found in the central archives in Bucharest – usually in the collections of diverse institutions (such as the Interior Affairs Ministry, the Chamber of Commerce, the Police, the Royal House). More documents can be found in local archives (e.g. Constanta district branch of the National Archives in the collections of Constanta city hall, of the Techirghiol city hall, of the district judiciary court of Constanta or in the Tulcea district branch of the National Archives in the document collection of the prefecture of the Tulcea district). If one researchers the history of these minority groups during the communist regime, important information can be found in the collections of documents of the secret services, of the central and local committees of the Communist Party, judiciary courts and police.

My own research on the history of women and women’s movement in Romania proved that most archival documents dealing with this topic can be found in the personal archive collections of women leaders of organizations, women writers or women publicists than in the collections of various women organizations or dealing with women related issues.

2. The kind of research access to documentation about women and minorities in archives: are there special archive thematic guides or other issues making easier the access to the documentation?
Unfortunately, at this moment there are no thematic guides that will help researchers with the identification of documentation on these historical themes.

3. “Privileged” women and minority documentations : documents of which groups of women (Artists, feminists, writers, teachers etc.) and of which minorities are better preserved and presented?

Due to the high demand for historical information documenting the communist period and regime, the most “privileged” treatment in terms of access but also of restoration work is given to the document collections received from the communist state institutions. Consequently, the women and minority documentation for this period is relatively easier to access by researchers. For the previous periods, it can happen that due to the state of documents, some parts of archival collections cannot be accessed.

Bibliography
Adina Berciu-Draghicescu, “Biblioteca Directiei Arhivelor Nationale Istorice Culturale” in Elena Tarziman, S. M. Antonescu, Cristina Popescu (eds), Studii de bibliogie si stiinta informarii (web version: http://ebooks.unibuc.ro/StiinteCOM/bibliologie/13.htm)
Adina Berciu-Draghicescu, Maria Petre, “Organizarea si prelucrarea arhivei contemporane”, web version: http://ebooks.unibuc.ro/StiinteADM/secretariat/10.htm
Constantina Stoianovici, “Selectionarea fondurilor arhivistice” in Document, nr. 2-3/ 2005: 68-70
Minoritatile Nationale din Romania 1931-1938. Documente, (3 vol.) Coordonator Ioan Scurtu, Bucuresti, Arhivele Nationale ale Romaniei, 1999
Minoritati etnoculturale. Marturii documentare (3 vol), coordonator Lucian Nastasa, Centrul de Resurse pentru diversitate etnoculturala, Cluj, 2001-2003