An Institutional Effort: Memories from the Recent Past or ‘How the Bulgarian Committee for State Security Archive was Preserved’

The article provides an analysis of a turning point from the most recent history of Bulgarian state institutions: the organized transfer of the archive of the Committee for State Security from the storage facilities of the Ministry of Interior to the new storage facility of the independent dossier Committee. This happened over the course of the 2010-2011 period. A special organization was established for this purpose, which includes senior and executive level officials. The complete organization and control efforts were assigned by the Ministry of Interior to the deputy minister Veselin Vuchkov, who is the author of this text. The text presents the primary reasons for this complex institutional effort, its social meaning, the practical difficulties involved therein, and the consequences over the short and long term. In parallel to this process, the historical police archive (for the period 1923 – 1944), which was created outside of the scope of the Committee for State Security, was also handed over in an organized manner; it was directed to the Archives State Agency with the Council of Ministers. The handover of these two archives from the Ministry of Interior to the respective departments ensures their use for research purposes, their reasonable preservation, and gradual digitalization.