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100th Anniversary of the Signing of the State Archives Decree

On 7 February 1919, Józef Piłsudski, Chief of
State, signed the Decree on the Organisation of
State Archives and the Custody of Archival
Documents. The document served as a legal basis
for the establishment and functioning of archives
in the reborn Republic of Poland. It replaced
the Regency Council Rescript on the archives,
issued on 31 July 1918.
The Decree contains ten chapters on
the organisation and tasks of creating the state
archives network created from scratch.
The archives were created at a very difficult time
for the young state, without proper technical
infrastructure and support necessary for
the archives to operate smoothly. The centralised
model of management adopted at that time was
the only guarantee of the development of
the archives network and the tasks fulfilled by
the archives.
Through their superior authority, which was
the Department of State Archives, the state
archives were subordinated to the Ministry of
Religious Denominations and Public
Enlightenment. The tasks of the Department of
State Archives and the state archives themselves
included, among others, the collection and
storage of manuscripts related to the culture and
history of Poland, technical support and scientific
supervision of archival resources, preservation
and protection of documentary heritage from
damage, as well as reclaiming Polish state-owned
archival documents located outside Poland.
The organisational structure, which includes
the archives in Warsaw and across the Republic
of Poland, changed over time. That resulted from
the gradual take-over of archives which held historical resources, but were still located outside
Poland in 1919. The activities undertaken pursuant
to the Decree resulted in creating collections of state
archives, estimated in 1939 at 90,000 metres of
records. The document applied until March 1951.
Nowadays, the organisational structure of the state
archives comprises the Head Office of State Archives
and 33 local archives along with entities which they
are in charge of.
Tomasz Matuszak, PhD