Централен държавен архив

The creation of the Archive is connected with the Decree 515 of the Presidium of the National Assembly dated 10 October 1951 and the Council of Minister’s Decree 344, dated 18 April 1952. On this basis two central archives were founded in 1952: the Central State Historical Archives (CSHA) and the Central State Archives of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria (CSA PRB) with a demarcation date of their fonds – the 9 September 1944. Two decades later on 2 January 1974 the Central State Technical Archives was created by order of the minister of information and communications, with the main objective to collect, process, preserve and organise the use of the valuable technical documents. In 1979, the CSHA became a national repository of copies of records relative to the Bulgarian history, kept in foreign archival centres. By Council of Ministers’ Decree dated 30 December 1992, the archival system was reorganised and the three central archives merged into a sole Central State Archives (CSA) under the General Department of Archives. The offices, reading rooms, labs and repositories, which were dispersed before the unification, were assembled in 1992 in the building at 5 Moskovska Str. After a subsequent reconstruction and adaptation period, new repositories were equipped for the most valuable and frequently used records. On the basis of the contract signed in 1993 with the Supreme Council of BSP, the Archive accepted the documents of the former Central Party Archive. To avoid any duplication in the archival references, a range of letters were added to the numbers of the fonds: for the fonds of the former CSHA – K; for the fonds of the former CSTA – A; and for the fonds of the former CPA – Б. In 1999, the archive acquired the documents of the former “Bulgarian photography” EAD, which fulfilled the role of public photo archive.  

As of 1 January 2012, the amount of archival material held by the archive totals 20,100.89 linear meters, or 4,041 record groups with 1,739,277 archival units. Among others, it holds restitution and/or compensation-related materials.