The State Military Historical Archives were created in 1951 by orders of the Minister of defense № 50, dated 9 February 1951 and № 140 dated 20 March 1951 and directive № 4544 dated 21 May 1951 of the Chief of the General Staff under the name “Central Archival Fonds of the Bulgarian People’s Army”. It was validated as a departmental archive by the Council of Ministers’(CM)s decree 807 dated 6 October 1951 and subordinated to the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff. In 1955, the Archive was renamed as Central Military Archive (ЦВА). In 1971, by Ordinance of the Chief of the General Staff the Military Historical Archive merged with it, thereby preserving the documents of the Military Historical Committee at the General Staff, which had been created in 1914. By CM’s decree № 237 dated 21 December 1999, the archive it was subordinated to the General Department of Archives and renamed, in 2007, as State Military Historical Archives under the Archives State Agency.
The State Military Historical Archives is made up of the following divisions: Formation and Preservation of the Archival Fonds; Publicity of the Archival Fonds; and IT, Restoration, Conservation and Microfilming.
At the time of its creation in 1951 the Archive was located in the Infantry School within the 18th Infantry regiment area. In 1954, a special archive facility was built and, between 1971 and 1974 another 10-floor building was built for the institution and it is still occupied by the archive today.
As of the 1 January 2012, the number of fonds of the archive equates to 8974.66 linear metres with 3,407 archival fonds (3,344 public and 63 private) with 426,918 archival units; 306 partial accessions and 810 memoirs.
Държавен военноисторически архив
Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.