The optimization of state-building alongside the current transformation process in Ukraine have resulted in the demand for a clear vision about, and identification of, the precise place of archives' place in society and how they are perceived by that society. Ukraine is one of the largest Post-Soviet States (CIS). Its renaissance as a state dates from 1991 when the USSR collapsed as a superpower. For Ukraine, this turning point symbolised the crushing of the Soviet totalitarian system, the gradual adoption of democratic standards, and the beginning of the construction of civil society.
State orientation and ideologisation of the archives were very peculiar to the totalitarian period. Their activities were completely dependant on the demands of the С Communist Party "nomenklatura". After 1991, the archives lost these ideological functions. Now, practical activity depends solely upon the demands of society. However, this situation has created new problems: firstly, these demands are being formulated in an unplanned way; and secondly, the archives are not ready to satisfy them. As a consequence, there is some disharmony: society does not have its demands fully satisfied, and in turn the archives are dissatisfied with society's undervaluing of their increasing activity. There are financial problems, in particular about archivists' salaries which are inadequate for their social functions, tasks and reputation as keepers of society's memory. The same lack of resources is evident in their poor working conditions, insufficient provision of modern IT equipment, and inadequate material and technical resources.
As a result of sociological study conducted in archival searchrooms, we came to the conclusion that, in general, the public's opinion of archives is of a dual nature. On one hand, archives are places for keeping piles of useless paper; but on the other hand, they are necessary institutions that must provide enquirers with responses to their urgent information requests. The transition period has brought four categories of users to the archives: intellectuals (or scholars), civil servants, politicians, and the general public.
The results of this survey need some explanation. The problem is that the archives in Ukraine are set into the system of state central and local government bodies and thus have dual functions: on one hand, they are the administrative body for record-keeping; on the other hand they are centres for the keeping and use of retrospective information. This causes a certain attitude to the archives on the part of the state administration which directly manage them, and of politicians who are afraid of using the archival information in the interests of the party in power, in the context of a considerable politicisation of public life in Ukraine.
We should also take into account the fact that the last 50 years and more have been the period of historical justice restoration, rehabilitation and compensatory damage to the victims of totalitarian regimes (Soviet and Nazi). As a result several million Ukrainian citizens and foreigners have applied to archives for their documentation of such persecution. Though the national archival fonds suffered considerably after World War II, the majority of applicants received such documentation. The very fact the archives' social significance developed to such extent surely contributed to their positive image.
However, all this activity also gave rise to some groundless expectations about the archives. Thus a section of society expects they will receive an answer immediately; they expect the archives to satisfy any request concerning historical information. But in reality Ukrainian archivists have to look through piles of papers by hand to find the necessary information. It makes the whole procedure of archival searching more difficult, slower and more expensive.
Archivists established their closest relationships with the first category of users -scholars. This can be explained by the fact that scholars are traditional, long-term users of the Archives. As a rule they are highly educated people, working for academic degrees, authors of academic works and with the required professional and educational level to carry out independent work with archival documents. But nowadays, despite the traditional nature and content of their work in the archives they too are demanding an increase of methods of searching archives, electronic access and that the archives are equipped with modern computers.
To understand this situation one should bear in mind that while there are no problems with physical access, the same cannot be said about intellectual access. For example:
Social structural changes have had an effect on the research subjects of these traditional users. During the Soviet period they were more interested in the modern history of Ukraine, especially the post-war period and almost present-day history; now they are going deeper into the history of the nineteenth and the first years of the twentieth centuries, taking interest in the events of 1917-1921, 1930s and 40s - the period of national liberation movements ofthe Ukrainian people. But because during the Soviet period the holdings for these periods were not consulted very much, and most of them were classified, search tools for them are far from being informative and exhaustive at the necessary level. In general these changes to researchers' timeframes and subject-matter are a characteristic feature of a transient society, but they caught Ukrainian archives quite unawares and require appropriate additional effort.
One more new issue concerned with scholar-users, is their growing number. Current developments mainly in social sciences in Ukraine require most scholars to work with archival documents; the same is observed while they prepare academic monographs and other research. Unlike previous totalitarian times, when it was enough for the humanities scholar to show his or her allegiance to historical party dogmas, nowadays the resource base for the majority of humanities researchers has become an archival one. It should be emphasised once again that these substantive changes came upon the archives suddenly. Neither equipment and capacity of reading rooms, nor the quality and content of search tools meets the constantly growing requirements of these users and it raises, fairly, their complaints.
Civil servants are not an absolutely new category of archival information users. Quite the contrary, in times of totalitarism the archives, which were a part of People's Commissariat/Ministry of Internal Affairs, had to service mostly administrative establishments, frequently providing retrospective information, from the provision of information to penal establishment to carrying out the inquisitional processes. But during the period of democratic transformation great changes have occurred for this category of users. The legislative base of archives (namely, Laws "On Information", "On National Archival Fond and Archival Institutions", "On Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repressions", as well as the draft law "On Personal Data Security") neatly regulate the structure and character of archival documents, in respect to which archivists should be a kind of "gatekeeper" (according to American archivist and librarian Matthias Lane), irrespective of any political affiliation.
The peculiarities of the organisation of the Ukrainian archival system, mentioned above, especially the fulfilment of immediate administrative-managerial functions by the Archives, significantly complicate this process. Moreover, the process of the archives in gaining such status was achieved step by step. The starting point was 1988, when regions liquidated administrative bodies - archival departments of regional administrations, and in spite of that they became a part of regional governing bodies. In 1996 a section of regional archives officers received the official status of state employees. And finally, in 2003 central archives receive the same status. Archives at the lowest level were earlier attached to the structure of local executive authorities, and later to local government bodies. Thus, in 2003, the process of the archives' integration into the structure of public authorities and local government bodies is completed once and for all.
Such a model of interrelationships between governing bodies and the archives seems to be absolutely unique, and not only within the CIS. We detect some positive aspects here. Their administrative status should help the archives solve the problem of automation, their technical equipment, the construction of new archives' buildings and so on. In providing informational and administrative services to the authorities, the archives have the daily opportunity to prove in practice their social importance and unique value of the information held to solve immediate administrative tasks. That is why there is a chance that the archives' image as far as administrators are concerned will be changed - from a storehouse of useless paper, serving only a small interested group of intellectuals, to a leading establishment for information provision.
Politicians are a completely new category of archival information users. Since the Soviet system admitted only the one party - a state one, the Communist Party, the rest of citizens, who did not accept its dogmas were considered to be dissidents. They had no access to the archives. At the beginning of the democratic transformation of Ukrainian society a rather multifarious political system was formed - at present there are more than 100 political parties, and officially registered public organisations range from Communists to Christian Democrats, from supporters of Ukraine's integration into Russia to Ukrainian ultranationalists. However, it is worth mentioning that, regardless of certain extremes of political straggle in Ukraine over the last 12 years, archival information was not used even once for "dirty" PR, e.g. discrediting former members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Unlike modern information ("Melnichenko's films", information about business activities during the 1990's and so on), facts from the former Communist Party's archives have never been used by the opposition for discrediting present-day statesmen, and most of them (including our first and current Presidents) were, in their time, members of leading Communist Party bodies. This may be explained by the absence of official legal processes against the Communist Party (banned in 1991), as well as - to some extent - by specific features within Ukrainian mentality, such as patience, political inactivity and a forgiving nature.
Moreover, setting the archives into the state machinery, as noted above, has caused contradictions. The Archives of the Communist Party contained a lot of information, sometimes untrue, but always documented, about activists of dissident movements -representatives of national opposition. Theoretically there was the possibility of using these so-called "discreditable" materials against them, since documents of the Communist Party, when handed to the state archives, were practically all unclassified, and since then their access has been limited only by requirements of the Law "On Information", concerning personal data security. But this has not happened, and this demonstrates once again the good performance of Ukrainian archivists as "gatekeepers".
Archives in Ukraine are trying to co-operate in gathering and keeping the documents of all existing political parties. A striking example of this is the Central State Archives of public associations of Ukraine. Among its informational partners are: the Communist Party of Ukraine, the Socialist and Social-democratic parties, the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, the Popular Movement (Narodny Rukh) of Ukraine and so on. Different exhibitions of archival documents, reference texts and documentary publications are dedicated to the history of these parties and party life in general. Among the recent editions are "3rd congress of CP(b)U" and the last volume of "Chronicles of UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Ukrainska Povstancha Armiia)".
At the same time the appearance of political figures as a new category of archival information users presents archivists with some difficult tasks since these people do not always realise the necessity of saving documents created by them, or at least taking any necessary actions in that direction. That is why there is a real danger of losing part of the resources for the modern period of political life of Ukraine. The archives have launched a project to work with parties, trying to convince them of necessity of saving their documents, if not at a state archives, then at least at within the modern archives of parties and public associations, which would operate under the organisational and methodical control of the state archives.
Finally, the last category of archival information users - the general public - is also not absolutely new for the archives. But the deluge of inquiries over the last 10 years, seeking social-legal assistance for victims of both totalitarian regimes was totally unexpected. The inquiries were from real elderly and not very healthy people - victims of political repressions of Stalin's regime in 1930s-1950s, representatives of entire nations deported (Crimean Tatars). There were also victims of Nazi persecutions in 1939-1945 (prisoners of concentration camps, ghetto, forced labourers taken to Germany and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe in 1942-1944). Overall between 1991 and 2002 archives received more than two million such inquiries, most of them answered completely - and in time - by archivists. Owing to information provided by the Archives compensation payments were made to those suffered under Stalin, as well as to Nazi victims, by the Federal Republic of Germany and Austria. This amounts to of several million dollars, so one can understand the feelings of those people, whose inquiries to archives were ultima ratio in their hope of receiving, in their old age, a a fair compensation for the sufferings they endured. An important event was that the Archives of Ukraine started to create then-database on these categories of documents. The state archives of Donetsk and Kharkiv regions were the first to create such databases which allowed them to find quickly the necessary information about the persecution of Ukrainian citizens and foreigners by totalitarian regimes and to bring it to the notice of interested parties.
Another demand beyond that of the requests of Nazi victims - who undoubtedly deserve to be the first in line - comes from the rapidly increasing number of genealogical researchers, a completely new category of users in Ukrainian archives. Often, archivists are able to assist genealogists. Frequently, such users become "friends of the archives," providing them with technical and personal assistance. Probably this group will become the main one in the near future. This may cause serious problems for archivists if they are not prepared to provide them (or themselves too) with the appropriate tools for access to archival holdings.
In our opinion, the automation of the archives is the answer to all these challenges. According to the results of an investigation at the beginning of the 21st century, about 100 subject and registration databases were functioning at four central and 14 regional archives, state sectional archives and the archival establishments of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. At the majority of regional state archives the conversion of available registration databases was started. The order of the day is the creation of a single information system "Archival fonds of Ukraine", an on-line nationwide catalogue with remote access, which will contain information about 200,000 fonds making up the National Archival Fonds, including documents from former party archives, penal-repression bodies, as well as archival collections of museums and libraries.
The preparation of certain segments of fonds catalogues at state archives to a common conceptual, methodological and technological-program standard will allow us to create, in the future, a modern information system which will cardinally change the appearance of Ukrainian archives. It will allow users to select necessary information on-line, and archivists will be able to prepare lists, guides, fonds registers and documents at a high level. The creation of such reference works is now a strategic way of developing the Ukrainian archival system. During Soviet times, finding aids which explained the structure and content of archival fonds were considered to be of restricted use, had a small circulation and were not distributed, for instance, abroad. That is why it is no wonder that the best information source about Ukrainian Archives was a book by American researcher Patricia K. Grimstead, published in 1988. Only after 1991 was there change - restrictions were lifted finding aids, and they (mostly in the form of microfilms) appeared abroad.
In order to satisfy growing requirements for archival finding aids especially at those archives which have never had them (the Archives of the Communist Party, state archives in border regions), the program for preparing the reference texts "Archival repositories of Ukraine" was developed and approved in 2000. It resulted in a new generation of archival guides with full lists of fonds, without any exclusions - Guides to the Central State Archives of public associations of Ukraine (former Party Archives), Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine in Lviv, the State Archives of Chernigiv and Sumy regions, a series of finding aids at inter-fonds and fonds levels, a special work on the system of scientific-reference machinery of Ukrainian Archives. The first volume of a guide to the Central State Archives-Museum of Literature and Arts of Ukraine, guides to others, including regional, archives, as well as to departmental archives such as the Ministry of Internal Affairs, previously absolutely closed, were prepared. A completely new type of finding aid might be a series of Annotated registers of inventories of fonds which is intended to provide detailed information about documents from the Ukrainian Archives not at fonds level, but at the lower levels. The main principles in preparing the new generation of tools is complete openness, and that they are of a systematic and serial nature. The only way to respond to all the above-mentioned challenges and develop genuine public policy in Ukraine is to change the image of archives in the eyes of society, raise the status of the profession, to make possible full automation in the archives and the preparation of a modern generation of comprehensive archival finding aids both in electronic and in traditional book formats. To my mind, meeting these problems "with open eyes" is the best way to find efficient solutions.
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