The Dissertation is sacred to the archived system of Poland in the second.half of the ХХ th century. After the Second World War as a result of social and political transformations and grave post-war condition of the Polish archives a new period began in their activity. It was characterized by the standardization of approaches to the organization of the archived business and centralization of the public archived policy. Officially these changes were fixed in the Decree about Record Offices (State Archives) from 1951. It entered the concept of the State Archived Fund and the centralized state archived service was created to control it. The leading organ of the archived service was the Main Management of Record Offices. According to the administrative-territorial division of Poland, the system of archives subordinated to it was formed by the archives of three levels: central, province and district archives. Out of sphere of influence of the Main Management of Record Offices there were archives of the Ministries of national defence, internal affairs and foreign business and also party archives and manuscripts’ departments of scientific libraries. Church and monastery archives were autonomic. In 1951–1956 the Main Management of Record Offices had a status of the central organ of the executive power, subordinated directly to the Chairman of the Council of Ministers. In 1956 it was under the authority of the Minister of culture and art, and in 1958 it was in charge of the Minister of higher education. In 1976 as a result of administrativeterritorial reform district archives were liquidated, and the amount of province archives was increased in number. The system of record offices consisted of two levels. It was formed by the central and province archives which could have representative offices on places. The network of record offices, subordinated to the Main Management of Record Offices, was formed in 1980 s. Next years it did not undergo special changes. The next stage of the development of the archived system of Poland was in 1980–1990 s and was related to the Law on the National archived fund and archives from 1983. It continued the centralization of the archived business. The concept of the National Archived Fund was entered by the law. It was divided into the State Archived Fund and Non-state Archived Fund. A Supreme Supervision after the National Archived Fund was carried out by a minister whom the state archived service was under the authority. In 1983–2000 it was the Minister of science, higher education and technique, and from 2000 it was the Minister of culture and protection of national inheritance. The State Archived Fund was controlled by the state archived service headed by the Main Director of Record Offices. An executive organ was the Main Management of Record Offices. A public policy in the field of the State Archived Fund was carried out by the system of state archives. According to the law, it was formed by four kinds of archives: archives which were submitted to the Main Director of Record Offices; archives which were not under the authority of the Main Director of Record Offices (the Seym and Rada of the state, Ministries of national defence, internal affairs and foreign business); archived subdivisions of state enterprises, establishments and organizations; the archive of the Committee in the matters of radio and television. In 1990 s with an overthrow of the communist regime and the development of the democratic institutes of power the amount of record offices which did not submit to the Main Director of Record Offices increased in Poland. The archives of the Administration of the President of Polish Republic, of Senate, of Guard Service of the State (later – Agencies of Internal Safety and External Secret Service), of the Institute of National memory, of the Commission of the pursuit of crimes against the Polish people belonged to them. At the same time the archives of political parties stopped self – existence. Their funds were passed to the archives, subordinated to the Main Director of Record Offices Basic tasks for the state archived service of Poland and submitted to it archives were determined by the legislation. They were the following: forming of the State Archived Fund and completing of their own funds by its documents, their storage and working up, the organization of the access to the archived documents and the use of the information which was in them. Record offices conducted also active scientifically-publishing activity in the field of the archived business and contiguous disciplines with it. The mechanism of the forming of the State Archived Fund of Poland and filling up it by the documents of the funds of record offices was determined in 1950–1970 s. In this process the organs of the state archived service played the key role. The organization of the archived documents and their working up was carried out on the basis of principles and methods, worked out by the Polish archivists in an interwar period, which were based on the achievements of that time world archivistics During the second half of the XX th century the access to the archived information in the Polish archives grew constantly. Limitations touched the separate categories of the archived documents, which were determined only by the norms of the archived legislation. Different forms and methods of the organization of the access and usage of the archived documents were used in archives. Their amount grew and diversified depending on the increase of informative necessities of the society and possibilities of the archives to satisfy these necessities. The second half of the ХХ th century was characterized by the activation and expansion of the scientific and publishing activity of the Polish archives. It was marked by the variety of forms and methods, directed to the realization of scientific plans worked out by the Main Management of Record Offices and the realization of independent scientifically-publishing work.
