The Destruction of the Security Authority Documentation of Communist Poland in 1944–1990: Reasons, Statistics, and Results

Abstract

In the years 1944–1990, there were separated archives of the civil security organs in People’s Poland, the so-called Operational Records Bureau/MSW Bureau “C” and Operational Records “C” Divisions at Voivodeship Citizens’ Militia Headquarters and Voivodeship Internal Affairs Offices. All types of operational and judicial cases and administrative materials produced in the Ministry of Security were deposited there. According to the file list, the materials were destroyed after the expiry of their storage period. In the process of destroying the files, the need to free up space for new materials was also taken into account. The specific nature of the security organ files meant that the destruction process was heavily influenced by the political decisions of the ministry’s leadership. In the years 1957–1988 alone, a total of at least 2,185,568 case files and archival units (approximately 44,000 l.m.) of SB files were destroyed in the process of culling and destroying files. In the entire communist period, the number of destroyed files reached a total of nearly three million case files and archival units. Their destruction enabled the transformation of an occupational communism to a hybrid communism in Poland.