«Work of Archival Institutions in Conditions of Special Legal Regimes»: Discussion Notes by the Authors of the Guidelines

The purpose of the work is to highlight problematic issues regarding the content of the methodological recommendations «Work of archival institutions in the conditions of special legal regimes», prepared by the Ukrainian Research Institute of Archival Affairs and Records Management in 2023. These questions in the form of comments and suggestions were expressed by reviewers of archival institutions that have experience in evacuation and/or are in the front-line zone. In particular, these are: The Central State Scientific and Technical Archives of Ukraine, the state archives of Donetsk, Luhansk, Mykolaiv, and Kherson Regions. The compilers of the Methodological Recommendations in the article try to briefly comment on the suggestions and remarks of the reviewers, explaining the reason for their non-consideration. The methodology of the article is based on the application of the methods of functional and comparative analysis, situational modeling and social survey. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the innovative for Ukraine modeling of situations of the influence of martial law and other special legal regimes on the work of archival institutions and the description by individual archival institutions of the content of these influences and the presence of certain advice regarding their consideration in the Methodological Recommendations. Conclusions. In the article, the authors recorded the main comments and suggestions of the reviewers, which were not taken into account. This happened not because the mentioned comments and suggestions did not make sense, but due to factors of an objective nature, in particular, the fact that the issues raised by the reviewers were not foreseen by the technical task for the development of a scientific work; the answers to them were beyond the competence of the authors of the Methodological Recommendations, and their essence is related to the consequences of the actions of the insurmountable circumstances of wartime, etc. Some reviewers expressed their vision of the content of the stages of preparation of more specific recommendations regarding the work of archival institutions in the conditions of special legal regimes, which will be partially taken into account in the scientific work «Restoration of the work of archival institutions after the de-occupation of the territory», which will be carried out by Ukrainian Research Institute of Archival Affairs and Records Management in 2025.