Privatization Of The Public Sector Functions : Polish Case
Daria Nalecz
Polish State Archives
Historical Background
After the Second World War, private property was practically abolished, as were the legal foundations of business and public operations of private associations, organizations and individuals. Existing ownership rights were transferred to the state, services were nationalized, and other functions not necessarily performed before by the state were acquired by the latter. Although in Poland such a model had never been adopted in practice, it was accepted on ideological grounds, which constituted an exception among the countries of the Eastern Bloc. Private ownership of land continued in Poland, though farms and private small manufacturing and family businesses could not exceed 50 hectares (in reality they used to be much smaller). Some autonomy was left to the Catholic church which enjoyed a limited freedom in educational activities, charity and business.
Consequences for the archives
On the basis of the decrees on agrarian reform and nationalization of industry (in the years 1944-1946), yet with no reference to the letter of those provisions, the transfer of ownership rights was accompanied by the nationalization of archive fonds. Thus, state archives were augmented by the collections of aristocratic families whose members had occupied public functions in different historical periods, the records of big property owners, and the files of industrial plants. Those actions, not yet meeting legal requirements, had been given formal framework by the decree on archives of 1951. The law introduced a provision requiring the fonds to be transferred to state archives (of public organizations and associations, which were dissolved under the overall suppression of political life). In recognition of this, the law of 1983 on the archives prohibited the withdrawal of anything from the state archive network once an item was placed there.
Expansion of the state¡¦s influence required that all major economic institutions, including industry, and governmental institutions, be supervised by state archives, and records generated by them were systematically gathered by the latter. Only church and monastery archives remained beyond the influence of state archives.
Privatization processes after 1989
The processes of privatization covered all areas of civic activities, particularly businesses.
The processes of privatization took the following forms:
- return of property to its former owners (a form uncommon in Poland, implemented through court action),
- selling property on the open market or to emerging employee-run companies,
- establishing new businesses.
Privatization processes are related not only to manufacturing activities, but also to economic turnover, commerce and services.
A considerable number of non-government organizations emerged supporting the state functions, such as the Polish Humanitarian Action. Operations of state structures have been supplemented by numerous budget-based specialized funds such as the Rehabilitation Fund for People with Disabilities. Many agencies, including the Military Assets Agency and the State Land Resources Agency, have been acting on behalf of the state with the responsibility of selling state property. In other cases, the state itself initiated a specific type of activity leaving an established structure with the freedom of further operations. Such has been the case of the Polish Science Foundation which, since establishing and acquiring start-up funds, has been continuing its operations in supporting Polish science on the basis of the commercial code.
Self-government structures have also been re-established in Poland, acquiring powers in considerable areas related to local administration at the communal, county and provincial levels which, until recently, remained in the sole competency of the state.
Archive practice versus privatization processes
Privatization of economic entities results in an obligation to transfer to state archives all records of historical value generated by those entities. This must occur before privatization, irrespective of whether the entities have been owned by home, foreign or international capital, and independently of the timing of transferring records to the archives adopted to date. Once that obligation has been met, the contact between a state archive and a given entity is disrupted.
Following the amendments of archival law, all self-government bodies were made subject to archive supervision, including their subordinate units, who are subject to the same chancellery and archive instructions and record schedules. Archive materials generated by those units will systematically be acquired by state archives.
Similar principles have been adopted by new state structures supervising public areas transferred into private hands, such as the Social Insurance Authority or the Telecommunication Regulation Authority, etc.
Unresolved questions
In view of the range of privatization and transfers of many prerogatives formerly remaining with the state, the question is now open about the scope of the future collecting of records generated by new institutions. Are the records of state agencies supervising different areas of civic activities going to be sufficient for scientific research and public needs? Are general records depicting and summing up various areas and dimensions of state policy going to satisfy the users? Should the answer to these questions be negative, is the legislator able to impose upon private institutions an obligation to preserve materials of historical importance which may entail additional costs? Should an attempt be made to arrive at an understanding upon which private institutions would transfer such types of records to state archives on negotiated financial terms? In such a case, the issue should be resolved as to who would be interested in the long-term preservation of specific records, and who (which structure) should bear the costs. These questions are still not legally regulated in Poland and the debate on a new archival law is not concluded.
Similarly, it has not yet been resolved which relationship is going to take place between the state archives and companies with mixed ownership combining private capital and participation of state assets. In the present legal environment, there are no provisions to cover such companies by the influence of state archives. However, the draft of the new archive law introduces provisions on covering such companies with archive supervisions irrespective of the participation of the state (majority or minority, 1 per cent or 99 per cent). Any decision in that respect will be equal to a legal determination of the concept of state archival fond, that is whether it is created ¡V along with institutions apparently governmental ¡V by those institutions with mixed property.
The above reservations do not apply to the companies owned solely by the state. That is, those whose ownership has not changed but whose the organizational form and management methods have. They still remain within the responsibility of state archives.
It seems that due to the shrinking sphere of direct influence of the state on the activities of the citizens, the question remains open, and not only in East and Central Europe. There is a need to develop new methods of co-operation between newly emerging private structures and state archives, aimed at the protection of not only those documents which might be considered a component of national heritage, but also those contributing to meeting various social and scientific research needs. Hence, apart from legal measures, education and common concerns are needed, as well as a debate of both sectors (private and state) about appraisal policies.
The above-mentioned issues and the general questions of the relationship between private sector and state archives in East-Central Europe discussed in Poland in 1998 during the annual conference of the series "Colloquia Jerzy Skowronek Dedicata" (The Private Archives and Archive Materials in the Central and East European Countries. Edited by W„ladys„law St„Dpniak, Warszawa 1999) still require prolonging legal proceedings. First of all, the privatization process itself does not take place without turbulence; new business organizations throughout the entire region are marked by a lack of stability, a drive towards subsequent transformations, the emerging of sister companies, which are also characterised by considerable dynamics. On the positive side, a part of those measures is founded on speculation. It seems more dangerous for the policy of gathering archive fonds that a certain link (iunctim) is made between the short life of an institution and the lack of consideration of the role of continuity and tradition, which is directly translated into the attitude towards the importance of generated documentation.
Hence, a more general question can be asked about the role of international standards and, as far as the issues under discussion are concerned, about considering the possibilities of elaborating a standard which would be a follow-up of the ISO 9001 norm dealing with materials of historical importance.
Daria Nalecz
- Historian, specialized in the modern history of Poland.
- Professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences.
- General Director of the Polish State Archives since 1996.