For the first time, the State Archives participates in a meeting of the NATO Archives Committee, which officially confirms our membership as an institution in this Alliance Committee.
At the invitation of the NATO Archives Committee, the Director of the State Archives Dr. Emil Krsteski and Svetlana Usprcova, Head of Research, International and Domestic Cooperation and Publication of Archival Material, officially participated in a NATO Archives Committee meeting for the first time, which was held on 1 July 2021, using the online platform Zoom was attended by about 60 historians who primarily deal with military history and archivists from the national archives of Great Britain, France, Germany, Canada, the United States Countries, the Netherlands, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Northern Macedonia and others.
This meeting is important because it is the first step of cooperation of the State Archives with the NATO Archives Committee, since on March 27 last year, our country became a full member of the NATO Alliance. In his address at the first part of the meeting, Dr. Emil Krsteski referred to the importance of the documents from the NATO Archive for the history of our country and for historians dealing with contemporary history and gave an overview of NATO-related documents, which are in our Archive. It has also taken the initiative to publish a brochure containing all the important documents related to the progress of our membership in the Alliance.
Then, the head of the department, Svetlana Usprcova presented the topic: "Access to archival materials in the State Archives, in research for new archival materials and archival funds related to NATO", which met with strong interest from the participants. During the meeting discussed about the types of archival documents from NATO activities, which are, above all, operational or military diaries, the need for their declassification and availability to the public after a certain period of time, as well as NATO archive funds related to operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina (IFOR and SFOR).