Introduction. Inside and Outside the Archive: the Uses of Archives and Archival Practice

The text presents the idea for this issue of the Journal, that sprang from the feeling of unease that is already a recurrent feature of the relationship between individual and archive, a feeling complained of by researchers in Eastern Europe working with various kinds of archives both in existence and in the process of being established. This feeling of unease is in the first place methodological in nature and linked to the defining of archived documents and to their political significance, but ultimately has to do with the meaning the documents yield when interrogated. There is, however, also an unease that stems from the diversity of the practices associated with archives and archiving, practices connected with access to memory; in Eastern Europe, this access is still the object of very strong indirect political interest.