Arhivski vjesnik, Vol. 68 , 2025.
Review article
https://doi.org/10.36506/av.68.10
Research in the Diplomatic Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia: Possibilities of Working on the Example of Records on Australia
Stipica Grgić
orcid.org/0000-0001-6276-4362
; Hrvatski institut za povijest
*
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
The Diplomatic Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia is a specialized archive that has been operating for over a hundred years within the highest bodies responsible for foreign policy in monarchical Yugoslavia, its socialist successor, and today, the Republic of Serbia. The Archive primarily collects, organizes, and preserves materials related to the work of the highest foreign policy bodies of socialist Yugoslavia. These include their official correspondence as the “central” body with the country’s diplomatic and consular missions in other countries and at international forums. The records are then made available to users through its reading room. The materials, organized in itslargest fonds, the so-called Political Archive, are currently available from 1945 to 1989, with efforts underway to make materials from the last 30 years available to researchers. Access to the records, their availability, and working with them in the Diplomatic Archive differs slightly from classic, primarily archival institutions. Therefore, this paper presents its specifics, from the perspective of the user and the possibilities of working within it, taking the example of materials from the Political Archive related to Australia, and to a lesser extent, New Zealand. Its materials primarily concern the diplomatic and consular work of the respective embassies and consulates, with a focus on bilateral relations between Yugoslavia and Australia in a narrower sense. However, they mostly deal with individual cases, i.e. encrypted telegrams reporting on specific significant events that occurred on a daily basis. Some of the documents also pertain to issues related tothe diaspora arriving from Yugoslavia. Although the reports were primarily written from the perspective of Yugoslav diplomats abroad, they offer valuable insightinto how they perceived their diaspora in Australia. Therefore, Diplomatic Archive’s records are excellent for reconstructing not only the bilateral relations between Yugoslavia and Australia, but they also provide researchers from various fields with the opportunity to conduct interdisciplinary analyses of various aspects of life, work, and organization within the Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian, Yugoslav and other diasporas in Australia.
Keywords
Serbia; Yugoslavia; Diplomatic Archive; diplomatic missions; emigration; Australia
Hrčak ID:
341824
URI
Publication date:
19.12.2025.
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