THE PROBLEM OF DETERMINING THE ADMINISTRATIVE AND LEGAL STATUS OF THE CENTRAL STATE ARCHIVES OF UKRAINE

Abstract

In the conditions of Russia's military aggression against Ukraine and the legal regime of martial law in the country, the issue of ensuring proper governance and effective administration of the work of state institutions is extremely important. This is especially relevant for the system of central state archives, which combine the functionality of cultural institutions, authorities and archival institutions. The purpose of the research is to identify shortcomings in the current organizational and legal form of the central state archives as archival institutions and to provide the author's vision of the administrative and legal status of the central state archives of Ukraine. To study the administrative-legal status of the central state archives, to determine the problematic issues of their proper administration and ways of development, general scientific and special-legal methods were used: description and analysis, chronological (historical), comparative-legal, formal-legal and logical-legal. First of all, the optimization of the system of central state archives from 9 to 7 institutions was due to the challenges of wartime, the reduction of funding of the public sector in general and the archival industry in particular. Preparation for the approval of the provisions of the newly formed central state archives once again emphasized the presence of conflicts of law in the field of organizing the work of the staff of the central state archives and the lack of legal certainty of the organizational and legal form of these institutions. Moreover, the current legislative framework contains a contradiction of norms, when central state archives as archival institutions have officials on staff, to whom the legislation on civil service should be extended. At the same time, special legislation on civil service excludes the possibility of its existence in state institutions. So, the result of the study is to reveal the existence of a legal conflict between the norms of special archival legislation and legislation on civil service, the need and ways of resolving conflicting practices are determined. Conclusions. It has been established that after the adoption of the Law of Ukraine "On Public Service" in 2015, it was not ensured that normative and legal acts of archival legislation were brought into line with legislative amendments, which caused the emergence of conflicting norms and uncertainty in the administrative and legal status of the central state archives of Ukraine. The conflict between the norms of two special laws (which regulate the functioning of archives and civil service, respectively) can be taken into account by changes to by-laws in the field of archival matters.