Why Archives Open After Half a Century

A state secret is tied to how useful it would be to an adversary, and that usefulness fades over time: technologies become outdated, borders change, and leaders leave office. So in many countries, the basic period is fairly short - decades, not centuries.

Personal information works differently. Medical records, denunciations, testimony, and court cases concern specific people and their children. Here, the period is counted not from the importance of the document, but from a human life: as long as the people named are alive, publication will harm them, not history.

The last point is often overlooked, but it explains a lot. Between the decision to open records and the moment you can access and read them lies a lot of work: sorting them, describing them, and removing material closed for other reasons. With large collections, this takes years, and sometimes decades.

By then, several things come together. The people involved can no longer be harmed directly, promises made to sources no longer stand in the way, and the political cost of acknowledgment falls: different people made the decisions, and often a different government made them.

Delay also has a clear cost. History is written from documents, while by then the witnesses have died and no one is left to clarify anything. Many cases remain only half understood: the papers exist, but the living memory that could explain what was left unsaid is gone.