Джерела з історії Словенії першої половини ХХ ст. у Архіві Форін-Офіса (м. Лондон)

The article is devoted to the formation of the Archives of the Foreign Office, its structure and departments, provided British diplomatic documents of the official and unofficial origin, concerning the region of Central and South-Eastern Europe, such as office documents and memoir notes, which can be used as sources for the history of Slovenia of the first half of the ХХ century. The documents are divided into groups; periods of history of Slovenia, covered in the considered sources, are underlined.The Slovenians live at the crossroads of trade routes between the Balkans and Central Europe, their land was always important for the control the Adriatic. So the nearest peoples – Italians, Austrians – always had an interest here. In addition, this land was interesting for a more powerful subject of the world politics – Great Britain. Already from the middle of XVIII cent., when the crisis of the Ottoman Empire has achieved its culmination, Britain has begun to monitor developments in the region attentively. The main competitor in the region in case of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire was originally Austrian Empire, and since the middle of 1870ths British-German relations were deteriorated by strengthening of the Germany’s economic expansion in Africa and the Middle East. The crisis has got even greater detente after the start of the exploitation of the Middle Eastern oil; World War I has lead to radical changes in the international relations, including the Balkan region. All these processes are forced Britain to give more attention to the Balkans, to increase diplomatic staff, to collect and process vast amounts of information.For this purposes the Foreign Office has created the archive, which developed over a long time and was reorganized several times. The last replacement of a classification was in 1968. Internal divisions of the Foreign Office were arbitrarily divided into two main categories: political (or diplomatic) and non-political. Political departments were responsible for a specific geographical area, and others – for specific cases. That’s why documents of political departments were often classified geographically, while other ones by content. Departments, as well as searched states, had their own codes, by letter or number.In this classification Slovenia were firstly belonged to Austria and then to the First Yugoslavia, so that documents and records are scattered over a large number of different funds, which sometimes do not even have a detailed description. Nevertheless the Archive contains a large number of documents, concerned to the Slovenes by some way. Archive funds are divided into groups: General Correspondence, Registers and Indexes, Embassy Archives and Consular Archives from 1906, Confidential Print, Treaties, Private and Private Office Papers, Archives of Commissions and Conferences.Basically there are documents relating to the political history, as well as a small descriptions of various trips to Slovenia, records about the Slovenian land and Slovenes, which were written on different occasions at different times of the Slovenian history by different people, which were minor or major policy observers. Documents of the intelligence service are generally dry and statistical and mostly belong to the military, political and economic spheres; personal records are largely subjective, superficial and contain a lot of prejudices, but add substance to all the researches on political, economic and national-cultural history of Slovenia.Рассмотрено формирование Архива Форин-Офиса, его структура и отделы, содержащие британские дипломатические документы официального и неофициального происхождения относительно региона Средней и Юго-Восточной Европы, канцеляр-скую документацию и записки мемуарного характера, составляющих комплекс источников по истории Словении первой половины ХХ в. Документы разделены на группы, выделены периоды истории Словении, которые освещаются в рассмотренных источниках.Розглянуто формування Архіву Форін-Офіса, його структура та відділи, які містять британські дипломатичні документи офіційного та неофіційного походження щодо регіону Середньої та Південно-Східної Європи, канцелярську документацію та записки мемуарного характеру, що складають комплекс джерел з історії Словенії першої половини ХХ ст. Документи поділені на групи, виділено періоди історії Словенії, які висвітлюються в розглянутих джерелах