The Second Documentary Collection collects, professionally analyses, museologically presents and publishes various forms of material from the period between World War I to the present day. It contains documents from political, military, social, cultural and educational organisations and institutions.

The greatest part of the documentary material before 1991 was collected and analysed by the Museum of the Revolution of the Peoples of Croatia. From 1991 to 1996 the collection acquired documentary material concerning the Patriotic War and the multi-party political system in Croatia. The historical documents from World War II began to be collected during the war, after the War Museum and Archives of the Independent State of Croatia was founded on May 16 1941. During World War II Partisan units and antifascist organisations also collected and kept material relevant to the Struggle for National Liberation.

The systematic gathering and professional treatment of the material began with the founding of the Museum of National Liberation in Zagreb (October 16 1945), which was on August 10 1960 renamed the Museum of the revolution of the Peoples of Croatia. Initially the Museum collected documentary material from all of Croatia with the assistance and support of various commissions, social and political organisations, institutions and individuals; the material concerned not only the labour and communist movement but also material ‘from the enemy’, namely the documentation of the Independent State of Croatia and occupied territories of Croatia in World War II. However, during the sixties the greatest part of the archival material and all the material relating to memoirs was given to the Institute for the History of the Labour Movement (today it is kept at the Croatian State Archives), and the material from ‘enemy archives’ was handed over to the Military History Institute in Belgrade.

The task of the Collection remained the same after the Decree on the Founding of the Croatian History Museum of June 11 1991 by which it became the legal successor of the Museum of the Revolution of the Peoples of Croatia. The Second documentary Collection holds material and items which need to be preserved as a document of a time, since they are, when they are museologically organised, useful in presenting events from the recent past as well as contemporary events.

The Collection has some 30.000 documents and objects, 25.000 of which have been catalogued.