Its director Ante Nazor said the Centre had done a big job in collecting, putting into order and publishing material necessary for understanding the 1991-95 Homeland War.
The key principle of the Centre's work is not to write tailored to the victor's needs but based on arguments and scientific truth, he said.
Croatia rests on Homeland War values, a key event in recent Croatian history, said the prime minister's envoy, Culture Minister Nina Obuljen Korzinek.
The establishment of the Centre was an act of exceptional importance, a result of the highest state bodies' commitment to the historical truth, to distancing the Homeland War from ideology and daily politics and to achieving a strictly scientific approach to the study of history, she said.
She underlined the successful digitalisation of archive material and announced the establishment of an encyclopaedic web portal on the Homeland War in Croatian and English.
Presidential envoy Marijan Marekovic said the Centre was important for future generations to learn the truth about the Homeland War.
The Homeland War determined the fate of future generations to live in freedom, which is why its history must not fall into oblivion, disorganised research or foreign interpretation, he said.
Too often others wrote and falsified our history, and the importance of the Homeland War obliges us not to repeat that. Our future generations cannot be taught about that by either international tribunals or the lies of defeated occupiers. They must learn the truth based on facts and arguments, not on myths, and that truth is brilliant and clean, said Marekovic.
The Centre has 17,850 boxes of conventional archive material, over 4,000 hours of video recordings, over 80,000 photos and over 700 hours of audio recordings, Nazor said, adding that it has published or co-published 99 books and collections.