KGB archives of 1917-1991 will be in open access

On April 9, 2015, The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (Ukrainian Parliament) approved a government bill No. 2540 opening up access to the archives of repressive bodies of the Soviet Union totalitarian regime of 1917-1991.

The archives of all repressive organizations such as KGB, All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, the Ukrainian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, speculation, sabotage and malfeasance, the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of Cassation, and the Supreme Cassation Tribunal and other that were Ukraine in 1917-1991 will be transferred to Institute of National Remembrance and declassified:

“The State shall guarantee the right of everyone to have access to archival information repressive bodies” – says the document.

 

See also: How the KGB archives will be opened and information declassified

 

Avatar photo

UaPositon

An independent media focused on Ukraine.
Follow us on social media:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

9 Comments

  1. How would that work in practice – would you have lawyers would could search as I really would like information on the training camps during the period 1977 until 1989 for the ANC/IRA/PLO

    Post a Reply
    • Actually all citizens have the right to make a request to Institute of National Remembrance. In practice the most likely that this declassified information will concern only to Ukrainian SSR KGB archives about politics, diplomats, etc.

      Post a Reply
  2. This opening of Ukraine KGB archives promises to be a huge resource for historical research – and a big employment generator for Ukrainians who can do high-quality archival research for diaspora Ukrainians and overseas researchers.

    Post a Reply
  3. When would the records be available? I’m sure there are a lot of people or their descendants in diaspora that would be interested in obtaining information. In my own family there are members that have either died during created Holodomor of the 30 ‘s or have been through the russian concentrate camps.

    Post a Reply
  4. As many have said it needs to be digitized and published on the web in multiple languages! This should be especially beneficial to the Russian people!

    Post a Reply
  5. Will that cover stuff collected by the Ukrainian KGB?

    Post a Reply
  6. This should make for some interesting reading.

    Post a Reply
  7. It will be interesting to see how the KGB worked in the West against Ukrainian exile groups. As you couldn´t send Russians to try to recruit Ukrainians, the KGB of Ukraine always had to post their people in countries with larger Ukrainian exile groups. And of course the same applied to Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Armenians etc etc.

    Post a Reply

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published.

Share This

Share this post with your friends!