Truth and lies in Ukraine's KGB archives

After the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, historian Volodymyr Vyatrovych took the reins of the KGB archive in Lviv. The job was a reward for his criticism of a policy limiting researcher access to the holdings of the Regional State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine – its current official name. He occupied the position for a little more than two years, until the presidential election in early 2010, after which he was replaced.

In 2012, along with colleagues, Vyatrovych published a guidebook titled The Right to Truth. “In the book,” he told me, “we show that despite the change in Ukraine’s political situation, it is absolutely possible to gain access to archives in the country. One only needs to be confident and calm, write letters, and point to the legislation, which hasn’t changed.” We discussed his experience declassifying KGB documents when he came to Stanford for this year’s Hoover Archives China-Russia Summer Workshop.

Volodymyr Vyatrovych: When I was appointed as director of the Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine in October 2008, I brought several colleagues with me – historians and managers. We initiated changes. We started the declassification process, published documents, and started an electronic archive.

Natalia Koulinka: What sort of documents does the archive keep?

VV: It’s practically the entire history of Soviet Ukraine from 1918 to 1991. These documents show Soviet history from inside. My experience includes work with Communist Party materials as well as with documents of Cheka and KGB, and I have to say that the latter are the most interesting. The Communist documents contain too much ideology, too much that’s far from reality. Conversely, KGB documents from before the early-to-mid 1980s are full of precise information, sometimes even speaking cynically about what was happening in society. There are lots of documents: summaries of public opinion, agents’ reports about who said what and who heard. This is, of course, one specific type of resource, but with the information contained in these documents, it’s possible to reconstruct what the society was all about. Starting from the second half of the 1980s, however, or maybe even earlier, even these documents no longer contain information that would help one understand reality.

 

NK: ???

VV: The decomposition of the Communist order took the KGB and the system of internal security down with it. In the mid-‘80s, the information it provided to the Soviet leadership was mostly that which the leadership wanted to hear. They were afraid to show the real picture of what was happening around them. And that’s one of the reasons the Soviet leadership lost control over the situation in the country.

NK: How exactly did this affect KGB documents? What was the main difference between those created before and after the mid ‘80s?

VV: They started to contain less and less concrete information and more and more ideology. And that meant it became harder to understand what was going on in society. Phrases like “the society welcomes the Communist Party line” and “the society supports such-and-such initiative of the authorities” began to appear. At times, it was almost comical. Two documents from 1991 are indicative of the changes. Starting in 1990 in Ukraine, the KGB reported not to the Communist Party, but to the Supreme Soviet. On August 19, 1991, the last head of the Ukrainian KGB wrote to leaders of the Supreme Soviet that Ukrainian society welcomed the creation and actions of the Emergency Committee. Two days later, after the putsch failed, the same person signed a document saying that Ukrainian society unequivocally condemned the bunch of deadbeats who called themselves the Emergency Committee. In my opinion, this is a demonstrative moment. The organization no longer performed the duties entrusted to it.

NK: But your example refers to the early 1990s, when everything had drastically changed. Could it be that in KGB documents from the 1980s, we see not the results of decline, but rather evidence of people’s true feelings?

VV: I think the turning point in Soviet history, one of the most important moments that changed people’s attitudes toward the authorities, was the catastrophe at Chernobyl. And once again, it’s KGB documents that showed me that the society clearly and openly distrusted the authorities. Also at that time, strange and funny things started appearing in the KGB documents, such as reports that lectures on things like “Secret Agents and Glasnost” and “Perestroika and the Soviet Security Service” were conducted for KGB officers. Articles heavily loaded with politics and ideology began appearing in The KGB Collection(«Сборник КГБ») journal. Previously, it had published only methodological, practical things. And then suddenly Soviet ideology appeared. They began printing articles depicting state security services as keeping pace with the times, supporting perestroika and feeling the necessity of glasnost. Everything concrete was simply displaced by ideological articles like that. That’s why at the end of the ‘80s, when the national-democratic movements in Ukraine and throughout the USSR were in full swing – especially in the Baltic countries, Georgia, and Russia – the security services weren’t ready to suppress them. The Soviet authorities couldn’t do anything.

NK: Do these documents preserve names of those who worked with the KGB?

VV: There aren’t many of those documents left from the ‘60s to the ‘80s. Why not? On July 16, 1990, after the velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe, which saw democrats taking over the archives of security services, KGB leadership in Moscow issued order No. 00150, which called for the liquidation of archival documents. Documents began to disappear in droves, and those who did the destroying apparently started with the papers that may have contained their own names. That meant materials from the ‘60s to the ‘80s were targeted first and foremost. Some of the operational materials relating to politicians were taken out Ukraine. Unfortunately, there’s no way to trace what the materials were or how much there was. I can only say that I spoke with KGB veterans who told me from the time that order was issued to the end of 1991, and even after Ukraine became independent, documents were continually shipped to Moscow. And I’m confident that to this day, these documents are somehow being used to influence the country politically.

NK: Your directorship at the archive ended in 2010. The new head of the Security Service of Ukraine, appointed by President Yanukovych, announced in his very first press conference that all necessary truth had already been revealed…

VV: I commented on his statement, saying that in Ukraine’s history, another security service had decided how much truth should be revealed, and that service had ended badly. That evening, Russian websites posted my statement, saying, “According to the former director….” That’s how I learned I had been fired. The presidential order firing me actually appeared the next day.

NK: Why do you think the new leader decided to change the archival access policy you introduced?

VV: I think the main reason was political. The new president of Ukraine was positioning himself as a pro-Russian president, and there was evidence of direct Russian influence in this matter. The fact is that archival policies in Russia underwent major changes beginning in 1991. In the early ‘90s, the Russian president himself signed the first decrees opening the archives, but somewhere around 1993, still under Yeltsin, the work began to back up, and the archives, especially KGB archives, began closing again. Under Putin, a former KGB officer, working with the KGB archives became almost impossible.

That’s why our opening of the archives in Ukraine invoked a negative reaction in Russia. The Russian side repeatedly stated that we shouldn’t continue our work, because by opening archives in Ukraine, we might reveal Russian state secrets. It should be noted that many Western researchers came to Ukraine to work in the archives and used Ukraine as a kind of window to the world of KGB archives because so many materials that were closed and forbidden in Moscow remained open there. The FSB even requested that we sign a document essentially saying that Ukraine and Russia should determine together which materials should and shouldn’t be opened to the public. We rejected the proposition. However, in 2011, after my firing, an agreement was signed under the framework of the CIS that requires consensus between Russia, Belarus – I think – Armenia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan (Ukraine still hasn’t signed) on issues surrounding the declassification of KGB archives, and only with the permission of each country can any document be opened. That means declassification will always be blocked.

NK: What were you able to do in the two-plus years you were director of the archive?

VV: We had just started the process, but when I was fired, approximately 10% of the material had been declassified. If our work had not been cut off, we could have finished the complete declassification by 2012-13. But we did create an electronic archive system and placed tens of thousands of documents in it. They were supposed to be placed on a special website, which we didn’t have time to create. Nevertheless, in each regional branch of the archive, special reading rooms were created for the electronic archive, where anyone can work and download material onto flash drives. By the way, new documents were still being uploaded to the electronic archive for somewhere around a year after my dismissal. Now, as far as I know, the process has been stopped, but the electronic archive still works. The most important thing, I think, is that we developed a methodology for how, within the rather imperfect archival legislation in Ukraine, the archives may be declassified someday. On the legislative level, of course, the situation hasn’t changed much. So the declassification we started can be continued when the political situation in the country changes. We also published a guidebook for the archive. It’s a unique publication in the Post-Soviet space.  As far as I know, no other archive has published books indicating what materials they have. Finally, we attempted to change attitudes toward the archives. We showed that these documents are important historical resources, that they should be used by historians, and that the Security Service shouldn’t govern their usage.

NK: What languages is the guidebook in?

VV: Parts are in Ukrainian and parts are in Russian, because we left the documents in their original languages. Some are in Polish. Ukraine was the extreme western republic of the USSR, so documents on the Hungarian Uprising in 1956, Prague Spring in 1968, and Solidarity in Poland in 1980 can be found there. That’s why the archive is very interesting for Western researchers, especially from Eastern Europe.

NK: How does Ukraine’s legislation regulate Western researchers’ access to its archives?

VV: The legislation doesn’t include any special provisions for Western researchers. They have the same rights as Ukrainians. And it should be noted that when I was director, Western researchers took advantage of the openness of the archive to a far greater degree than Ukrainians, who often put it off until “later.”

NK: You brought several colleagues to the archive with you. Did they remain after you were fired?

VV: The majority were fired. Some were fired immediately after I was. My replacement was fired after only a month. The historians worked about a year longer. But by the end of 2011, the research unit, where young historians and graduate students worked, was liquidated. I think only two of the people who came with me are still working there, but they don’t do research anymore – they’re responsible for bureaucratic issues.

Джерело: The Stanford Post-Soviet Post

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