Ten Years of Research in Soviet KGB Archives

From June 20 to June 22, 2024, the international conference "Research of the NKVD/KGB and the Opening of Soviet Secret Police Archives in Ukraine, 2014–2024" was held at the Toskánský Palace in Prague. The event aimed to assess a decade of archival study of Soviet secret service materials in Ukraine since their full disclosure following Ukraine’s "Revolution of Dignity" in 2014. Special attention was given to the work of Ukrainian historians and archivists amid the ongoing war.

The event was made possible through financial support from the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Georgetown University, the University of Toronto, and long-term collaboration with the Czechoslovaks in the Gulag project at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (ÚSTR), alongside Michael David Fox from the Jacques Rossi Memorial Fund, who had previously organized similar gatherings.

The conference program included seven expert sessions featuring a total of 15 individual presentations and two roundtable discussions. These sessions addressed key issues related to the operation of Soviet security agencies, including surveillance, informants, the concept of enemies devised by the Soviet secret services, the violent methods they used to assert their influence, how they impacted individuals and society at large, and the long-term consequences on the historical consciousness of the population. Among the speakers were leading global experts on Soviet secret services and repression, including Serhii Plokhii from Harvard University, Lynne Viola from the University of Toronto, and Alain Blum from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris.

The conference, held under the patronage of Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský, opened with a discussion titled “Ten Years Later: The Opening of Secret Police Archives in Ukraine During Wartime.” Participants included Andriy Kohut, director of the State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine (HDA SBU), and Iryna Lopuschynska, director of the State Archive of the Kherson region, who shared how the war affects the work of archivists and historians and discussed conditions in Russian-occupied territories.

The program on the second day began with the session “Terror and Its Perpetrators,” examining individuals responsible for implementing Stalinist purges and repressions during the Great Terror (1937–1938). Presentations explored interrogation methods and the activities of investigators in remote parts of the Soviet Union, as well as the reliability of KGB archival records.

This was followed by a session on war crimes and evidentiary materials, featuring Olena Lysenko from the Institute of History of Ukraine, who presented on the use of documents from the 1970s and 1980s in the investigation of Nazi war crimes committed in Ukraine.

On the third day, attendees examined the practices of the secret police and the methods Soviet authorities used to exert control over the population. Guillaume Minea-Pic from the Center for Russian, Caucasian, and Eastern European Studies (CERCEC/EHESS) in Paris discussed the theory and practice of violence employed by the Cheka and OGPU in building the Soviet state. His lecture was complemented by Kathryn David from the U.S. Department of State, who analyzed surveillance of religious activities.

Another key topic of the conference was the role of archives in the digital age, which was the focus of the first roundtable discussion. Historian Igor Cașu from the National Archive Administration of Moldova, Christian Ostermann from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Natalia Khanenko-Friesen from the University of Alberta, and others discussed the opportunities digitalization offers for scientific collaboration, the ethical challenges it raises, and new ways to study and analyze vast amounts of archival data.

The conference "Research of the NKVD/KGB and the Opening of Soviet Secret Police Archives in Ukraine, 2014–2024" provided significant new insights and opened discussions on the methods the Soviet secret services used to influence the lives of millions. The event highlighted not only the importance of the lectures and discussions but also the international cooperation between experts from various countries who contributed to this important gathering. The conference also underscored that the opening of KGB archives in Ukraine was a key step toward a better understanding of Soviet history and its impact on the present. The conference proceedings will be published in book form in the United States.

Conference Committee:
Michael David-Fox (chair), Georgetown University; Igor Cașu, National Agency for Archives, Moldova; Adam Hradilek, ÚSTR; Andriy Kohut, HDA SBU; Serhii Plokhy, Harvard University; Lynne Viola, University of Toronto; Vanessa Voisin, University of Bologna.

Co-Sponsors:
Czechoslovaks in The Gulag Project, Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, Prague; The Jacques Rossi Memorial Fund for Gulag Research, Georgetown University.

Financial Support and Patronage:
The event was held under the auspices of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Jan Lipavský, with financial support from the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, provided through the program supporting applied research in national and cultural identity, and specifically through the grant "The database of the historical sources concerning political repressions against Czechoslovakian citizens and compatriots in the Soviet Union" (Project Number DH23P03OVV073), as well as from the University of Toronto.

Welcome speech by the conference organizers:

Welcome speech by the representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Discussion: “Ten Years After: The Opening of Secret Police Archives in Ukraine in A Time of War.”
Moderator: David Stulík, Special Representative for the Eastern Partnership
● Iryna Lopuschynska Director, Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine
● Andriy Kohut Director, Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine

Session 1. Terror and its Perpetrators
Moderator: Adam Hradilek, Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (ÚSTR)
● Timothy K. Blauvelt (Ilia State University, Tbilisi), “NKVD Investigators as Subjects during the Great Terror in the Stalinist Periphery”
● David Brandenberger (University of Richmond), “Reading Interrogation Protocols after the Linguistic Turn: A Textual Analysis of Uman’s 1939-1940 Purge of the Purgers”

Session 2. War Crimes and Evidence
Moderator: Serhii Plokhii (Harvard University)
● Fransizka Exeler(Magdalene College, Cambridge and Freie Universität Berlin), “What Counts as a Reliable Historical Source and For Whom? The 1947 Soviet Military Trial at Chernihiv and Some Reflections on the Nature of Soviet War Crimes Trials”
Video is not available due to the speaker's online connection.
● Olena Lysenko (Institute of the History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), “Documents from State Security Agencies of the 1970-1980s as a Source for Investigating Nazi War Crimes: A Case Study of the Chernihiv Region of Ukraine”

General Discussion on Papers from Sessions 1 and 2
Moderator and Discussant: Lynne Viola (University of Toronto)

Session 3. Secret Police Files: Lives and Afterlives
Moderator: Igor Cașu (National Agency for Archives, Moldova)
● Paula Chan (All Soul’s, Oxford), “A Tale of Two Perpetrators: Soviet War Crimes Prosecutions from Local to Digital”
● Karolina Koziura (European University Institute, Florence), “The Afterlife of Files: Secret Police Archives across Eastern Europe”

Session 4. Violence and Memory
Moderator: Vanessa Voisin (University of Bologna)
● Jared McBride (UCLA), “Just Off-Camera: Epistemic Borders and Violence in Ukrainian Secret Police Archives”
● Victoria Smolkin (Wesleyan), “How the Security Apparatus Participated in both the Repression and Construction of Memory in Late Soviet Ukraine”

General Discussion on Sessions 3 and 4
Moderator and Discussant: Vanessa Voisin (University of Bologna)

Roundtable 1: Digital-Age Scholarship, International Cooperation, Public History
Igor Cașu (National Agency for Archives, Moldova), Adam Hradilek (ÚSTR), Andrii Kohut (SBU Archive), Natalia Khanenko-Friese (University of Alberta), Christian Ostermann (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars)

Session 5. Secret Police Practices
Moderator: Lynne Viola (University of Toronto)
● Guillaume Minea-Pic (CERCEC/EHESS and European University Institute), “Theory and Practices of Violence: The Cheka/OGPU and Soviet State-Building”
● Kathryn David (Office of Historian, U.S. Department of State), “Surveillance and the Sacred”

Session 6. Stalinist Deportations and the Agency of the Deportees
Moderator: Andriy Kohut (SBU Archive)
● Roman Podkur (Institute of the History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), “The Research Potential of the Files of Department V (Military Censorship) for the Study of Popular Opinion”
● Alain Blum (EHESS and INED), “Postal Control and Family Files: What Ukrainian and Lithuanian Archives Reveal about Deportation Situations”

General Discussion on Sessions 5 and 6
Moderator and Discussant: David Brandenberger (University of Richmond)

Session 7. Informants, Information, and Ideology
Moderator: Michael David-Fox (Georgetown University)
● Julie Fedor (University of Melbourne), “The KGB’s ‘Trusted Persons’: A Closer Look at an Important but Neglected Category of KGB Collaborators”
● Oksana Yurkova (Institute of the History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), “GPU Secret Informants at the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences: The Cases of Secret Informants ‘Academician’ and ‘European’ in the 1920s”
● Olga Bertelsen (Tiffin University, Ohio), “The KGB and Soviet Youth: Forms of Ideological Control”

General discussion for Session 7
Moderator and Discussant: Michael David-Fox (Georgetown University)

Roundtable 2: Reflections on the State of the Field
Seth Bernstein, Michael David-Fox (Georgetown University), Serhii Plokhii (Harvard University), Roman Podkur (Institute of the History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), Vanessa Voisin (University of Bologna)