The Fate of the KGB ArchivesAuthor(s): Amy KnightSource: Slavic Review, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 582-586Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2499726 .

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The Fate of the KGB Archives

Amy Knight

It has been more than two years since Russian President Yeltsin issued a decree ordering the transfer of both KGB and party archives to the repositories of the Russian Federation.' In accordance with this decree, significant portions of the party archives were placed under the juris- diction of the newly formed Russian Committee on Archives (Rosko- markhiv), which began to declassify documents for public availability. The archives of the former KGB, however, have remained firmly in the hands of the Russian security services. Though the KGB went out of existence in late 1991, the new security apparatus that arose in its place has a strong, vested interest in holding onto its files and has done everything possible to prevent their transfer for subsequent declassi- fication. For his part, Yeltsin has made no effort to have his decree implemented. Indeed, he seems to have avoided the issue altogether, despite its pivotal importance both for historical research and for the future of democratic reform in Russia.

What is in the archives of the former KGB and why are they polit- ically significant? It should be noted that these archives do not repre- sent a single entity, but are divided among several different reposito- ries. Not only the territorial branches of the KGB but also the different services had their own archives. Thus, for example, the KGB's First Chief Directorate (foreign intelligence) had its own archive, which now belongs to the Foreign Intelligence Service (FIS) of the Russian Fed- eration. This archive was and still is completely separate from that of the KGB's Second Chief Directorate (domestic security and counter- intelligence), which now belongs to the Ministry of Security (MB).

The archives of the FIS are not so controversial domestically as those of the MB, because they cover the foreign operations of the KGB and its predecessors. Spying against other countries is something all governments do and few Russians question the legitimacy of KGB ac- tivities in this sphere. Nonetheless, FIS archives could hardly be con- sidered apolitical. They hold answers to questions that have preoccu- pied western policymakers and historians for years, questions that have profound implications for east-west relations today. Judging from the intense public debate that arose last year over the guilt or innocence of convicted American spy Alger Hiss and the current widespread con- cern over the fate of American POWs, many issues from the cold war period need clarification in order to create a "clean slate" for a pro- ductive relationship between Russia and the west. Though western re- searchers cannot expect open access to Russia's foreign intelligence files-any more than Russians could hope for access to CIA files-the current strategy of selling choice KGB documents to western journal-

1. The decree was issued on 24 August 1991. Slavic Review 52, no. 3 (Fall 1993)

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The Fate of the KGB Archives 583

ists and publishing houses is not a satisfactory solution to the archive issue.

In contrast to westerners, Russian democrats and human rights activists have focused their attention more on the MB archives because they house the documents on police persecution of innocent citizens throughout the Soviet period. The so-called "operative collection" con- tains thousands of police dossiers and agent files, with records of secret surveillance and copies of denunciations. The criminal investigation collection includes records of criminal cases investigated by the polit- ical police from the 1920s onward. This collection, which contains protocols of arrests, interrogations and trials, is massive, reportedly containing files on four million cases of "counter-revolutionary" crimes. 2

Democratic reformers in Russia consider it essential to devise a set of rules and regulations governing access to these files, along with those of all other Russian archives. With this goal in mind, several leading democrats, including historian Iurii Afanas'ev, have been ac- tive members of the Commission on the Transfer of the CPSU and KGB Archives to State Use, which was set up by the Russian Parliament in October 1991. As Afanas'ev emphasized in the last issue of Slavic Review, the archives belong to Russian society, not to the state, and any decisions regarding them should serve society's needs rather than those of any particular state agency. Russians deserve to know the truth about their recent history. Not only is such historical knowledge intrinsically important, it is essential in order for Russia to proceed with its devel- opment towards democracy. The MB archives chronicle the crimes of Russia's totalitarian past, a past that Russia must understand and come to terms with before it can achieve true political reform.

However much they want to see the MB archives opened, most Russian democrats recognize the need for a cautious approach to the problem. First of all, there is the potentially destabilizing effect that revelations from the files might have on society. The security police enlisted the collaboration of a vast number of citizens to serve as secret agents and informers, and they regularly made use of denunciations against people to build up criminal cases. As we know, the declassifi- cation of the Stasi files in East Germany and the subsequent revelations of the names of thousands of police collaborators caused a great deal of societal trauma and wrought havoc on the personal lives of many East German citizens. The Czechoslovak solution, with the so-called lustration law, was no less traumatic. There the files remained closed to the public, but special commissions were given access in order to screen candidates for public office. Those with secret police connec- tions were automatically disqualified. As anyone who has lived in a totalitarian state knows, collaboration with the political police is a very

2. A detailed account of what is in the KGB files appeared in an unpublished paper by Arsenii Roginskii and Nikita Okhotin, "Arkhivy KGB: god posle putcha."

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584 Slavic Review

loose concept. Often people were enlisted unknowingly or were coerced into doing so by threats and blackmail. Lustration laws thus raise a host of moral and ethical dilemmas.

Russian democrats are well aware of the pitfalls of opening up the police files and have devoted considerable effort to devising appro- priate solutions to the problem. In June 1992 members of the parlia- mentary commission on transfer of the archives proposed that victims of police persecution and their relatives, while not having the right to restrict access to their files by historical researchers, should have the right to prevent the publication of materials of a personal nature. But the plan was never implemented. Throughout 1992, while liberal mem- bers of the parliamentary commission were pressing to proceed with the proposed transfer of KGB documents, MB officials were prevari- cating, using every possible excuse to obstruct the process. With the backing of the Yeltsin government, the MB adamantly refused to give up any of its operational archives, which describe police methods and contain all the agents' files.

It is hardly surprising that the security services would do all they could to hold on to their archives. After all, many of today's security officials have police careers that date back to the Brezhnev or even the Khrushchev era, and they clearly have much to hide. (Not to mention that, since nepotism was widespread in the security services, many of their fathers were probably in the NKVD.) Even before the coup, KGB leaders, fearful of the pace of democratic reform and its impact on their organization, had begun to destroy documents from their ar- chives. In late 1989 they sent an instruction to staffers in the Second Chief Directorate to dispose of all case records of persons charged under article 70 of the RSFSR Criminal Code, "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda." This infamous statute, used by the KGB to persecute political dissidents during the Brezhnev era, had been removed from the criminal code at the instigation of human rights activists. The KGB used this change in the law as a pretext to begin erasing evidence of its repressive methods. A year later, in September 1990, KGB Chairman Vladimir Kriuchkov ordered extensive destruction of KGB documents in the "operative collection," a process that continued until summer 1991. The loss was reportedly catastrophic. After the August coup, when the KGB was under the chairmanship of the avowed reformer Vadim Bakatin, the purging of documents continued, despite Bakatin's order prohibiting such activity.

Though such a reaction on the part of the security services was predictable, the apparent passivity of the Yeltsin government on this issue is more difficult to explain. By all accounts, Rudol'f Pikhoia and Dmitrii Volkogonov, whom Yeltsin appointed to head the commission on archival transfer, have shown little interest in following through on the process with regard to the KGB archives. Indeed, they have sup- ported the MB's efforts to place limitations on the transfer. Thus, for example, in early 1992 Roskomarkhiv (later renamed Rosarkhiv), which Pikhoia heads, issued a joint directive with the MB saying that the

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The Fate of the KGB Archives 585

transfer of KGB files would take place in two stages. At first only the transfer of files on victims now rehabilitated would take place. Only later would the MB give up the other files. This decision was a blow to those who had hoped to expedite the transfer more quickly.

Interviewed in Literaturnaia gazeta last spring, Pikhoia claimed dis- ingenuously that the transfer of the KGB archives was "proceeding normally across Russia." When pressed, however, he admitted that nothing had been done with the central archives in Moscow. Pikhoia cited a number of vague technical reasons why these archives had not been moved and then volunteered feebly: "Incidentally, as compared with the massive bulk of party documents, the KGB archives are small in volume, trifling."3

As for Volkogonov, a military historian and Stalin's biographer, he has privileged access to all the archives and has gained an enormous advantage over other historians by being able to use secret documents for publication. Presumably he has little incentive to open up the KGB files to other researchers. As Yeltsin's chief spokesman on archival matters, Volkogonov wields a great deal of influence. Yet this same Volkogonov only seven years ago wrote a book entitled The Psychological War, a chilling diatribe against the west.4 In this book Volkogonov lambasted "imperialist propaganda mongers" in Washington for prais- ing such "renegades" as Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov. He also attacked the courageous human rights activist General Pyotr Grigorenko (whose health was ruined during forcible incarceration in KGB-run psychiatric hospitals). In Volkogonov's words, Grigorenko was a "malicious anti- Soviet ... who had completely gone out of his mind ... a man who could easily qualify for a psychiatric hospital."

Volkogonov seems an odd choice to administer Yeltsin's archival policy and interpret Russian history for the west. If he was capable of writing such outrageous untruths only a few years ago, why should we believe him when he tells us what the KGB archives say about Alger Hiss or about American POWs? Volkogonov's sporadic revelations from the KGB files epitomize the arbitrary nature of Yeltsin's archival policy, which encourages the selective use of historical documents for political and commercial purposes. This policy results in half-truths about past police repressions and key aspects of cold-war history. It is designed more to manipulate public opinion than to clarify historical uncertainties.

Democrats like Afanas'ev rightly deplore this cynical disregard for the rights of all Russians to equal archival access. Afanas'ev opposes any use of secret archival material before it has been declassified, even when it is for democratic purposes. This is why he objected when human rights activists Gleb Yakunin and Lev Ponomarev, who gained access to KGB files after the coup, released secret materials showing

3. Literaturnaia gazeta, no. 17 (28 April 1993): 10. 4. D. Volkogonov, The Psychological War (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1986).

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586 Slavic Review

that church officials collaborated with the KGB. We can criticize Afa- nas'ev for perhaps being xenophobic on the question of western access to Russian archives, but he doubtless would be much less vehement on the subject if he did not see the archival authorities "wheeling and dealing" to the detriment of society as a whole. In other words, if the government granted the same access to all Russians under uniform regulations, Afanas'ev probably would not object to allowing foreign- ers the use of archival documents.

Despite the progress that has been achieved with the party archives, it is unlikely that the KGB archives will be transferred over to the Russian state repositories in the near future. As if to confirm this, the MB has taken the initiative and announced plans to open up its own reading room in Moscow. Here, MB officials say, members of the public will be able to see "historical documents associated with political repressions."5 Needless to say, these documents are unlikely to excite much interest.

Liberal members of the parliamentary archival commission believe that Yeltsin's decree on the KGB archives was purely a symbolic ges- ture, which he never intended to implement, and they are probably right. He could hardly have planned to have Rosarkhiv take charge of the security archives when he has not even tried to institute reforms in the MB or the FIS. So long as the security services continue to be run by career KGB officials who wield substantial political power, there is no point in attempting to open up their archives.

In any case, the transfer of the KGB archives is not a priority for Yeltsin and his subordinates. According to the Russian scholar and archivist Arsenii Roginskii, "It is a matter of indifference to them whether the documents from the Lubianka archives are stored in the left 'pocket' or the right: in either case, the materials are fully at their disposal."6 So, for the time being, as Roginskii and his colleague Nikita Okhotin point out, Russians are left with an unfortunate and disquiet- ing irony: "The guardian of the materials on the repressions is the direct successor of the organization that inflicted the repressions, and, moreover, the files of the victims are examined in the very same build- ings where they were tortured and executed."7

5. Interview with Anatolii Kraiushkin, chief of the MB Archives Administration, Rossiiskaia gazeta (6 March 1993): 9.

6. Moscow ITAR-TASS World Service in Russian, 29 May 1993, as cited in FBIS- SOV-93-104 (2 June 1993), 39.

7. Roginskii and Okhotin, "Arkhivy KGB," 30.

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