The Former KGB-Archives in Moldova: How Accessible Are They?
The Former KGB-Archives in Moldova: How Accessible Are They?

Summary/Abstract: The KGB archives of the former Moldavian SSR were accessible to a few Moldavian historians for the first time in the early 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Historians were then interested especially in mass deportations, famine and public executions as well as resistance against the communist regime in its formative years in Moldova, i.e. in 1940-41, the late 1940s and 1950s. Only recently, in January 2010, the doors to the KGB archives were reopened as a result of the political change that launched new politics of memory toward the communist Soviet past. More exactly, a Presidential Commission for the Study and Evaluation of the Communist Totalitarian Regime in the Republic of Moldova was established that had extensive access to the archives of the former Soviet political police in Chisinau. In November 2010, an agreement was signed between the former KGB archives of the MSSR and the Ministry of Interior on the one hand and the National Archives of Moldova on the other, according to which all the files related to Soviet repressions should be transfered to the latter. Thus, all interested persons from Moldova and abroad would get access to them.

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