The Access to Information in the Ukrainian Security Service Archives
The Access to Information in the Ukrainian Security Service Archives

Summary/Abstract: The Ukrainian State Security Service Archive contains more than 1.5 million volumes with documents from Soviet times about political repressions. Until recently the vast majority of these documents had remained secret and was not shown to people without access to state secrets. The practice of refusing access to classified archival material of Soviet times was, following the adoption of the Ukrainian Constitution, entirely illegal. In the beginning of 2009 a process of systematic review of the old Soviet archive documents was initiated. During 2009 more than 16,000 archival documents were declassified, a figure amounting to only 2-3 % of the total. In 2011 the declassification process has been essentially accelerated: groups of cases rather than individual cases were examined. Today the process of consideration is finished. 95 % of the archive cases have been declassified; 5 % have been classified according to the Ukrainian “Law on State Secrets”.

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