Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

Yevhen Zakharov Yevhen Zakharov writes: My family is among the majority of Ukrainian families who suffered through tragedies and who want to know the truth about our past.

Valery Khoroshkovsky, the new head of the State Security Service (SBU), didn’t take long in signaling a new direction for the law enforcement/spy agency, the Ukrainian successor to the Soviet KGB.

“The Security Service should reduce work with archives and concentrate on its main tasks,” Khoroshkovsky said. “A great deal of material has been declassified: the truth that needed to be made available to the Ukrainian people… has been made available.”

He also defined his agency’s mission as “primarily in protecting its secrets, protecting the laws which created these secrets.”

That same day one of those dismissed was the head of the central SBU archive Volodymyr Vyatrovych, who led an unprecedented campaign to open previously secret archives so Ukrainians could better understand their individual and collective histories.

Now, most staggering, a new top official is saying with total certainty that the people have had enough truth given to them. Once again, government officials are trying to decide for us what we need to know and what we don’t. It won’t work, Valery Ivanovych!

I would remind you, should you have forgotten that the main duty of the state, according to Article 3 of the Constitution, is to affirm and defend human rights, including the right to truth about our history.

What secrets are we talking about? Nobody is denying that the Ukrainian state has its secrets, and that the State Security Service must protect them, in accordance with the law.

However, the bulk of the SBU archival material was created before 1991 in another country, the Soviet Union, which no longer exists.

Moreover, the stamps “secret,” “entirely secret,” and other stamps restricting access on these documents are not set out in any Ukrainian law! I would point out that rights to information, under article 34 of the Constitution, may only be restricted by specific laws.

It is clear that all documents classified as secret by the Soviet regime need to be declassified. There is no sense in independent Ukraine in keeping any of that material secret. And the information which should remain secret can be given the stamps “top secret” or “particularly important” in accordance with the Ukrainian Law “On State Secrets.”

The systematic process of declassifying documents about political repression of the Soviet period – the bulk of the SBU archives -- was only begun in 2009. The leadership of the SBU said on Dec. 24 that 16,000 archival documents had been declassified, only a small percentage of the overall number of documents which need to be declassified.

There are archival documents about Holodomor, about the national liberation struggle of the 1940s, about the criminal files of prominent figures, etc.

And most of the documents about Soviet crimes are still closed. Those include records that would shed light on such atrocities as:

1. Mass repression against the peasants during the terrible years of 1930-1931;

2. Organization of the Holodomor, the man-made famine resulting in the death of 7 to 12 million people in the USSR, including up to 15 percent of the population of Ukraine in 1932-33.

3. Mass arrests and executions in the “Kulak operation” of the NKVD – (the Soviet KGB predecessor), which called for a quota of executions, estimated to be July 1937 – November 1938 (767,397 people were arrested, of whom 386,798 were executed).

4. Repression against the families of people convicted of “state treason” in 1937-1938.

5. Executions and convictions according to the so-called “execution lists.” where the measures of punishment was determined personally by Stalin and his henchmen, including, Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovych, Zhdanov, Mikoyan and others. During the period from February 1937 to October 1938, 44,000 people were convicted, of whom 39,000 were shot, among other mass repressions of the Great Terror.

6. The mass execution of 22,000 Polish officers taken prisoner in the spring of 1940 in Katy