Friday, March 01, 2013

Former Soviet Archives

From best I can tell the archives of the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan are still both partially open with regards to researching Stalinist repression even though both states are run by dictators. Whereas those of democratic Kyrgyzstan have reclassified everything to do with Soviet violations of human rights as secret and top secret. Scholars writing on the Russian-Germans conscripted into the labor army are still citing a number of different archives from the RF and Kazakhstan. In contrast those writing about the subject on Central Asia recently only cite archives from Moscow and none from Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. I know for a fact as a result of going to the TsGAKR in Bishkek last summer that these documents are indeed now off limits in Kyrgyzstan despite the fact that many of them were published earlier. I assume that those in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan have also been reclassified. But, I have no evidence other than the lack of citations in recent scholarship. Can anybody confirm the status of the archives in these three states regarding research into Stalinist repression?

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