Previously, a description of the activities of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation was already given, however, due to the increased interest of readers in materials about military archives, it was decided to continue this topic, focusing on certain areas of search. Understanding the features of storage and use of archival documents is of great help in compiling a pedigree and family tree.
Introductory information
A significant source of information of a genealogical nature is considered to be the personal files of officers of the Soviet Army, which until 1946 was called the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army. Without taking this information into account, it is very difficult to compile the family tree of your family as accurately as possible.
From point of view , the greatest interest represent the files of officers for the period from 1930 to 1970, namely:
- information about commanders, participants of the Great Patriotic War, who received ranks before the war;
- personal files of officers who received ranks already in the post-war period;
- materials about reserve officers who did not have a special military education, but received their ranks after military training.
Storage locations
Most of the information is located in the district and city military registration and enlistment offices - according to the military registration of officers. However, due to the expiration of the storage period, many information from the early Soviet period was transferred to the 5th department, located in the Moscow region (Podolsk). This is the main archive of the Second World War, a search by last name in which can give significant results.
The Naval Archives (Gatchina, Leningrad Region) store the personal files of fleet officers. Some information about the officers of the Red Army and the Ministry (Commissariat) of the Interior can be found in the Moscow Russian State Military Archive.
Compiling a family tree of your family means taking into account all areas of search, and it is not possible to find an impressive part of the personal files of officers of the period of the Great Patriotic War. First of all, this concerns young officers who received their ranks after completing courses on an accelerated program. Absence combat experience often became the cause of the death of still young commanders, and the intense mode of work of the headquarters did not always allow timely transfer of materials to the archive. But still, you can try to find information on this category of officers in the 11th department of TsAMO, where it is presented in the form of service records; archive of the Great Patriotic War, a search by the name of an officer in combination with other sources often lead researchers to genealogical discoveries. It should only be remembered that biographical data in this institution are issued for review only with the personal presence of the applicant or authorized representative and upon presentation of documents confirming kinship.
Brief description of the personal file
The instructions required that personal files be drawn up in 2 copies. These materials contain detailed information both about the officer himself and about his relatives. The photograph must be endorsed by the immediate superior and the seal of the military unit. The documents also included autobiographical information, a track record, brief information about his wife, children and parents. All these materials, of course, help to make a family tree of your family. The officer's personal number was affixed directly to the service record. In addition, this list dated and outlined all the main stages of service: birth information, social and party affiliation, information about conscription or training in a military institution, about conferring ranks, as well as about awards, injuries, penalties and incentives.
When using materials from the site, a direct link to the source is required.
AiF.ru continues to publish interviews with Research Fellow of the Russian Military Historical Society (RVIO) Anton Migai. the expert spoke about how in the Soviet troops during the Great Patriotic War a record of the dead and missing was kept, as well as how work is currently being done to clarify these data.
According to German data, about 5 million Soviet citizens were taken prisoner during the war, but the data could be restored only about a small part of the prisoners - about a million people. In the second part of the interview, the expert spoke about why not all data on Soviet prisoners of war in German camps was published or available to specialists, as well as how the Nazis kept records of prisoners and when all the data from these archives would be declassified.
Vladimir Shushkin, AiF.ru: What happened if our fighter was taken prisoner? Did our part record him as retired?
Anton Migay: Missing. If someone saw that he raised his hands, ran away to the territory of the enemy, then they write "surrendered". Well, basically, of course, it was recorded as "missing." Further we turn to the German archives. A soldier was recorded in the list of prisoners ...
Transportation of Soviet prisoners of war by the Germans, 1941. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org / Federal Archives of Germany
- And this is his German part recording? Does she take someone prisoner and record in her unit on the spot?
- On the spot, in the archive of the unit. Then they are sent to transit points, to transit camps. It has its own stats. They are sent to what is called Dulag. This is just a transit camp, from the German abbreviation (Dulag = Durchgangslager - transit, or transit camp - ed.). They have their own statistics of the dead, they have their own statistics of the sick, the living, they have their own statistics of further movements. Again, how are these statistics kept? Do the Germans consider it necessary to keep a surname record? Does the soldier give his real name, surname, patronymic? Or some other? Dies nameless? And if he dies, did they count him, did they not count him? Many factors on which the soldier is taken into account. But if the prisoner of war passed the transit camp, he was sent further behind the front line - to Germany or to the territory occupied by Germany, sent to work, there is already a more detailed account. They are already photographed there, fingerprints are already being taken there. The so-called "green card" is started, since they are made of green cardboard. Again, the German clerk, who did not speak Russian, wrote down by ear, and the person's surname changed beyond recognition. The place of birth has changed beyond recognition. A photograph and a fingerprint is still a rare success, because they could decide not to take pictures or there was no such opportunity. They didn't take pictures then. They were too lazy to take fingerprints.
POW card. Notes in Russian were already made when working with the archive. A photo:
If such a card was issued to a prisoner of war, she travels with him. He was sent to work at the plant, the card was sent there, a note was made. Died - marked. If a prisoner of war continued to fight in the camp, organized some kind of underground group, sabotage, poured sand into the rotating parts of machine tools, assembled a radio receiver, read reports from the Soviet Information Bureau, and the Gestapo exposed him, he ceased to be a prisoner of war. He became, according to the laws of the Third Reich, a criminal. He was sent to an extermination camp as a political prisoner.
But here there is such a small line that people, perhaps, did not feel, but according to office work, he ceased to be listed as a prisoner of war and became a criminal. Some, apparently, from the point of view of the legislation of the Third Reich, he lost his rights. But what rights did he have? Talking about this, of course, is ridiculous, but all the same, these moments were also taken into account, and this was also reflected in this very “green card”. If, from the point of view of the laws of Germany of that time, a person is dangerous, a corresponding note was made here. Either the map was crossed out in red, or the abbreviation "Darkness and Fog" ("Nacht und Nebel") was written. This meant that the person was directed to destruction.
Soviet prisoners of war in the camp, August 1942. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org / Federal Archives of Germany
Having received such a card, a person did not live in the camp for a long time, he was destroyed. For other categories of crimes, they were sent to work teams in the camp. Someone survived, again, there were underground groups. The prisoners themselves worked with the cards. If the prisoner was in some kind of underground group, then he was given a command, and the personal card could be moved somewhere, shifted to another box, changed his surname. Prisoners under numbers, a huge number of people. Someone moved the card somewhere, the person was lucky, the person survived. But accounting, again, was kept, and it’s good if the documentation of this concentration camp has reached us. At the end of the war, the Nazis destroyed the camps, and most importantly, the archives of the camps. To prevent these archives from being used in court for an indictment. They worked with them, they entered the archive. They worked with them in the archive. We tried to understand how the German clerk reflected the surname "Smirnov" or "Semyonov", as it is written, and brought it into a single database.
Did you manage to get a lot of German archives?
- Enough. Everything that fell into the Soviet zone of occupation. Archival documents were first of all confiscated and sent for processing. Naturally, it wasn't just us. Naturally, went to the British, Americans.
- Do you have access to the data that the allies had in their zone of occupation?
- We have access now. Archival agencies continue to declassify. Even now they continue to declassify. I can’t tell you specifically whether they have an analogue according to these documents of our Memorial OBD database. Hardly. For each specific surname, you need to go to work there.
Soviet prisoners of war in the camp. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org / Federal Archives of Germany
- That is, all the databases were not transferred to the Soviet Union?
— No, a lot of things were not transmitted. A lot is still stored there. Well, of course, not like in years cold war, official services are no longer so relevant to this, but it is stored. Something is classified, or rather, not declassified. Something just lies. Russia, the countries of the former Soviet Union, is broadcast from time to time. For some political action. Someone comes and delivers. Here at this level.
- Why is it classified? Is it just automatic? Fifty years there, conditionally?
- It was classified in the 40s, because they worked with it. And the declassification period is not 50, but mostly 100 years. Therefore, it has not yet been declassified. You know, let's go a little further. Mata Hari, a well-known such spy in the First World War. So, her case is still classified. All because she was shot in 1917, and the term of secrecy was 100 years. That's just in next year maybe her personal file will be declassified. Although, it would seem, everything is already known about her. And all the data is of purely academic interest. Well, everything in the West is stored approximately at this level.
In order for the label “secret” to actually appear, the state needs good reasons. Most of these cases are state secrets.
But many personal archives famous people become secret at the request of the heirs, who do not regret that their ancestors look in an impartial light.
The most secret documents became in 1938
A radical change in the classification of information occurred in 1918, when the Main Directorate of Archives was organized under the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR. The brochure “Keep the Archives” published by Bonch-Bruevich was distributed through the “ROSTA Windows” to all government agencies, where there was, in particular, a provision on the secrecy of certain information.
And in 1938, the management of all archival affairs was transferred to the NKVD of the USSR, which classified a huge amount of information, numbering tens of thousands of files, as classified. Since 1946, this department has received the name of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, since 1995 - the FSB.
Since 2016, all archives have been reassigned directly to the President of Russia.
Questions for the royal family
The so-called famous Novoromanovsky archive has not been declassified until the end royal family, most of which was initially classified by the Bolshevik leadership, and after the 90s, some of the archival documents were widely publicized. It is noteworthy that the work of the archive itself was strictly confidential. And one could guess about his activities only by indirect documents of employees: certificates, passes, report cards wages, personal files of employees - this is what remains of the work of the secret Soviet archive.
But the correspondence between Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra Feodorovna has not been fully disclosed. Palace materials relating to the relationship between the court and the ministries and departments of the First World War are also not available.
KGB Archives
Most of the KGB archives are classified on the grounds that the operational-search activities of many agents can still cause damage to counterintelligence work, reveal the methodology of its work. Some of the successful cases in the field of terrorism, espionage, smuggling are also mothballed.
This also applies to cases related to intelligence and operational work in the GULAG camps.
Stalin's affairs
From the archive of the President of the Russian Federation to the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, 1,700 files were transferred, formed in the 11th inventory of the Stalin Fund, of which about 200 files were classified as secret.
Of considerable interest are the cases of Yezhov, Beria, but they were published only in parts, and complete information on the cases of "executed enemies of the people" are still not available.
The confirmation that many more documents are to be declassified is the fact that in 2015, at four meetings of the Interdepartmental Expert Commission on declassifying documents under the Governor of St.
Party archives - also in the "secret"
Of considerable interest to researchers are the decisions of the Council people's commissars or resolutions of the Council of Ministers, decisions of the Politburo.
But most of the party archives are classified.
New archives and new secrets
The main task of the archive of the President formed in 1991 Russian Federation was a combination of documents from the former archive of the President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev, and then the subsequent period of the reign of Boris Yeltsin.
The presidential archive has about 15 million different documents, but only a third of them, five million, are in the public domain today.
Secret personal archives of Vladi, Vysotsky, Solzhenitsyn
The personal funds of the Soviet leader Nikolai Ryzhkov, Vladimir Vysotsky and Marina Vlady are closed to the general public.
Do not think that the documents appear classified "secret" only with the help of government officials. For example, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's personal fund, kept in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, is kept secret because the heir, the writer's wife Natalya Dmitrievna, decides on his own whether or not to make the documents public. She justified her decision by the fact that Solzhenitsyn's poems are often found in documents, which are not particularly good, and she would not want others to know about it.
In order to make public the materials of the investigation file, according to which Solzhenitsyn ended up in the Gulag, it was necessary to obtain the consent of two archives - the Ministry of Defense and the Lubyanka.
Plan for "secrets"
Andrey Artizov, the head of the Rosarkhiv, said in one of his interviews: “We are declassifying documents in accordance with our national interests. There is a declassification plan. To make a decision on declassification, three to four experts with knowledge are needed foreign languages, historical context, legislation on state secrets”.
Special commission on declassification
In order to declassify the materials in each archive, a special commission was created. Usually - from three people who decided on what basis to betray or not to make this or that document widely publicized.
Secret materials are of undoubted interest to a wide range of people, but historians warn that working with archives is a ton business and requires certain knowledge. This is especially true of secret archival materials. Not many people have access to them - thousands of documents from the times Russian Empire and the Soviet Union are classified for various good reasons.
On March 13, 1954, the Chekists were removed from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, a new department was formed: the State Security Committee of the CCCP - the KGB. The new structure was in charge of intelligence, operational-investigative activities and the protection of the state border. In addition, the task of the KGB was to provide the Central Committee of the CPSU with information affecting national security. The concept is broad, to be sure: it includes both the personal life of dissidents and the study of unidentified flying objects.
Separating truth from fiction, recognizing misinformation intended for "controlled leakage" is now almost unrealistic. So, to believe or not to believe in the truth of the declassified secrets and mysteries of the KGB archives is everyone's personal right.
The current Chekists, who worked in the structure during its heyday, some with a smile, some with irritation dismiss: no secret developments were carried out, nothing paranormal was studied. But, like any other closed organization that has an influence on the fate of people, the KGB could not avoid mystification. The activities of the committee are overgrown with rumors and legends, and even partial declassification of the archives cannot dispel them. Moreover, the archives of the former KGB underwent a serious purge in the mid-1950s. In addition, the wave of declassification that began in 1991-1992 quickly subsided, and now the release of data is going on at an almost imperceptible pace.
Hitler: died or escaped?
The controversy has not subsided since May 1945. Did he commit suicide or was the body of a doppelgänger found in the bunker? What happened to the Fuhrer's remains?
In February 1962, trophy documents of the Second World War were transferred to the TsGAOR of the USSR (the modern State Archive of the Russian Federation). And along with them - fragments of the skull and the armrest of the sofa with traces of blood.
As Vasily Khristoforov, head of the registration and archival funds department of the FSB, told Interfax, the remains were found during an investigation into the circumstances of the disappearance of the former Reich President of Germany in 1946. The forensic examination identified the partially charred remains found as fragments of the parietal bones and the occipital bone of an adult. The act dated May 8, 1945 states: the discovered pieces of the skull, "probably fell off the corpse, seized from the pit on May 5, 1945."
"Documentary materials with the results of the re-investigation were combined into a case with the symbolic name "Mif". The materials of the named case, as well as the materials of the investigation into the circumstances of the Fuhrer's death in 1945, stored in the Central Archive of the FSB of Russia, were declassified in the 90s of the last century and became available to the general public," the source said.
What was left of the top of the Nazi elite and did not end up in the KGB archives did not immediately find rest: the bones were repeatedly reburied, and on March 13, 1970, Andropov ordered the remains of Hitler, Brown and the Goebbels to be removed and destroyed. This is how the plan for the secret event "Archive" was born, carried out by the operational group of the Special Department of the KGB of the 3rd Army of the GSVG. Two acts were drawn up. The latter reads: "The destruction of the remains was carried out by burning them on a fire in a wasteland near the city of Schönebeck, 11 kilometers from Magdeburg. The remains burned out, crushed into ashes together with coal, collected and thrown into the Biederitz River."
It is difficult to say what Andropov was guided by when giving such an order. Most likely, he feared - and not without reason - that even after a while the fascist regime would find followers, and the burial place of the ideologist of the dictatorship would become a place of pilgrimage.
By the way, in 2002, the Americans announced that they had X-rays that were kept by a dentist, SS Oberführer Hugo Blaschke. A reconciliation with the fragments available in the archives of the Russian Federation once again confirmed the authenticity of parts of Hitler's jaw.
But despite the seemingly indisputable evidence, the version that the Fuhrer managed to leave Germany, occupied Soviet troops, does not leave alone modern researchers. Looking for it, as a rule, in Patagonia. Indeed, post-World War II Argentina harbored many Nazis who tried to elude justice. There were even witnesses that Hitler, along with other fugitives, appeared here in 1947. It is hard to believe: even the official radio of Nazi Germany on that memorable day announced the death of the Fuhrer in an unequal struggle against Bolshevism.
Marshal Georgy Zhukov was the first to question Hitler's suicide. A month after the victory, he said: "The situation is very mysterious. We did not find the identified corpse of Hitler. I cannot say anything affirmatively about the fate of Hitler. At the very last minute, he could fly away from Berlin, since the runways made it possible." It was June 10th. And the body was found on May 5, the autopsy report is dated May 8. ... Why did the question of the authenticity of the Fuhrer's body arise only a month later?
The official version of Soviet historians is as follows: on April 30, 1945, Hitler and his wife Eva Braun committed suicide by taking potassium cyanide. At the same time, according to eyewitnesses, the Fuhrer shot himself. By the way, during the autopsy, glass was found in the oral cavity, which speaks in favor of the version with poison.
Unidentified flying objects
Anton Pervushin, in his author's investigation, cites one demonstrative story that characterizes the attitude of the KGB to the phenomenon. Igor Sinitsyn, a writer and assistant to the chairman of the committee, who worked for Yuri Andropov from 1973 to 1979, once loved to tell this story.
“Somehow, while looking through the foreign press, I came across a series of articles about unidentified flying objects - UFOs ... I dictated a summary of them to the stenographer in Russian and carried them to the chairman along with the magazines .... He quickly flipped through the materials. After thinking a little, he suddenly pulled out of the box desk some small folder. The folder contained a report from one of the officers of the 3rd directorate, that is, military counterintelligence," Sinitsyn recalled.
The information transmitted to Andropov could well become the plot of a science fiction film: an officer, being on a night fishing with his friends, watched as one of the stars approached the Earth and took the form aircraft. The navigator estimated the size and location of the object by eye: diameter - about 50 meters, height - about five hundred meters above sea level.
“He saw two bright beams come out of the center of the UFO. One of the beams stood vertically to the surface of the water and rested on it. The other beam, like a searchlight, searched the space of waters around the boat. Suddenly it stopped, illuminating the boat. seconds, the beam went out. Together with it, the second, vertical beam went out," Sinitsyn quoted the report of counterintelligence officer.
According to his own testimony, these materials later came to Kirilenko and, over time, seemed to be lost in the archives. This is roughly what skeptics reduce the probable interest of the KGB to the UFO problem to: pretend that it is interesting, but in fact bury the materials in the archives as potentially insignificant.
In November 1969, almost 60 years after the fall Tunguska meteorite(which, according to some researchers, was not a fragment of a celestial body, but wrecked spacecraft), there was a message about another fall of an unidentified object on the territory of the Soviet Union. Not far from the village of Berezovsky in Sverdlovsk region several luminous balls were seen in the sky, one of which began to lose altitude, fell, then a strong explosion followed. In the late 1990s, a number of media outlets came across a film that allegedly depicted the work of investigators and scientists at the site of an alleged UFO crash in the Urals. The work was supervised by "a man who looked like a KGB officer."
“Our family lived in Sverdlovsk at that time, and my relatives even worked in the regional party committee. However, even there almost no one knew the whole truth about the incident. In Berezovsky, where our friends lived, everyone accepted the legend of the exploded granary ; those who saw the UFO preferred not to spread. The disk was taken out, presumably, in the dark, in order to avoid unnecessary witnesses, "contemporaries of the events recalled.
It is noteworthy that even the ufologists themselves, people who were initially inclined to believe in stories about UFOs, criticized these videos: the uniform of Russian soldiers, their manner of holding weapons, cars flashing in the frame - all this did not inspire confidence even among susceptible people. True, the denial of one particular video does not mean that adherents of the belief in UFOs give up their beliefs.
Vladimir Azhazha, an ufologist and an acoustic engineer by education, said this: “Does the state hide any information about UFOs from the public, it must be assumed that yes. On what basis? On the basis of a list of information constituting state and military secrets. Indeed, in In 1993, the State Security Committee of the Russian Federation, at the written request of the then president of the UFO Association, pilot-cosmonaut Pavel Popovich, handed over to the UFO center headed by me about 1,300 documents related to UFOs. These were reports from official bodies, commanders of military units, and messages from private individuals."
Occult interests
In the 1920s and 30s, a prominent figure in the Cheka/OGPU/NKVD (the forerunner of the KGB) Gleb Bokiy, the one who created laboratories for the development of drugs to influence the minds of those arrested, became interested in studying extrasensory perception and even searched for the legendary Shambhala.
After his execution in 1937, the folders with the results of the experiments supposedly ended up in the secret archives of the KGB. After Stalin's death, part of the documents was irretrievably lost, the rest settled in the cellars of the committee. Under Khrushchev, the work continued: America was worried about rumors periodically reaching from across the ocean about the invention of biogenerators, mechanisms that control thinking.
Separately, it is worth mentioning another object of close attention of the Soviet security forces - the famous mentalist Wolf Messing. Despite the fact that he himself, and later his biographers, willingly shared intriguing stories about the outstanding abilities of the hypnotist, the KGB archives did not retain any documentary evidence of the "miracles" performed by Messing. In particular, neither Soviet nor German documents contain information that Messing fled Germany after he predicted the fall of fascism, and Hitler put a reward on his head. It is also impossible to either confirm or deny the data that Messing personally met with Stalin and he tested his outstanding abilities, forcing him to perform certain tasks.
On the other hand, about Ninel Kulagina, who in 1968 attracted the attention of law enforcement agencies with her extraordinary abilities, the data has been preserved. The abilities of this woman (or their lack?) are still controversial: among fans of the supernatural, she is revered as a pioneer, and among the learned fraternity, her achievements cause at least an ironic smile. Meanwhile, the video chronicle of those years recorded how Kulagina, without the help of her hand or any devices, rotates the compass needle, moves small objects, such as Matchbox. The woman complained during the experiments of back pain, and her pulse was 180 beats per minute. Its secret was, allegedly, that the energy field of the hands, due to the super-concentration of the test subject, could move objects that fell into the zone of its influence.
It is also known that after the end of World War II, as a trophy in Soviet Union hit, made on Hitler's personal order: he served for astrological predictions of a military-political nature. The device was out of order, but Soviet engineers restored it, and it was transferred to the astronomical station near Kislovodsk. Knowledgeable people it was said that Major General of the FSB Georgy Rogozin (in 1992-1996 former first Deputy Chief of the Presidential Security Service and who received the nickname "Nostradamus in uniform" for his studies in astrology and telekinesis) used SS trophy archives related to the occult sciences in his research.
In the 1990s, a number of documents Soviet era, previously classified as "top secret", began to be made public, however, realizing it, the authorities again closed access to them. Apparently, many secrets of the USSR will remain inaccessible.
Labeled "Top Secret"
The secrecy stamp is imposed for two reasons. First and foremost, most of the documents stored in the archives are state secrets. The second reason has to do with materials related to famous people past, whose heirs do not want publicity of the details of their lives.
In 1918, something happened that today does not allow us to in full get acquainted with the documents of the Soviet past. That year, Lenin received a message in which he was informed how the Red Army soldiers indiscriminately destroyed manuscripts and correspondence. famous writers. The leader immediately called the publicist Bonch-Bruevich with a request to write a pamphlet entitled "Keep the archives." The brochure, which has sold 50,000 copies, has borne fruit.
However, very soon, Soviet officials realized that it was important not only to preserve the archives, but also to restrict access to them by ordinary citizens due to the confidentiality of information contained in some sources.
In 1938, the management of all archival affairs was transferred to the NKVD of the USSR, which classified a huge amount of information, numbering tens of thousands of files. Since 1946, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR received the powers of this department, and since 1995 - the FSB of Russia. Since 2016, all archives have been reassigned directly to the President of Russia.
Stalin's affairs
Despite the fact that many documents from the Stalin era have long been declassified, some of them are still hidden away from prying eyes in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History. In particular, about 200 cases from the Stalin fund are classified as secret. Of considerable interest to researchers are the cases of Yezhov and Beria, which were published only in parts, and there is still no complete information on the cases of executioners who became enemies of the people.
Today, many Russians are requesting investigation files of illegally repressed citizens kept in the archives of the FSB and in the GARF. Access to investigation cases repressed is allowed by law for relatives, as well as for other interested persons. True, the latter can receive the required documents only after the expiration of the 75-year period from the date of the verdict. Often visitors to the archives receive defective copies, in particular, with the names of NKVD officers blacked out.
Some researchers are sure that the cases of the NKVD will never be declassified in full. In March 2014, the interdepartmental Commission for the Protection of State Secrets extended the secrecy period for documents of the Cheka-KGB for 1917-1991 for the next 30 years. This decision also affected a large array of documents relating to the Great Terror of 1937-1938, which were extremely in demand by historians and relatives of the victims of repression.
WWII Archives
Many secrets today still hide the period of the Great Patriotic War. For example, there is still no consolidated work on the operations of the Red Army during the war years with the application of maps in the public domain. Since the release in 1998 of the collection of archival materials "1941", new authentic documents have been published in a very dosed manner. Moreover, researchers do not even have the right to look at the names of cases in the inventories of secret storage.
Historian Igor Ievlev remarks on this: “Apparently, the researchers have already approached the barrier, beyond which, if it is overcome, completely uncomfortable and, probably, even shameful and shameful pages can be opened. real history country".
Also, modern historians cannot get acquainted with the original documents accounting for the number of those called up and mobilized in war time and are still compelled to base themselves on data from the preserved books of conscription, a secondary source. Unfortunately, the draft cards of recruits, the registration cards of the reserve and enlisted personnel of the Red Army, were almost all destroyed.
Not so long ago, on the forum of one of the sites dedicated to the soldiers of the Great Patriotic War, one of the readers shared interesting information. According to him, in one of the conversations former employee The military registration and enlistment office told him a long story about the total destruction in 1953 after the death of Stalin of all records and service records and other primary documents for enlisted personnel from pre-war times until the end of the war.
What is the reason for the desire of the leadership of the USSR to hide data relating to mobilization on the eve and during the Second World War? Researchers are sure: in order to hide the real losses of the USSR in the first months of the war.
KGB Archives
The KGB in the USSR, like the CIA in the United States, is an intelligence service that, during its existence, has carried out a huge number of covert operations around the world. Any state security officer will attest that KGB business papers are rarely declassified in original form. They are preliminarily “cleaned out”, removing information that the department does not want to make public for one reason or another.
Almost all the secrets of the Soviet special services known today were published in London in 1996 thanks to former employee Vasily Mitrokhin of the archive department of the First Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR.
The published materials contain information that could hardly be published in Russia in the foreseeable future. In particular, it was exposed to the public how, between 1959 and 1972, the KGB collected information about American power plants, dams, oil pipelines and other infrastructure in preparation for an operation that could lead to a disruption in the power supply to all of New York.
It contains information detailing the KGB's plans to covertly acquire three American banks in Northern California as part of a covert operation designed to obtain intelligence about high-tech companies in the region. The banks were not chosen by chance, since all of them had previously provided loans to corporations of interest to the KGB. The figurehead in whose name the banks were bought was supposed to be a Singaporean businessman, but the American intelligence services managed to figure out the plans of the KGB.
Even these two facts are enough to understand why the KGB carefully guards its secrets.
Completely personal
Many personal funds related to the life of famous people are also closed to the general public. A lot of things that should not be known are hidden in Stalin's personal archive. But at least the names of these materials are known. There are, in particular, Stalin's outgoing cipher telegrams for the period of the 1930s, the correspondence of the Secretary General with the USSR People's Commissariat of Defense and the USSR Ministry of the Armed Forces for the 1920-1950s, letters from citizens and foreigners addressed to Stalin, documents about Molotov's trip to London and Washington in 1942
In addition, we will probably never know the details of the personal lives of Marina Vladi and Vladimir Vysotsky. Former Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov will not reveal state secrets to us, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn will not tell us about his innermost thoughts. Personal archives of public figures are most often closed from public access by their heirs.
For example, the personal fund of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, stored in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, is in the closed access, because the heir - the wife of the writer Natalya Dmitrievna - decides for herself whether to make the documents public or not. She justified her decision by the fact that Solzhenitsyn's poems are often found in documents, which are not particularly good, and she would not want others to know about it.
Difficulties of declassification
In 1991, the archive of the President of the Russian Federation was formed, which combined documents from the former archive of the President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev, and later the first President of Russia Boris Yeltsin. During the first 10 years of the foundation's existence, many materials were declassified, but in the early 2000s this process was suspended, and the documents that had already been made public were classified again.
Andrey Artizov, head of the Russian Archive, said in one of his interviews: “We are declassifying documents in accordance with our national interests. There is a declassification plan. To make a decision on declassification, three or four experts with knowledge of foreign languages, historical context, state secrets legislation are needed.”
What are the leaders of the country afraid of declassifying documents, many of which have already crossed the half-century mark? Researchers call whole line reasons: Among them, for example, is the very difficult issue of cooperation between the USSR and Nazi Germany on the eve of the Great Patriotic War, reflected in numerous documents.
Among other reasons are given: the real scale of the repressions of the Stalinist authorities against their people; destabilization of the world situation by the USSR; facts that destroy the myth of economic aid from the USSR to other states; squandering public funds on bribing governments of third world countries in order to obtain support from the UN.
In fact, all prohibited materials can be summarized in two main categories: documents that cast the Soviet regime in an extremely negative light, and documents that in any way relate to the ancestors contemporary politicians, about which I would like to remain silent. This is understandable, since both can seriously undermine the reputation modern Russia- the successor of the USSR - in the eyes of the whole world.