SBU declassifies documents about political repression in Ukraine
On 27 August Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU] presented its book “Memory Declassified. Holodomor 1932-1933 in the documents of the GPU-NKVD”. It also made public declassified documents about political repression in Ukraine during the Soviet period.
The presentation took place in the course of a roundtable held at the SBU headquarters and attended by historians, legal specialists, representatives of nongovernmental organizations, Ukrainian organizations abroad and others.
The Acting Head of the SBU Valentin Nalyvaichenko stressed that at the present time there could be no secrets, subjects hushed up or distorted on issues concerning political repression.
“The Ukrainian Security Service is opening up to the Ukrainian public and the international community all material it holds on this issue and calls on researchers, historians and all concerned members of the public to work with them”.
Mr Nalyvaichenko said that according to preliminary estimates the NKVD had arrested 279 thousand people in Ukraine from 1937-1939. Of the overall number of people arrested just in 1937, 53% were Ukrainians, 18.8% - Poles; 10.2% - Germans; 8% - Russians; Jews – 2.5%.
He also said that in preparing the publication, SBU staff had processed 1,314 volumes of operational statistical reporting by State Security bodies on the repressions. At present almost 500 criminal cases are being studied.
Answering questions from journalists, Mr Nalyvaichenko stated with regard to the repressions that “it was a planned mass campaign, a planned crime against humanity”. He said that the Ukrainian Security Service answered only for their archives, “we are telling the full truth”.
He added in this context that SBU had sent official requests for information to their colleagues in the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan. They have already received a response from the Kazakhstan Security Service providing a list of Ukrainians forcibly moved to Kazakhstan. As regards the central archives of the Russian Federation, the SBU is planning in the near future to hold negotiations with their Russian colleagues in order to receive the relevant documents from the latter. “For this reason our archives testify to only a part of this tragedy”, Mr Nalyvaichenko explained.