aaus-list @ ukrainianstudies.org -- [aaus-list] Reuters on SBU criminal case again historian


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Reuters

Secrets case launched against Ukraine museum head

September 9, 2010

Ukraine's state security service on Thursday opened a criminal probe 
against a museum director on suspicion of preparing to divulge secrets 
in what appeared to be a toughening of policy on declassifying 
historical documents.

Under former President Viktor Yushchenko, old KGB archives in the 
ex-Soviet republic were opened up in 2009 and thousands of documents 
spanning the Soviet period were declassified.

But a new state security (SBU) chief, appointed when President Viktor 
Yanukovich came to power in February, has come out against free public 
access to KGB-era files and said the job of Ukraine's SBU service is to 
guard secrets, not leak them.

On Thursday, the SBU said it had opened an investigation against Ruslan 
Zabily, director of a museum in Ukraine's western city of Lviv, for 
preparing to divulge state secrets.

Zabily -- whose museum is dedicated to the tens of thousands who died in 
western Ukraine under Soviet and Nazi rule -- had illegally gathered 
material containing state secrets, and intended to pass this on to other 
people, an SBU statement said.

He denied any state secrets were being compromised and said the 
historical documents on his laptop, which was seized by SBU agents on 
Wednesday, were publicly available.

Zabily, speaking at a Kiev news conference on Thursday, said the move 
was part of a drive by the Yanukovich leadership to play down the role 
of the Ukrainian nationalist movement in the nation's history and cover 
up Soviet-era abuses.

"I demand my computer back quickly. There were only copies on it of 
historical documents, my own research and personal information," he said 
in a statement.

DARK STALIN YEARS

Public access to KGB-era files was relaxed under Yushchenko, allowing 
many Ukrainians to find out what had happened to relatives who 
disappeared during the dark years under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

Yanukovich's power base is in the Russian-speaking east where many 
Ukrainians view history through a Soviet prism and share Russia's unease 
at overt criticism of the Soviet past.

Critics say restricting access to old KGB files reflects the strong 
pro-Moscow slant in Yanukovich's policies.

"Playing games with the memory of whole generations is fairly 
dangerous," Zabily later told Reuters. "Politicians should not get 
involved in these questions. That is the prerogative of historians."

New SBU chief Valery Khoroshkovsky reversed Yushchenko's policy on the 
KGB archives after taking over earlier this year and said:

"The job of the secret service is primarily to guard its secrets, guard 
the laws that created these secrets."

Volodymyr Vyatrovych, a former SBU archives chief who played an 
energetic role in opening up historical files until he was sacked when 
Yanukovich took over, said the action against Zabily seemed like a 
"witchhunt against historians".

"SBU agents not only are trying to cover up the crimes of the Stalin 
regime, but use his methods today as if it is not 2010 but 1937," 
Vyatrovych said in a statement. The SBU said compromising material had 
been found on Zabily when he arrived in Kiev from Lviv on Wednesday.
Its statement said action was under way "to identify the circle of 
people to whom the secret information had been intended."
-- 
**************************

Alexandra Hrycak
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology
Reed College
3203 SE Woodstock Blvd.
Portland, Oregon 97202-8199


E-mail: hrycak@reed.edu		
Telephone: 503-517-7483 		
Fax: 503-777-7776 		
Personal web page: http://academic.reed.edu/sociology/faculty/hrycak/





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