aaus-list @ ukrainianstudies.org -- [aaus-list] Reuters on SBU criminal case again historian
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- From: Alexandra Hrycak <hrycaka@reed.edu>
- Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 10:22:07 -0700
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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historical documents.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historical documents on his laptop, which was seized by SBU agents on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historical documents, my own research and personal information," he said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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