Shadow of Lubyanka

Former deputy of the Latvian Parliament Linard Mucinch and Ukrainian historian Yuri Shapoval - about how the open archives of the KGB affect politics and understanding of history

Vitaly Portnikov: The heritage of the Soviet KGB still remains not only the subject of interest of professional historians, but also a political factor that determines the development of the former Soviet republics. Over the years, more and more attention to this heritage, especially since the archives are opened, the researchers have the opportunity to dig into them deeper, and politicians - to draw their conclusions about who they work with or worked recently.

Today we are talking with a member of the Government Commission on the scientific study of the KGB of the Latvian SSR, a former deputy of the Parliament of the Latvian Republic, Linard Musins , who arrived in Kiev just in order to get acquainted with the KGB archives of the Ukrainian SSR. And the guest from Kiev is a historian, professor Yuri Shapoval , who has devoted many years to the study of the history of the Ukrainian KGB.

How advanced to Latvian researchers from the point of view of their interest in the past KGB, and how does this affect the modern life of the country?

Latvia is the only one of the Baltic countries, which managed to completely capture the CGB agents of the agents

Linard Mutsins: This creates many questions that are not always easy to answer. We are the only one of the Baltic countries, which managed to completely capture the KGB agents - in Lithuania and Estonia, unfortunately, we managed to take away.

If we look deeper into the Archive of the KGB of Ukraine, then we begin to find “gold bars” here and understand that people who, obviously, predicted that life did not promise from occupied Latvia in a timely manner. We here found various textbooks written on the basis of Latvian affairs, which were carried out in the 50-60s. Unfortunately, we do not have them - it means that they were removed in a timely manner.

Vitaly Portnikov: Just Mr. Mucinsh in 1991 adopted all the premises of the Latvian SSR, and here in 1991 no one adopted anything. In Ukraine, it was much more difficult than in Latvia, I would even say that all this happened frantically.

Yuri Shapoval: I recall those years: the archive was on 33 Vladimir Street, in this main building. Then he moved several times until he got into this building on Goldenburne Street, 7, really, a good building for the archive. So it was a difficult process.

It must be remembered that the documents were destroyed here-in the late 80s and in the early 90s (the employees themselves told about this), and much was taken to Moscow, when there was a central directive, a certain list of documents. Nevertheless, I remain an optimist: the archive is a bottomless barrel, you will always find something.

Vitaly Portnikov: What did Ukrainian researchers find?

Yuri Shapoval: I remember very well when the deputy chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine, the late Vladimir Ilyich Prosiko, told me: "Are there any bags designed for destruction: do you want to see them?" I went up, looked: it turned out to be the form of Mikhail Grushevsky -that is, these 10 years Grushevsky, from 1924 to 1934, surveillance of him, the whole set of documents.

Then, when we wrote a book about the Chekists, for which I and my co -authors in Russia declared extremists, we found very interesting documents regarding the people who headed the security service: this is Vsevolod Baritsky, Israel Leplevsky , Karl Karlson , Alexander Uspensky. We made a book and published a lot of important documents.

The history of the KGB, written for students of the Moscow Higher School, is on the Internet, and then was behind seven seals

What has been preserved, what was important to me is various kinds of instructions and directives, a lot of internal documents. I well remember all sorts of incidents with documents. When in 2009 we made a book about a large terror, the then director of the archive told me: "What are you, Yezhov’s orders cannot be used." - "Why?" -“They are worth the“ secret ”-“ so cut off. ”“ So you need to collect the commission, and this is very difficult. ”But they are nevertheless declassified. That is, there are duplicates of these orders, which are now in Moscow for seven seals and they can be used. Plus textbooks, of course, there are a lot of different kinds of literature that was not issued before. For example, the elementary history of the KGB, written for students of the Moscow Higher of the Moscow Higher Schools are on the Internet, and then there was a seven stunches.

Vitaly Portnikov: In Latvia, did you meet some documents that became discoveries for you?

Linard Mutsins: We have problems now. Special services are strong, they want to use power, and information is power. When we took away the card file from the KGB, it was more used by special services, and this is understandable. But 20 years have passed, public opinion has changed. For some time I also thought that there was no need to open a card file. There are different materials, there is a common archive, an electronic database.

We have one significant difference: our state does not secret and did not secret, that is, we do not have any secret documents of the KGB, because we believe that we are not the heirs of the USSR. Of course, we sometimes hide behind the ideas that personal data can be damaged, human rights must be protected. But when you weigh the benefits for society and the interests of an individual, then social benefits always outweigh. Well, then we will only talk about criminal cases, about those who suffered, sat in the camps, whom they sent? Of course, we talk about them. On August 24, 1991, they adopted the law that the KGB is a criminal organization, and we must proceed from this.

In Russia there was a sensational story when one young man by open sources calculated the killers of his grandfather

Vitaly Portnikov: In Russia there was a sensational story when one young man simply calculated the killers of his grandfather by open sources. And this was with great interest to be perceived by public opinion in the country, the president of which is a native of the KGB. And in Ukraine, all these archives are available, and people could ask who, in fact, repressed their relatives.

Yuri Shapoval: Of course, this can be done: we have preserved documents. Then there was a kind of rotation, and after all, those who committed crimes were then destroyed at the transition from 1938 to 1939. But many have survived. I read that in the 60s they interrogated many, and they told why they did it. Of course, the main argument: "We were ordered, we were executed an order." But it is clear that everyone performed in his own way.

Linard Mutsins: Our case of General Novik ended with a verdict of life imprisonment, that is, we are one of the few who managed to imprison the first secretary of the Communist Party and General of the KGB. But this is because he was alive by that time, while others died.

Linard Mucinch

There were several more things. Of course, Russia very actively protects these people, declares them its citizens ...

Yuri Shapoval: We did not have this line in Ukraine when they announced that the KGB is a criminal organization. In 1991-92, the employees of the former KGB said: you take the oath and serve independent Ukraine, or you are leaving. Some of the people left, and the part remained, and we, unfortunately, then saw that not everyone served independent Ukraine. Plus, of course, the Russian factor: how many people who worked there were admitted to secrets, left for Moscow ...

Linard Mutsins: This is already worked out material.

Vitaly Portnikov: It is very important to understand to what extent in Moscow there is the documentation of the KGB itself, which can then be used against post -Soviet elites. People who collaborated with the KGB in the 70-80s are at a very productive age.

Linard Mutsins: They went upstairs, and then they were removed from the register - it was not supposed to ...

There was no this line in Ukraine when they said that the KGB is a criminal organization

Yuri Shapoval: there are a lot of such examples, among them there are very famous people, one even became deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of Ukraine, and formally recruited, only then he was freed from this burden. However, he was a bad informant: he was a poet, and for him it was in the tenth plan. But the scheme is about the same.

Linard Mutsins: Young people forget about it, thinks that they recruited some communists and people who worked for Soviet power. No, they were looking for agents among nationalists, among those who demanded independence.

Yuri Shapoval: Even among the leaders of the Ukrainian liberation movement there were many such people. Many things were simply destroyed.

Linard Mutsins: We have data that the militants who worked in Western Ukraine were sent to Latvia. There are facts that would also be interesting to study: they taught these techniques, fake partisan detachments were created. On the one hand, they caught real partisans, on the other hand, the agency of England, the USA and Sweden.

Vitaliy Portnikov: That is, these are the same people who actually engaged in this in Ukraine as dummy figures.

Linard Mutsins: Agent-Boevik is something more than just an agent.

Vitaly Portnikov: How does Latvian public opinion perceive your activity today? Is it perceived as archive or as political?

We have data that the militants who worked in Western Ukraine were sent to Latvia

Linard Mutsins: Now they have calmed down. Polls say that everything needs to be published. Your people who came from the Institute of National Memory performed with us and clearly said: today we look at you and tell ours too - it's time to open everything, you can come with a camera, do not pay anything, take pictures that you want, everything is available.

Yuri Shapoval: Once my American colleague Terry Martin, a well-known researcher who wrote a very good book about the period of collectivization in the Soviet Union, went to you, made photocopies of operational and intelligence and a little accumulated all this for me so that I have an idea about this. I asked him, he said: "You know, there is the degree of openness is simply magnificent." It was the end of the 90s.

Yuri Shapoval

Vitaly Portnikov: I found a document in the archive, which became family for me. He showed how all -pervasive the KGB was. The document dated May 14, 1955 concerns the visit to the ambassador of Israel Samuel Aliashev just open Kyiv synagogue. Naturally, there were no representatives of the synagogue itself, there was no rabbi, because they perfectly understood that representatives of the special services would come with the ambassador, and it is not known what would happen next. The Commissioner of the KGB, who wrote a large letter to all the heads of the party and the government, the first secretary of the regional party committee, the chairman of the City Council, all officials were completely informed about this visit.

And I accepted this ambassador, my great -grandfather, who was then the headman of this religious community, he was the only person who was then in this synagogue. When you read the report that he gave positive answers to all the questions of the ambassador, it is difficult to understand what in this case is me in mind whether it is good or bad. I can imagine what kind of razor blade my poor great -grandfather walked on. The first time I was faced with the fact that my relative, as if very far from politics, turned out to be like under sofitis, with an unknown outcome: they could plant after this protocol visit. The Israeli ambassador comes, and where he goes in Kyiv - to the synagogue, to talk with the religious community.

Yuri Shapoval: The regime showed that everything is in order.

A beer agent is something more than just an agent

Linard Mutsins: Today we are studying the KGB and religion in the Government Commission. Many points are very interesting. There was such a puppetical process: everything was planned in advance, agents were substituted everywhere - who will be the archbishop of the Lutheran Church, this is a suitable candidate or worthless. The most interesting thing is that before our death, Brezhnev had the movement of young pastors "Renaissance and Liberation", they began to demand from the Archbishop of Changes within the Church, achieved complete re -election and so on. These are such leaders of public opinion of the intellectual plan.

Yuri Shapoval: I have been making a series of "Ukraine and Poland in the 30-40s. Unknown documents of special services" with colleagues from the Institute of National Memory of Poland, with colleagues from our Institute for National Memory and the Sectoral State Archive of Security for 20 years. Unknown documents of special services. We would have to do something directly with you. It would be, in particular, it would be very interesting with regard to Western Ukraine and the resistance that was there in the post -war period.

On the other hand, of course, you are right: it is impossible to talk about these banal archive investigative affairs, because there people, due to different circumstances, signed false protocols. But the way the special service worked (the technology of her work at that time), how she introduced her people in the liberation movement, are interesting topics, and there is a field for cooperation.

Vitaly Portnikov: This is a very big problem: just a patriotic movement, which became a model for the imitation of young people, was infiltrated by agents, and they did not disappear.

Yuri Shapoval: We had such an odious example: the last UPA commander Vasily Stepanovich Cook was just involved in this. The rest of the people who were thrown abroad, such as Miron Matvienko ... It was perfectly known how and where he was flying, he was safely caught, forced to work. He even wrote a brochure against his colleagues. These are interesting cases, they require serious attention.

Linard Mutsins: There is a tragedy behind every person.

Vitaly Portnikov: Here is a very big question - the moral atmosphere in society, which was literally permeated with agent work, and how society recovers after that.

We had trials, and, unfortunately, the KGB’s impudent agents managed to win them

Linard Mutsins: more than 30 years have passed, people are leaving. We had trials, and, unfortunately, the impudent agents managed to win them. Of course, the KGB workers did not particularly testify against them, but a democratic decision was made that you need to do all this through the court if you want to prove that you are not an agent. Unfortunately, this idea burst, in 90% of cases the prosecutor's office failed to prove anything. Of course, maybe this had to be decided by a military tribunal, because civilian courts do not understand the whole danger of this. On the other hand, there was a very large movement that restrained people. You go to the polls - at first it was impossible, and then it is possible, but under your surname they write: "He registered with the KGB of the USSR as an agent." If you want, vote for him.

Vitaliy Portnikov: Have you been elected, are there such examples?

Linard Mutsins: There are such. They, too, were selected according to certain psychological abilities - such as a provocateur or one that is sent or is already in the national movement to destroy it. He is promoted so that he all the time creates problems for national movements.

Yuri Shapoval: Actually, this is an element of lustration, when people who go to big politics or, suppose, to state work, must write a special statement that "I was not in the service." Here I do not know such examples.

Vitaly Portnikov: Either in Poland: admit that you were there, and live on.

Linard Mutsins, Vitaly Portnikov and Yuri Shapoval

Linard Mutsins: We refused this: why then appeal him, because he wrote, revealed a secret? Then we changed our minds: no, such a road is not suitable for us. There is a ban, since there are not only agents and employees of the KGB, but also members of the Communist Party after August 1991; Different working committees against independence were also created. There are a long series of people who are not allowed to certain places.

Yuri Shapoval: We have different experience: Ukraine has a softer option.

Linard Mutsins: And we think that we have a soft option. We started harder, and now, it seems, everything is a little softer. And you started softly, life made you form a political nation.

In Poland, quietly, without public publicity, simply take away the pension of former functionaries of the security service

Yuri Shapoval: In terms of distance from the past, from the special services for me the most striking example is Poland. They quietly, without public publicity, simply take the pension of former security service functionaries and do it systematically. I was interested in the institute of memory: why are you doing this? A decision has been made, they receive huge pensions. On what basis? They served another system. We do not have this in Ukraine, at this stage this is in no way regulated. This is also an element of departure from the past, from heritage, from traditions, from that special services.

Vitaly Portnikov: Because in Poland, as in Latvia, they perceive the state of communist times as a captured state. This is not a continuation of state traditions. And Ukraine comes to this, but slowly enough.

Linard Mutsins: We restored our Constitution of 1922 - this is very important.

Vitaliy Portnikov: In Ukraine, it is still difficult to explain to someone that the Ukrainian SSR was not a continuation of the Ukrainian People's Republic of the 1918–20s, but a substituted state. Большевики создали альтернативное государство в Харькове.

Линард Муциньш: Наше правительство было на корабле в Лиепайском порту. Там были немцы, дальше – коммунисты, и эта территория была только на корабле.

В Украине до сих пор еще трудно объяснить кому-то, что Украинская ССР – это было не продолжение Украинской народной республики 1918–20-х годов

Виталий Портников: Да, но ваше правительство переехало в Ригу, а правительство Украинской народной республики, в конце концов, потеряло Киев, и сюда приехало правительство Украинской ССР из Харькова. Оно, кстати, тоже называло себя правительством Украинской народной республики.

Линард Муциньш: Ясно: империя хочет доказать, что не желает существовать без Украины.

Юрий Шаповал: В 1920 году в Украину приехал Дзержинский, чтобы навести порядок в спецслужбе. К тогдашней ЧК примазались ужасные люди – бандиты, деклассированные элементы.

Виталий Портников: А потом там были чудесные люди?

Юрий Шаповал: Нет, я даже не об этом. Они чистили ЧК, и он писал Ленину: "Местные коммунисты – все какие-то недоумки. Почти вся украинская интеллигенция – это петлюровцы".