Some more scary stuff from Memorial and the Russian government’s transparency to the historical archives, notes Paul Goble’s blog over at the Moscow Times:

In an article in the current issue of Moscow’s “New Times,” Nikita
Petrov, the deputy head of history society and activist organization
the Memorial Center, wrote
that this is one manifestation of what he describes as the “serious
illness” Russia’s archives now suffer from, “the unconstitutional
prohibition on access to information.”

Russian laws call for “systematic and regular” declassification of
documents, he pointed out, “but this work is not being carried out”
consistently and across the board. Decisions regarding the
declassification of archived materials belonging to Soviet institutions
that have continued to exist are made by those institutions’ own
officials, who often find reasons not to release information.

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