Until now, many archival documents remain classified as "secret". Their publicity, it is believed, may harm the state interests of the Russian Federation - the legal successor of the USSR.
Why is it kept classified?
It is difficult to write about secret documents precisely because of their secrecy. No one, except those initiated into state secrets, knows what they contain. At best, one can only roughly list those cases to which classified materials may relate. Many documents related to the activities of the highest bodies of state power of the USSR in the 1930-1980s, especially during the Second World War, remain inaccessible to researchers. Until 2044, the archives of the NKVD related to the Great Terror of the 1930s are classified, so the truth about this tragic time will be revealed, at best, to the children of living researchers.
What in the Soviet past could discredit the present Russian state in such a way, if it is brought to light? I will make a special reservation: this is only if such things really took place in history, and documents that testify to them have been preserved. They might not have been. We can assume their presence only on the basis of indirect data cited in publications appearing from time to time.
Let's go through the order, from the first decades of Soviet power.
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The Russian Federation is unlikely to ever fully declassify cases concerning the organization and conduct of the mass red terror during the civil war, the origin of the funds of the Bolshevik party during the revolution, secret negotiations between the Soviet leadership with imperial Germany, the Entente and foreign financial circles, the background of the Brest Peace and the role of individuals in its imprisonment, the cooperation of the Bolsheviks and pan-Islamists in "revolutionizing" the East, the use of prisoners of war and military advisers from Germany and Austria-Hungary to create the Red Army, the role of the institution of hostages in forcing "specialists" to work for Soviet power, total genocide " bourgeoisie "in Petrograd in 1918, the suppression of popular uprisings in 1918-1921, organizing famine in the Volga region in 1921-1922. The genocide of the Cossacks should be especially highlighted. The fate of some national minorities is also incomprehensible - for example, historians do not know for certain where almost half a million Chinese who stayed in Russia went after the civil war.
Until now, it is only from local archives and indirect publications that one can judge the scale of popular resistance to collectivization and the measures to suppress it, in which units of the regular Red Army were involved, including combat aviation and chemical troops. The scale of military cooperation between the Red Army and the German Reichswehr in 1922-1935 is only partially revealed. The scale of the sale abroad by the Soviet government of cultural property from private collections and storerooms of state museums confiscated during the revolution is unknown. It is unlikely that Russia will ever reveal all the documents concerning the occurrence of mass famine in the republics most affected by collectivization (Ukraine, Kazakhstan).
With regard to the period of World War II, the declassification of plans for an offensive war against Germany, for dividing the world into spheres of influence, with respect to neighboring states, can inflict obvious damage on the state. Historians suspect a taboo on the publication of authentic data on the losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War. Obviously, if in fact there was an order from Stalin to evict all invalids of the Great Patriotic War from large cities on one day, then the documents testifying to this will never be made public in our state.
The seal of secrecy will obviously remain indelibly on all Soviet plans for a war with the United States after 1945, on many documents relating to the foreign policy of this period. The closer to our time, the more they affect the interests of the ruling elites, not only in Russia, but also in countries that are considered strategic partners of the Russian Federation in the "third world". The materials of the special services of this period, probably, still have not lost their relevance even in personal terms. The military plans of the late USSR may have also undergone little change at the present time. It is unlikely that Russian citizens will ever learn about the true scale of the USSR's gratuitous aid to developing countries. And, of course, we will not find out in the foreseeable future the whole truth about the war in Afghanistan.
Separately, it should be said about biomedical experiments on living people, which may have been carried out in the USSR. But this is a special article.
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Never say never"
In fact, maintaining the secrecy of many documents gives rise to monstrous rumors about the secrets that are hidden in them. And these rumors often damage the prestige of the state even more than the full opening of the archives can bring.
Nothing is eternal under the Moon. Therefore, one can never say that such and such in the past will never become public. For example, some important state documents about the Soviet period, classified in the Russian Federation, could be preserved in the archives of the former Soviet republics, and now independent states, and can be published by them. And the policy of our state is also not eternal and unchanging. Many of us have experienced events that testify to this, and even participated in them.
Archival documents alone will never be declassified. These are the documents that were destroyed without a trace. According to many testimonies, the secret commission of the Central Committee of the CPSU to investigate illegal repressions, created by Nikita Khrushchev after the XX Congress in 1956, destroyed, on his order, many documents that reflected the personal role of Khrushchev in organizing these repressions. If copies of these documents have not been preserved, it is obvious that mankind will never learn much about the Stalinist Great Terror. They also write that at the end of Stalin's life, all the personal cards of the drafting of persons liable for conscription registered before and during the Great Patriotic War were destroyed. This was done to conceal the true number of casualties in the war.
It can be assumed that the documents on the cases listed in this article will also never be published, precisely because they were immediately destroyed "after reading." However, I repeat once again that all these are just assumptions caused by the very fact of the existence of a huge array of secret archival materials.
Yaroslav Butakov