Vulture "secret": what secrets are hidden by the Russian Empire and the USSR
There are a huge number of archival documents from the time of the Soviet Union and even the Russian Empire, on which is still classified as “secret”. It is difficult to understand why keeping secret information about events whose participants have not been alive for many decades. But not everything is as simple as it seems.
Why are they classified?
Documents could be classified for two reasons: to preserve state secrets or at the request of relatives of persons involved in the papers.
Since 1918, Soviet power began to take care of the preservation of archival documents of the tsarist era. Soon it was decided not only to keep the archives, but also to restrict access to ordinary citizens. Since 1938, archival documents were transferred to the NKVD, which immediately classified most of them. Later archives were exclusively managed by special services, first Soviet and then Russian. And only in 2016 they came under the personal patronage of the President of the Russian Federation.
Many of these documents have lifted the ban, but not all. A significant part has remained hidden from the general public.
Royal Archive
Many documents of the Novoromanovsky archive of the imperial family are still classified. This is the correspondence of Nicholas II with the Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, as well as documents illustrating the state activities of the royal court during the First World War.
Perhaps this is somehow connected with the canonization of the Russian Orthodox Church of Nikolai Romanov.
KGB archives
As in any other countries, the details of the special operations of the Soviet special services remain closed. The fact is that many of the old techniques are applied to the present. Thus, not the operations themselves or the names of the persons participating in them are classified, but the methodology for their implementation.
Its disclosure may harm the intelligence and counterintelligence agencies.
Stalin's affairs
Many documents that were compiled during the Stalinist years of repression are still classified. Even the affairs of Beria and Yezhov are partially open. Some of the cases are only given to relatives or at the request of others. Often the information they contain is incomplete. The names of the NKVD officers were especially carefully removed from the documents.
Documents were issued on the condition that more than 75 years have passed since the sentencing. For some of them, the secrecy term in 2014 was extended by another 30 years.
Personal archives of Vysotsky, Solzhenitsyn, Ryzhkov
Personal papers and documents of these and many other figures of science, culture and policy classified by order of their relatives. They did not want to make known to the general public any undesirable facts from the biography.
For example, Solzhenitsyn’s wife does not want the poetry of her late husband, which she considered unsuccessful, to be made public.
Do all secrets need to be kept?
Perhaps many of the old Russian secrets still hold true today, and they need to be kept. But many simply did not declassify just because there were so many secrets before that it takes a lot of effort to reveal them.
And sometimes there is a distrust of people. Like, they don’t take it that way, they won’t figure it out, they will stop loving and respecting their country, no matter what happens. And completely in vain. It happens that a person in the absence of information or invents something terrible for himself, or someone else's propaganda will give him information from his point of view.
It happens that even the most inconvenient truth does not do such harm as its replacement with speculation.
Why are they classified?
Documents could be classified for two reasons: to preserve state secrets or at the request of relatives of persons involved in the papers.
Since 1918, Soviet power began to take care of the preservation of archival documents of the tsarist era. Soon it was decided not only to keep the archives, but also to restrict access to ordinary citizens. Since 1938, archival documents were transferred to the NKVD, which immediately classified most of them. Later archives were exclusively managed by special services, first Soviet and then Russian. And only in 2016 they came under the personal patronage of the President of the Russian Federation.
Many of these documents have lifted the ban, but not all. A significant part has remained hidden from the general public.
Royal Archive
Many documents of the Novoromanovsky archive of the imperial family are still classified. This is the correspondence of Nicholas II with the Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, as well as documents illustrating the state activities of the royal court during the First World War.
Perhaps this is somehow connected with the canonization of the Russian Orthodox Church of Nikolai Romanov.
KGB archives
As in any other countries, the details of the special operations of the Soviet special services remain closed. The fact is that many of the old techniques are applied to the present. Thus, not the operations themselves or the names of the persons participating in them are classified, but the methodology for their implementation.
Its disclosure may harm the intelligence and counterintelligence agencies.
Stalin's affairs
Many documents that were compiled during the Stalinist years of repression are still classified. Even the affairs of Beria and Yezhov are partially open. Some of the cases are only given to relatives or at the request of others. Often the information they contain is incomplete. The names of the NKVD officers were especially carefully removed from the documents.
Documents were issued on the condition that more than 75 years have passed since the sentencing. For some of them, the secrecy term in 2014 was extended by another 30 years.
Personal archives of Vysotsky, Solzhenitsyn, Ryzhkov
Personal papers and documents of these and many other figures of science, culture and policy classified by order of their relatives. They did not want to make known to the general public any undesirable facts from the biography.
For example, Solzhenitsyn’s wife does not want the poetry of her late husband, which she considered unsuccessful, to be made public.
Do all secrets need to be kept?
Perhaps many of the old Russian secrets still hold true today, and they need to be kept. But many simply did not declassify just because there were so many secrets before that it takes a lot of effort to reveal them.
And sometimes there is a distrust of people. Like, they don’t take it that way, they won’t figure it out, they will stop loving and respecting their country, no matter what happens. And completely in vain. It happens that a person in the absence of information or invents something terrible for himself, or someone else's propaganda will give him information from his point of view.
It happens that even the most inconvenient truth does not do such harm as its replacement with speculation.
Information