Ukraine’s National Archives in the New Political Climate

By Marichka Galadza

In Ukraine, a country that suffers from sub-par roadways and scarce indoor plumbing in rural areas, the state of national archives has not ranked high on the list of priorities for most politicians and foreign analysts. Yet, within the past several months, this topic has been the focus of pundits and newspaper writers.

After the recent the appointment of Olga Ginsburg as the National Archive Committee Director, various public figures, including President Yushchenko, expressed concerns about her competency. Questions have also arisen about the new government’s motivations in placing a woman who has been called a radical communist by Ukrayinska Pravda in charge of the National Archives, an institution that has a mandate to preserve documents of paramount historical importance, including documentation on the Holodomor of 1933 and the forced exile of millions of Ukrainians to Siberia.

To discuss the current state of Ukraine’s archives, Iryna Matiash, Director of the Ukrainian Research Institute for Archival and Records Studies, delivered a lecture in Toronto entitled “Ukrainian Archival Work in the 15 Years Since Independence: Gains and Losses.” The lecture was held on October 3 and sponsored by the Petro Jacyk program for the Study of Ukraine, at the University of Toronto.

Matiash’s lecture outlined various historical periods pertaining to the archival field. The first era, in the early 1900s, saw national archives flourish as a socio-cultural institution under the administrative hand of Oleksander Hrushevsky, the then head of the Ukrainian National Republic’s library archives branch. Later, in 1923, the Central Archival Administration (Ukrtsentrarkhiv) was formed, enabling the consolidation of Ukrainian archives under the administration of an executive branch.  After 1939, Ukraine’s national archives became a politicized tool of the NKVD, being incorporated into the USSR Commissariat of Internal Affairs (a centralized system in Moscow) one year prior.

Since 1991, some archives have been returned to Ukraine, although a treaty requesting a full catalogue of Ukrainian documents still being held in Russian archives has not yet been ratified by the Russian government.  Nevertheless, according to Matiash, the early 1990s were an era of enlightenment for Ukrainian archival studies and research.  Matiash expressed a positive outlook about the current state of archival practice, noting that the greatest gain since 1992 has been the national fund to secure the preservation of over 60 million documents currently housed in archives across the country.

During the discussion period following the lecture, a question about Ginsburg’s appointment was brought up, namely, what losses if any, could be anticipated in the wake of Ginsburg’s directorial position, and could Ukraine’s National Archives be at risk?

 Ginsburg, appointed under the executive powers of Prime Minister Yanukovych in mid-September of 2006, has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute and spent time as Communist party member under Brejniev. While she has had little time to take any administrative action, she has provoked much negative publicity with her statements expressing her reluctance to accept the position. Her unwillingness to take on this important role does not bode well for Ukraine’s National Archives. To add insult to injury she was quoted a saying: it was better to appoint her “than someone worse”.

As Serhiy Hrabovksy, reporter for the journal Suchasnist, has stated, Ginsberg’s appointment may reveal more than just cronyism and bad planning. He has suggested that her past political leanings may threaten the progress Ukrainian archival work has made since 1991.  Following the Access to Information Act in 1994, and the subsequent declassification of 99 per cent of all archival documents, Ukraine has progressively worked against the former Soviet ethos of “archives as arsenal.” Within the current archival growth period, historical documentation is considered apolitical and accessible to the public.  It does seem worrying thus, that the director of an institution that aims to present facts and historical truth is a former apparatchik of a party that spearheaded the destruction of millions of documents. 

Yet, some believe that Ginsberg’s appointment was not politically motivated. They argue Ginsberg is nearing retirement and needed a short-term position to complete her years in the civil service.  Proponents of this viewpoint assert that there are many bureaucratic safeguards in place that would not allow tampering with the archives. Let’s hope that this optimistic belief is correct.

Marichka Galadza is a fourth-year University of Toronto student who is studying Ethics, Society and Law and Environmental Studies.