The author of the channel 'Repressions in Sverdlovsk' Oleg Novoselov reported that in Yekaterinburg, historians received verbal notices that the cases of the repressed, stored in the State Archive of Administrative Bodies of the Sverdlovsk Region, will now be issued exclusively to relatives of the repressed.
'Thus, conducting research on political repressions will become impossible. Apparently, these changes are related to some internal directives at the federal level,' writes Novoselov. According to him, similar refusals have begun to come to historians in other regions of the country.
Researcher Vasily Redekop published the response to his request from the deputy head of the department of the Presidential Affairs Management of the Russian Federation A. Ivanov.
'The empowerment of Rosarchive with the specified powers [refusals] was dictated, first of all, by the need to protect the interests of the Russian Federation under conditions of unprecedented economic, political, and informational pressure on the Russian Federation and the commission of unfriendly actions by foreign states against the Russian Federation, Russian legal entities, and individuals. In particular, the need to protect the information contained in the documents of the Archival Fund of the Russian Federation, which are in open storage in state and municipal archives, from distortion of historical facts and events or their complete false interpretation, or use in the interests of unfriendly states and territories by users of archival documents, among whom may be, including foreign citizens, citizens of the Russian Federation who have citizenship (subjecthood) of a foreign state (foreign states), persons recognized as foreign agents in the manner established by the legislation of the Russian Federation,' said the official's response.
The letter also states that currently, about 4.5 million open archival cases containing 'sensitive information' are in archival storage, the use of which may 'harm the interests of the Russian Federation.'