Having conducted research in more than two dozen archives located in five countries on three continents, I’ve had my fair share of related adventures. Some of the most hilarious ones involved military and secret service archives. This is the first episode of a series on my archival escapades.
On a sparkling summer day in 2009, I was beaming with expectation as I entered the Nikolsky Gates, once the main entrance of the Kyiv Fortress. By the time I set foot in the majestic (then-)red building, it housed the Sectoral State Archive of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense – or so I thought. Little did I know that I was destined to wait half a decade to actually set my eyes on the files I was yearning for.
It was the summer after my first year of doctoral studies at Harvard. After a research stint in Moscow, I was overjoyed to spend another few weeks in the archives in Kyiv. The city was incomparably more habitable and alluring than the Russian capital, where I had already spent quite a few months in the decade prior.
My first trip led to the State Archive of Kyiv Oblast, just a stone’s throw from Babyn Yar. The archival complex was in a state of convivial neglect, with the fittingly stereotypical flora and fauna: overgrown weed and stray dogs.
The State Archive of Kyiv Oblast, 2009
Having done preliminary research on the history of Jewish self-defense in Ukraine in 1917-1924, I knew that the archive’s files on Soviet military organs of Kyiv Oblast should have plenty of valuable material on the subject. However, the archivist lady in charge immediately poured cold water on my plans. These files, she explained, had been transferred to the Ministry of Defense Archive, since that archive’s director took an interest in the military history of the period – and then also took the relevant files.
The Ministry of Defense Archive mostly holds documents from the postwar period – and up to the present. It is the latter circumstance that led to my unintentional five-year plan to get in. Since contemporary military documents and those from the (relatively) recent past are national security-sensitive, access to the archive bordered on the impossible. But this I only learned in due course.
The Nikolsky Gates turned out to house only an office of the Ministry of Defense Archive, and even from there I was quickly shooed out to the corridor by an otherwise very kind lady. It was when I saw her eyes widen as I was explaining my intentions that I began to sense that something was off. After complementing my Russian language skills (she was particularly pleased that I used words like ‘declassified’ and ‘seal of secrecy’), she informed me that no foreign researcher had ever tried to access the archive, and that she hasn’t a clue as to what to do with me.
After making a few calls, she decided to send me over to the nearby Central House of Officers. After wandering around for a while on the red carpet of the echoingly empty hallways, I finally found the room of the officer who would decide my fate. I was treated to the same scene of bewilderment followed by phone calls, and then the officer finally pronounced my sentence: I was to write a request to the chief of the general staff (and commander in chief) of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Only he had the authority to provide me with access to the archive. As the officer added for good measure, the process was likely to take a year or so.
I barely had a few weeks left of my sojourn in Kyiv, so had to abandon my quest for the time being. I only returned to Ukraine three years later. Before setting out for a year-long research trip to Ukraine, Russia, and Israel, in September 2012, I finally penned the letter to Colonel General Volodymr Zamana, then chief of staff. To my great surprise, I received a response within barely two months: I was welcome to peruse the archive, though they could only accommodate me after April 2013.
It was only in August 2013 that I was summoned to return to the Nikolsky Gates office. However, my hopes were again dashed when I was informed that I would only be given lists of files, and no set date to view the files I choose from the list. With the archival year coming to an end, I could not take up the archive’s offer from a few days later that I view the files in November. I had to persevere without them for another year.
That year saw the Maidan, the Russian occupation of Crimea, and then the outbreak of the Donbass War. I was trying to get used to the idea that my archival access issues won’t be a priority for the Ministry of Defense. All the greater was my excitement when I was nevertheless assigned a week’s worth of time slot to examine the files in the summer of 2014.
That summer, I spent a few weeks in marvelous (and at the time very tense) Odessa, working in the Oblast Archive. One day, I received a call from the Ministry of Defense: my visit had to be postponed due to the lack of available archivists. On a spur-of-the-moment idea, I turned this setback into lemonade, somehow convinced the Consul of Belarus in Odessa to issue me a Belarusian visa at his own discretion, and made my way to Minsk for a quick archival trip.
The tank repair base housing the Ministry of Defense Archive’s reading room isn’t the most welcoming of places, yet this sprawling industrial rustbelt on the outskirts of Kyiv was the object of my dreams. The reading room was to be open only 20 hours in total during my one-week slot, and my rush against time was compounded by the ban on using any electronics. The notebook I scrawled into was to be left at the archive at the end of every day, and was examined by a military censor after my research week. Only when cleared by the censor was it returned to me, and could I start using my notes.
Was it worth the trouble and all the wait? Most certainly. The coveted files contained a wealth of material offering new insights into the relationship between Soviet authorities and the Jewish self-defense network, documenting the fate of the latter well into 1923.
Was I indeed the first – and possibly only – foreign researcher given access to this archive? While I can’t tell for certain, it is at least not unlikely. To this day, only a handful of Ukrainian academic works cite documents from this archive, and the only two English-language ones I’ve managed to locate were also published by Ukrainian scholars in 2021 and 2022.[1] So, I some bragging rights might be due.
[1] Serhii Seheda, Vasyl Shevchuk, and Oleksii Pokotylo, “The Creation of the Armed Forces of Independent Ukraine: Military and Political Background,” Eastern Journal of European Studies 12 (2) (2021): 86–104; Vadym Mashtalir and Vasyl Shevchuk, “Relocation of Servicemen within the Commonwealth of Independent States (1991 – 1994),” Skhidnoievropeiskyi Istorychnyi Visnyk 22 (2022): 194–205.
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