Press Release, 30.04.2025

Photo by Yuri Martyanov, Kommersant

Deputies of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg have introduced a federal legislative initiative that should open access for relatives and researchers to archival files of non-exonerated victims of political repression in the USSR.

Currently, if a person has not been officially rehabilitated, the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as a rule, refuse access to his file, they only issue a brief archival certificate. However, there is no direct legal ban on access to such files. Moreover, in 2022, the Constitutional Court indicated that general rules for access to state archives should be applied to such cases. However, in practice, the authorities limit access referring to Article 11 of the Law “On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression”, which applies only to the cases of rehabilitated persons.

The Yabloko party proposes to eliminate this legal gap by introducing a corresponding provision into Article 11 that would enshrine the right to access the cases of not only exonerated but also non-exonerated victims of repression.

Meanwhile, statistics show that there are many such cases. According to the Chief Military Public Prosecutor’s Office, from 1991 to 2019, public prosecutors exonerated 124,499 people, denied exoneration to 176,760, and another 16,819 were found by the courts not subject to exoneration. The Ministry of Internal Affairs reports that since 1992, there have been issued almost 2.8 million certificates of exoneration and more than 800,000 refusals.

Sometimes the refusal of exoneration is due to the fact that a person collaborated with the Nazis during the war. However, the official position of Russia remains unchanged: as the President of the Russian Federation emphasised, original documents on the crimes of the Nazis should be available to society. In 2024, the UN General Assembly supported the Russian resolution on combating the glorification of Nazism. However, in practice, access to such archives is difficult.

The adoption of this initiative will restore historical justice, ensure the openness of archives and implement the right of citizens to access the truth about repressions, regardless of the official rehabilitation status of the victim.

The legislative initiative will be considered at a session of the St. Petersburg parliament. If approved, it will be sent to the State Duma for consideration as a federal bill.

ALEXANDER SHISHLOV

is head of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg