Church Materials May Become Inaccessible
"I would close half of the archives," stated the head of the State Archive Service, Olha Ginzburg. Notably, Ukraine's president has vested her with additional powers to do that, the Press Center of the Studies of the Liberation Movement has reported to ZIK.
On January 27, in Ukrinform, a press conference of the leadership of the State Archive Service with regard to changes of the archive-related laws initiated by the service was held. The deputies of the Parliament voted for the changes in the first reading. The changes provoked a wide public discussion primarily due to the limitations in accessing the archives.
In answer to the question about the implementation of the European norms of openness of the archives, particularly the requirement of the European Parliament to open the archives on the repressions of the Communist regime as a condition for signing the Agreement of Association, Olha Ginzburg said: "We have opened up so much that I would close half of them If I could."
At the press conference, the official stated that on January 26, President Viktor Yanukovych signed a decree to appoint Olha Ginzburg the State Expert on Secrets and extend her personal powers as the head of the Archive Service. Ms. Ginzburg is now vested with powers "to define which information is classified as confidential, to change the degree of secrecy of the information and declassify it."
"In the context of the personal position of Ms. Ginzburg, one gets concerned about the openness of the archives in future. The effective 'Summary of information which constitutes the state secret' contains no historic information'; however, yesterday, a representative of the Communist party, the head of the Archive Service of the country, was vested with powers to define the bases on which any information is to be classified and to control classification and declassification," commented a historian, Volodymyr Viatrovych.
