8 ms·
It was a very weird moment when 'the bags' were published. On one hand it had to be done as there were conspiracy theories abound regarding who's in them. Intia
by jgilias 6y ago
It was a very weird moment when 'the bags' were published. On one hand it had to be done as there were conspiracy theories abound regarding who's in them. Intially pretty much everyone would log in to check if there's someone they know. Journalists would scour the records and then try to get the ones mentioned tell their story.
At the end of the day though everyone understands that:
1. Having a record there doesn't necessarily imply active and willing cooperation with the regime, due to how the whole thing functioned.
2. Someone not being there doesn't imply they were not active and willing collaborators.
3. It is almost a given that the most interesting records are long gone.
So, nothing has really changed. You still don't know for sure who were the scum amongst us.
- AndyMcConachie 6y agoI wish they would do something similar for the FBI.
- rmrfstar 6y agoYou can get similar records for deceased people, which will give you a sense of what's in there. Isaac Asimov's FBI file is a case study [1, 2]. People fabricate stories out of jealousy, a desire for retribution, and generic Karen reasons [3]. Isaac Asimov seems to have had a neighbor or colleague in the latter category. People should study these files to develop robust procedural safeguards. [1] https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi-file-on-isaac-asimov-8300/ https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi... [2] https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2013/nov/07/isaac-asimov-fbi-file-ROBPROF/ https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2013/nov/07/isaac-asi... [3] https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/careless-whispers-how-the-german-public-used-and-abused-the-gestapo-1.2369837 https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/careless-whispers-h...
- burntoutfire 6y agoIt was similar in Poland, but fortunately not all interesting records were gone, so in fact a lot of the scum got exposed.
- jgilias 6y agoI think the difference is probably in the fact that Poland was a USSR satellite nation, much like DDR, while in Latvia after occupation they didn't set up a puppet state, but directly integrated us into the USSR. The implication here is that the regime secret services in Latvia not just collaborated extensively with Moscow, but were in fact part of the same organization. Meaning, that it is very likely that there existed instructions for emergency situations in which the most sensitive documentation needs to be shipped to Moscow.
- arethuza 6y agoI wonder how in a situation like that you can check the authenticity of archives. It must have been tempting for the KGB to plant incriminating material once they realised they were going to lose control of an archive - though they probably didn't have a huge amount of time to do that.
- burntoutfire 6y agoIn Poland the transition happened quite quickly (the authorities barely had time to burn a lot of the documents) so I don't think there was time to do any widespread document planting. Plus, if you plant some documents they'd had to be consistent with all other records or it would be found out upon investigation (there's a special state-run institute in Poland which hires a bunch of historians who analyze those records, so it's a real possibility).
- arethuza 6y agoYeah, I can't imagine that the KGB or the local security services ever thought they would really lose control of their archives. Though I imagine there would have been some effort to pull the files on anyone they wanted to keep as an intelligence asset in the long term.
- p_l 6y agoThe transition was fast enough that there's reasonable suspicion that the former opposition did some document planting.