Grateful to the team @restofworld for letting me take on this piece about a subtle but profound change that has been unfolding throughout the former Soviet Union.
It's about how previously secret KGB files are being published online, for all to see:
@restofworld It may seem like a small thing, but it has profound consequences. In Kyiv, Vilnius, Tbilisi, & more, they are changing how people think about their own families, and shifting the terrain upon which conversations about memory, complicity, and justice are held.
@restofworld Critically, these docs are being uploaded in an effort to both expose the stakes of widespread surveillance & suspicion & to present strategies for dealing with invasive technologies.
& last thing--they're also exposing myths about how the Soviet organs operated--that its agents knew, saw, & recorded everything.
Sometimes the surprise is that the archives hold unexpected answers; sometimes it’s that they hold none at all.
many thanks to @Oks_Parafeniuk for the amazing photos accompanying the piece!
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In September, I visited Kyiv to report on the new memorial project at Babi Yar, the place where the Holocaust "began." Everyone working on it believed that by building the memorial complex, they were building the future of Ukraine. (1/4)
It is a place that has been repeatedly obliterated, likened to the ancient river Lethe. Last week, it was obliterated once more by a Russian missile strike that killed five people. It also destroyed a building slated to be a museum to the Holocaust in Eastern Europe (2/4)
Almost everyone who is working on the memorial has now fled Kyiv, but some have taken up arms. "Our job is to help Ukraine stand and win this war for independence, to stay a democracy, to stay a free society. To finish the work that we started," one source told me last week (3/4)