What KGB Archives Reveal About the Holodomor?

This workshop examines methodological challenges of working with Soviet secret police archives documenting the 1932-1933 Holodomor and decades-long KGB activity to conceal the famine, suppress memory, and conduct active measures against diaspora recognition campaigns. Based on research reconceptualizing GPU repressions as a mass operation integral to genocidal policy, participants analyze KGB archival materials spanning from the famine to memory politics. Through collaborative analysis of operational bulletins, statistical reports, directives, and criminal case files, we examine how fragmented and manipulated sources can simultaneously reveal mechanisms of state terror while obscuring them. The workshop develops critical reading strategies for documents produced by repressive apparatus and addresses archival destruction as evidence. How do we confront intentional gaps in the record? What does absence reveal? How does it shape historical interpretation? Suitable for humanities doctoral students, this seminar provides methodological tools for working with communist security service archives.