The portal reports that three large folders with documents were found in the house, the existence of which was unknown until now. The experts have almost no doubts about the authenticity of the documents.
At one time, a Czech employee lived in this house, and it is likely that he also hid these documents at one time, although for reasons that have not yet been clarified, reports “lsm.lv”.
The documents related to the so-called KGB Part 5 line or ideological counterintelligence. According to the order of Vladimir Kryuchkov, the leader of the check at the time of the collapse of the USSR, all of them had to be destroyed in 1990.
“Apparently for some reason one of the KGB employees did not do it and hid these documents. This is how they came to us,” said Gints Zelmenis, a senior expert of the Latvian National Archives.
The portal reports that the documents cover a wide period of time. The oldest dates back to 1943-1944, when the Red Army began to return to Latvia during the Second World War. They mainly contain reports of national resistance guerrillas and their supporters. For example, Abrene partisan leader Peter Supi.
Documents from the 1960s and 1970s describe the situation in various Latvian village councils, mainly on the Vidzeme side, regarding persons undesirable to the Soviet government in each particular municipality.
The latest documents are from the end of 1989 – reports on the activities of “Helsinki-86” and the Latvian People’s Front, as well as various dissidents.
Zelmenis told the portal that in mid-February 1988, a document mentioned Gunārs Astra, who was released from prison on February 1 of that year, and “already a few weeks later everyone was given the task to observe him”. Another document mentions Lydia Dorinina-Lasmane.
Zelmenis also said that in the documents you can find certificates from the criminal cases investigated by the KGB. Criminal cases have been in the archives since the 1990s, but such documents allow you to compare the criminal case itself with a statement, “put it together and see how all this information fits, check the authenticity of these documents”.
“There are also references about agents, about different people. It can also be used in KGB staff research. Because, as you know, the KGB staff documents have not been preserved in Latvia, therefore we read the staff from many other sources,” Zelmenis explained.
He said no new agents could be named at the moment. “It is very possible that they are, but I cannot say for sure. But there are agents whose names can be found in the agency’s already published file. It is an additional opportunity to compare documents and verify authenticity,” Zelmenis emphasized.
After technical processing in the laboratory, these documents will be added to the archive “check fund” taken over from the Center for Documenting the Consequences of Totalitarianism last year and digitized. It is planned that from September they will be available to researchers and interesting readers of the archive KGB materials.
