ПОЧЕМУ ВЛАСТЬ СКРЫВАЕТ ИМЕНА ПАЛАЧЕЙ?

December 1991. Along with power, the new president is handed a sealed packet that every General Secretary had guarded without exception. Inside are two crimes Moscow denied for half a century: the secret protocol of the Stalin–Hitler pact, and the documents on the Katyn massacre. But that was just one packet — the one they were forced to open. What lies in the ones they still refuse to open? Why are KGB files classified until 2044, why are the names of the execution "troikas" a state secret, and why are prisoners' registration cards destroyed once the person turns 80? And why was what the state once publicly admitted quietly re-classified under the new regime? This is not a video about the dead of 1937. It's about how power has worked in this country for centuries — and still works today. Everything rests on documents and figures; sources are at the end of the description. ————————————————————— CHAPTERS ————————————————————— 00:00 — The folder every Soviet leader hid 02:32 — The bookkeeping of executions: a quota for corpses 04:26 — The Kremlin's main safe: why no one is let in 06:46 — What burns in the archives 08:52 — Why they hid it instead of burning it 11:01 — Yuri Dmitriev and the destruction of Memorial 12:55 — How the neighbors did it: Ukraine and the Baltics 15:28 — Why a dead Stalin is needed alive 17:56 — Three of every four — nameless 18:44 — The questions the state won't answer ————————————————————— SOURCES & FACT-CHECK ————————————————————— All figures and claims are verified against primary sources. Katyn and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact — The "sealed packet No. 1": transferred at the handover of power (cover dated 24 Dec 1991), opened by a commission on 24 Sep 1992, copies handed to the President of Poland on 14 Oct 1992 — Rosarkhiv (rusarchives.ru); Grani.ru. — Politburo decree of 5 March 1940; per the documents, 21,857 people were executed — packet No. 1 materials. — Official admission of NKVD guilt — TASS statement, 13 April 1990. — The pact's secret protocol was denied until 1992; published in Novaya i Noveyshaya Istoriya, 1993. The scale of the terror — NKVD Order No. 00447 (1937), with regional "quotas" for Category 1 (execution) and Category 2 (camps) — order text; Memorial Society. — Butovo firing range, up to ~500 executions a day at the height of the terror — Memorial; Butovo Museum. — 799,455 executions from 1921–1953, of which 681,692 in 1937–1938 — state archival statistics (MVD memo, 1954; V. Zemskov, S. Wheatcroft). — Only about a quarter of the victims are known by name — Novaya Gazeta; The Moscow Times; Memorial database. Archive secrecy and destruction — The Presidential Archive of Russia — the most closed; holds the Politburo "special folders." — Rosarkhiv subordinated to the Presidential Administration (2016). — KGB documents remain classified; petitions to open them rejected (term to 2044). — Re-classification of files as "for official use" despite the 75-year rule (2025) — Rosarkhiv directive. — The FSB refused to declassify the composition of the "troikas" — court materials; Memorial. — Katyn under Putin: investigation halted (2004), 116 of 183 volumes classified, Moscow City Court refused declassification (2010) — Grani.ru. — Document destruction: 1941 (evacuation), 1954–1955 (purge of "slanderous" files), 1990 (KGB order to destroy agent files), 2014 (destruction of prisoners' registration cards once they turn 80) — Memorial; Gulag History Museum. — The "Stalin lists": 383 lists, over 44,000 names sentenced to death personally by Politburo members — Memorial (stalin.memo.ru); held in the Presidential Archive. Dmitriev and Memorial — Yuri Dmitriev, head of Karelian Memorial, whose expedition found Sandarmokh (1997), 236 execution pits; sentence increased to 15 years of strict regime (27 Dec 2021, upheld by the Supreme Court of Karelia on 15 Mar 2022); trial held behind closed doors; the case is considered fabricated by hundreds of historians and rights defenders — Novaya Gazeta; BBC; Kommersant; Current Time. — Memorial: "foreign agent" since 2016; International Memorial liquidated by Russia's Supreme Court on 28 Dec 2021, the Human Rights Center by the Moscow City Court on 29 Dec 2021; database of about 3 million names; Nobel Peace Prize 2022 — RBC; ASI; Euronews. How the neighbors did it — Ukraine: 2015 law on access to the archives of the repressive organs, "open to all"; the SBU archive — about 7 km of shelves, 224,000 files — Sectoral State Archive of the SBU (HDA SBU). — Latvia: publication of the "Cheka bags" (December 2018), about 24,000 KGB agents. The cult as motive — 56% called Stalin a "great leader" (Levada Center, May 2021) — twice the 2016 figure — Levada Center; Carnegie. FIND ME Telegram — https://t.me/postsovietcom Instagram —   / postsovietcom   Facebook —   / postsovietcom   Support the channel — https://boosty.to/postsoviet #PostSoviet #history #NKVD #Katyn #Gulag #Stalin #archives #Memorial #Russia