The CIA's declassified collection of digitized documents, available in its online reading room, is a rich source for Ukrainian and Soviet history. A simple search for "Soviet Ukraine" revealed thousands of relevant results and more advanced search is possible. The wide array of U.S. intelligence documents sheds light on a great variety of issues and questions on Ukraine during the Soviet period.
Visual and textual materials relating to the creative practices and material culture of the religious underground under state socialism, sourced from secret police archives in Central and Eastern Europe. While materials pertain to religious groups throughout 20th-century socialist Europe, Ukraine is a major focus of the archive. Ukrainian materials are found throughout the various collections and…
The State Archival Service of Ukraine compiled this database of Ukrainian victims of Soviet repression from the 1920s-50s. The database information is drawn from different archives throughout Ukraine. Overall, entries on victims provide basic biographical information and in some cases a photograph. Individuals are searchable by name, nationality, and other keywords.
Since 2011, the "Rehabilitated by History" book series has published collections of archival documents, biographical and memoir essays, and studies pertaining to NKVD/KGB activity, political persecution, and collectivization in Soviet Ukraine. Focus on the victims of repression and their personal stories is especially rich in this project. Several "Rehabilitated by History" books have been…
This Czech project documents the political repression of Czechoslovak people by the Soviet government. It includes a rich collection of digitized NKVD/KGB investigation files from Ukrainian archives, namely Zakarpattia, which had a large Czech population in the early Soviet period. While the website is in Czech, the uploaded case files are in the original Russian. These documents from Ukrainian…
Digitized collections from the Kharkiv oblast archive include metric books pertaining to Christian, Jewish, and civil communities in the 19th and 20th centuries; birth, marriage, divorce, and deaths records for the 1920s-40s; registers from the Nazi occupation of the 1940s; audit documents from the 18th and 19th centuries; and books on the genealogy of local nobles from the Kharkiv region for the…
Scans and transcripts of diaries from Ukraine, the Russian empire, and the Soviet Union, from the 19th century through today. Users can search for Ukrainian-language diaries as well as Russian-language diaries pertaining to Ukrainian history (Belarusian diaries are available too). Diaries and diary entries can be searched by included words, year, gender, topic, and more. This is a valuable site…
The Central State Archives of Public Association (CDAGO) online exhibitions include numerous original scans from their archival collection. This website URL brings researchers to a list of exhibition topics spanning the breadth of modern Ukrainian history, including literary figures and movements, World War II, the Afghan War, the transfer of the capital of Ukraine from Kharkiv to Kyiv, the 1920s…
Digitized archive documents are found at the "Колекція документів на пергаменті Державного архіву Волинської області" (collection of documents on parchment from the State Archive of Volyn Oblast) and "Електронні справи" (digital files) hyperlinks on the given webpage. The former holds major documents on religious and political history in Latin and Polish. The latter holds rich town and village…
While this site holds a large number of rich archival sources, the digitized collection is somewhat difficult to navigate. For the committed researcher, however, the time taken to identify useful sources is worthwhile. Uploaded digitized files correspond to their opisy (descriptions), uploaded in a separate file. To navigate these collections, the researcher should locate the corresponding opis'…
The Dnipropetrovsk oblast archive website holds digitized documents from the region's early Soviet history, especially on famine and repression, as well as church and synagogue metric books. Under the heading "elektronyy arkhiv" on the lefthand toolbar, "kartoteky" holds the registration cards of people (including kulaks) deported from Ukraine and sent to special settlements in the 1930s and1940s.…