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Soviet military archives from WWII must be opened - Medvedev

© RIA Novosti / Go to the mediabank Soviet military archives from WWII must be opened - Medvedev
 Soviet military archives from WWII must be opened - Medvedev - Sputnik International
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Most of the secret Russian military archives of the World War II-era must be opened, President Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview with Izvestia daily.

Most of the secret Russian military archives of the World War II-era must be opened, President Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview with Izvestia daily.

"Eventually, I believe we must create a system of military archives that will allow any Russian citizen and any interested foreign citizen to have practically free access to any unclassified document," Medvedev said, adding that almost all military documents should now go into the public domain.

Answering a question about the possibility of having the military documents online, Medvedev said "it is not just high time - we have been working on this with all our strength."

He said that opening up of documents was an important way to prevent the falsification of history.

Russia fiercely resists interpretation of the events of World War II that diminish the Soviet role in the defeat of Nazi Germany, but Medvedev said that Moscow had also been guilty of concealing the truth, such as over the Katyn massacre of thousands of Polish military officers by Soviet secret police in 1940.

"It is a very dark page. And a dark page on which there was no truth," Medvedev said, adding that even though the archives on this issue were opened long ago, the pervading sense of secrecy was such that the debate was not put to rest.

"Despite the fact that the documents were declassified, I again ordered that all of them be displayed. But the debate is still going. Why? Because the topic was hidden - first, and second, it was presented with a totally false position," he said.

The president said he is a big hi-tech fan as it is very convenient for dealing with large amounts of information. He admitted, though, that there was an upside to scanning through piles of huge documents, as he had to in the past.

"It definitely had its advantages, as the person unwittingly learnt a mass of interesting materials combined in a digest or in a book," Medvedev said.

MOSCOW, May 7 (RIA Novosti) 

 

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