Archives of Kazakhstan as a source of Soviet ethnic deportations

With the demise of the Soviet Union and emerging Kazakhstan as an independent state in 1991, archives that had long been inaccessible for historians and researchers from other fields, reopened and classified documents were made available. As a result, researchers and the public gained access to Soviet era official documents and accounts. Archives of Kazakhstan, Russia and other post-Soviet republics became accessible for researchers, which allowed them to revisit and reassess a multitude of contentious and vexed issues and topics related to Soviet history. One of the delicate and disputed themes is ethnic deportations by the Soviet Union during the 1930s-1940s. The study explores archival data and documents pertaining to Soviet ethnic deportations stored in the Archive of the President of Kazakhstan (AP RK), the Central State Archive of Kazakhstan (CSA RK) and other archives of the country. Moreover, the study focuses on a series of collections of archival documents compiled and published by archives of Kazakhstan. The study highlights how it is essential for researchers to locate, select, collect, classify, analyze, describe, interpret and assess pertinent data in archives and collections of archival documents. Furthermore, the study also emphasizes the importance of a critical and objective approach to analyzing and interpreting archival data and the significance of creating a more impartial picture of historical events.