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During the last years I have encountered several cases when Russian classified documents are supposed to contain relevant information for some key events in Romania:

  • Romania's last king - some historians claim that the forced abdication from 1947 is far from being clear and Russians might have documents clearing things up

  • Romanian Revolution - also, some historians and analysts claim that Russia has documents that might shed some light on what really happened during Romanian Revolution (1989) when hundreds of persons were killed.

I am wondering if Russia has a clear policy on how this information is kept.

Question: What is Russian Federation policy for information declassification related to historical events within neighboring countries?

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Whereas the United States has an automatic declassification schedule at 25 years, where information stops being classified at that point unless specific exemptions are sought, Russia has not automatically declassified data from the existence of the Russian Federation--their period is 30 years and the Russian Federation is not yet 30 years old.

In both of the cases you cite, the relevant documents would be in the Soviet Archives. These are regulated under a 1993 law "On The Russian Federation's Archives And Archive Files".

Many declassified ex-Soviet documents are now in the Russian Archives. Some declassification processes are still ongoing, as the Soviet Union generated a lot of archival material, some of which is still relevant and classified by Russia.

It's notable that the Soviet Union itself also did have an automatic declassification rule set at 30 years, which Russia announced they would honor. It's unclear if they have met that.

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  • Useful info. It would be nice to provide some references, though. Thanks.
    – Alexei
    Jun 11, 2018 at 15:03
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    On the optimist side, there are some document from Soviet-era that have been declassified during the last decade. I heard about some research about the Ukraine famine in the 1930's profiting from information made available around 2010. I have no idea if files about Romania are in the same case, though.
    – Evargalo
    Jun 11, 2018 at 15:32
  • @Alexei I edited it to add sources.
    – Eremi
    Jun 11, 2018 at 15:35

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