Dr. Jelena Pogosjan - 2020 Cluster Recipient


KIAS Spotlight Researcher

Trapped in Archives of Repression: Personal Letters in ex-KGB Archives

Project Lead: Dr. Jelena Pogosjan

Professor
Faculty of Arts
Department of Modern Languages & Cultural Studies

Developing, formulating and test-driving a trial database and a bilingual searchable corpus of personal letters once confiscated by the KGB. Focusing on correspondence between Ukrainian immigrants in Canada and their families and friends left behind in the Soviet Union.

 

Project Description:

The collapse of the communist regime in Central and Eastern Europe, and the opening of its secret service archives resulted in the deluge of new archival data into the field of Slavic studies. For these archival sources to be accessible and useful for analytical purposes, much of this data requires further systemic procession and comprehensive management. This is especially the case with personal correspondence with abroad once intercepted and retained by Soviet Secret Service, or KGB, in the Soviet Ukraine. To address the challenge of analytical accessibility to the extensive and understudied corpus of personal letters, the Kule Centre for Ukrainian and Canadian Folklore and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta partnered with the Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine to develop a trial research database to serve researchers in and outside of Ukraine. The core practical goal of the proposed project is to develop, formulate and test-drive a trial database and a bilingual searchable corpus of personal letters once confiscated by KGB. In particular, the proposed corpus will focus on correspondence between Ukrainian immigrants in Canada and their families and friends left behind in the Soviet Union.

University of Alberta Team Members:

  • Dr. Jelena Pogosjan (PI)
  • Dr. Natalia Khanenko-Friesen
  • Dr. Alla Nedashkivska
  • Dr. Frank Sysyn
  • Maryna Chernyavska

External Team Members:

  • Andriy Kohut
  • Mariya Mayerchyk