Ukrainian Emigrants Under the Total Control of the kgb

During the Cold War, the kgb of the ussr was arguably the only agency that possessed the most comprehensive information about the lives and activities of Ukrainian emigrants in virtually every country in the world. Declassified documents from the archives of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine reveal the areas and criteria used to monitor Ukrainians abroad, how and for what purposes information was collected, analyzed, and reported to party authorities.

Indeed, the comprehensive nature of this surveillance is evidenced, for example, by the classification of operational case files established in 1965 for the information and analysis unit of the 1st (intelligence) directorate of the kgb under the council of ministers of the Ukrainian ssr. The bulk of the files consisted of information on Ukrainian émigrés in capitalist countries – the United States, Canada, South America, Great Britain, West Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, and Australia. In other words, a separate file was maintained for each country.

Read more here.