Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/01/21/ojars-rubenis.html
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Framed? By that upstanding and righteous institution?
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Was my name in there?
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Seems pretty small, informants should have as much dirt in their file as anybody else, maybe more!
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"vigorously deny any involvement "
Words to live by these days. Especially the “vigorously” part; you don’t want to be half-assing that kind of thing.
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the retreating KGB left behind two sacks and two briefcases containing indexed records of the secret informants…
I wonder if we’ll ever see the sacks and briefcases for Washington?
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Blackmail is a great way to get someone to do what you want, something that completely unsurprisingly the KGB knew very well. The only thing that I’m surprised by here is that they actually left behind the bags. Or perhaps, that was the point. Hmm, now I’m not surprised by any of it anymore.
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Three different times but there is just no way you and that many barnyard animals could all fit on a moped at the same time. Those bastards are probably lying about the swim fins and feather dusters too.
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I’m trying to build up a graph of this data but I keep getting a dead end on this guy идиот Trumpski everyone seems connected to.
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What’s going on in Latvian politics that makes now a good time for someone in the government to discredit and sow suspicion about some of the people on those lists?
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Actually, the KGB leaving behind a bunch of false names to sir up shit seems pretty plausible. I could even see them putting some thought into it: “hmmmmm. . . who do we really want to screw over?”
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i am a Canadian-born Latvian and live in Rīga, Latvia (have been here on-and-off for 20yrs).
the hoopla around the čekas maisi (čeka [cheka] is slang for secret police, maisi = bags) has been going on for the better part of the last 25 years. it dies down and then, usually around election time, it pops up again, but every new cycle the hoopla is slightly less than it was before. most people here are pretty much over it - when the “bags” were finally opened and all the information contained therein was released online, for a few days there were articles written, Facebook discussions about them, phone-in shows etc. dedicated to the topic, but fr the most part people are over it. especially considering that all that the bags contained were index cards with very basic information: name, assigned čeka code name, d.o.b., date of recruitment etc.
but there was no context - why was this person recruited? what information or service did they provide to the čeka? who did they ‘rat out’? nothing.
many people (the fathers of two of my best friends) were pulled in for interviews up purely as a matter of course because they had applied for permission to leave the country. my one friend’s father was a neurosurgeon and wanted to attend a conference in Italy - he was pulled in by the čeka, assigned a code name, and allowed to attend the conference, but upon returning he was never interviewed or questioned again, yet his card was in the bags.
the vast majority of the cards are cases like this. and most people here know this, and so the release of the cards, 30+ years later, was met with a collective “meh”. most people here logged in to the database to see if any of their friends or relatives were listed, joked about their code names and that was it. it’s been three weeks since the release and not many people are talking about anymore.
the other thing is that, those who could afford to, or had connections high up in the government, long ago had their cards removed and destroyed. so there were no really “juicy” names (ie: current members of parliament) in bags.
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