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Title: Boris Ravdin collection
Date (inclusive): 1941-1994
Collection Number: 2013C35
Contributing Institution: Hoover Institution Library and Archives
Language of Material:
Russian
Physical Description:
2 manuscript boxes
(0.8 Linear Feet)
Abstract: Reports, memoranda, and police files, relating to secret police activities and political dissidents in Latvia. Photocopy.
source:
Ravdin, Boris
Physical Location: Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
The collection is open for research; materials must be requested in advance via our reservation system. If there are audiovisual
or digital media material in the collection, they must be reformatted before providing access.
For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Materials were acquired by the Hoover Institution Library & Archives in 2013.
[Identification of item], Boris Ravdin collection, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library & Archives
Location of Original Materials
Archives of the State Security Committee (KGB) of the Latvian S.S.R.
This collection consists of selected documents (photocopies) from five criminal files held in the Archives of the State Security
Committee (KGB) of the Latvian S.S.R. They were made by Boris Ravdin for research purposes.
The extensive Boris Maftser criminal file relates to the "Riga trial" that was heard in Riga in connection with an attempted
aircraft hijacking in Leningrad. A group of sixteen Soviet citizens tried to steal a civilian aircraft on 15 June 1970 to
escape to the West because they were denied permission to emigrate legally. Even though the attempt was unsuccessful, this
was a notable event in the course of the Cold War because it drew international attention to human rights violations in the
USSR and resulted in temporary loosening of emigration restrictions. It was important for authorities to present this attempted
hijacking not as an action of desperate people deprived of the possibility to legally leave for Israel, but as the result
of an intricate Zionist conspiracy.
In the course of the KGB investigation the four defendants in the case, Boris Maftser, Aron Shpil'berg, Ruta Aleksandrovich,
and Mikhail Shepshelovich, were arrested and their homes were searched. The trial, led by the senior investigator for the
most important matters of the Latvian KGB, lasted seven months. The defendants were charged with "agitation and propaganda
aiming at damaging Soviet power." In 1977 this file was used as research material for a dissertation at the school for military
counterintelligence officers of the KGB of the USSR Council of Ministers
The Samuil Iofe criminal file relates to Iofe's activities, with the Bricha center in Riga, to organize illegal Jewish emigration
through Poland to Palestine. Bricha (escape or flight) was the underground organized effort that helped Jewish Holocaust survivors
escape from post-World War II Europe to Palestine. Other defendants in the case charged with Zionist anti-Soviet activities
were Iakov Iankelevich, Il'ia Krol', Il'ia Zaĭdin, and Greĭnom Gurevich.
Photographer Iosif Shneider was arrested by the KGB of the Latvian S.S.R for his anti-Soviet activities and search for illegal
opportunities to emigrate to Israel. He was accused of keeping nationalistic literature, listening to the Voice of Israel
radio, especially during the 1956 "aggression of Israel, England, and France against Egypt, transcribing and keeping at
home slanderous inventions regarding Soviet foreign policy aired by the station, and corresponding with a relative living
in Israel."
Markus (Mordekhai) Nurok was a religious and political figure in Latvia and one of the founders of the World Jewish Congress.
He was arrested in 1941 and released in 1942 thanks to the efforts of international Jewish organizations. In 1945 he immigrated
to Palestine and later became a member of the Israeli parliament (Knesset).
The Boris Shperling criminal file stands apart from the other four files because it does not relate to Zionism. Boris Shperling,
a student in the Department of Mathematics of the Latvian State University "openly pronounced anti-Soviet statements regarding
ways of building socialism in the USSR and slanderous statements regarding the policy of the Communist Party and Soviet government
at the seminar on the XX Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union." For arguing at the seminar, Boris Shperling
was sentenced to a two-year prison term.
This collection consists of selected documents (photocopies) from five criminal files. The files include arrest warrants,
search warrants, lists of confiscated items, questionnaires, interrogation records, court proceedings, petitions, and some
correspondence and memoranda.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Secret service -- Latvia
Dissenters -- Latvia
Latvia -- History -- 1940-1991
Ravdin, Boris