Landmark Agreement Signed as Adalet Project Marks New Phase in Digital Archival Justice

On March 20, 2026, the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) at the University of Alberta signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the State Sectoral Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine (HDA SBU), formalizing an international partnership to digitize and analyze KGB-era files documenting Soviet repression of the Indigenous peoples of Crimea: Crimean Tatars, Krymchaks, and Karaimes.

The signing took place during a hybrid workshop in Edmonton bringing together researchers from Canada, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic. The meeting was led by project PI Natalia Khanenko-Friesen (CIUS, University of Alberta) and included key collaborators Andriy Kohut (HDA SBU), Oleksii Ihnatenko (Ukrainian Catholic University, Lviv), Pavel Ircing (University of West Bohemia), Denilson Barbosa (University of Alberta), and Geoffrey Rockwell (University of Alberta), among others.

The workshop also featured the presentation of Vozmezdie (Retribution), a pilot digital humanities study applying AI-assisted discourse analysis to declassified KGB documents, an early proof-of-concept experiment contributing to the ongoing development of the Adalet project.

Adalet (from the Crimean Tatar word for "justice") is a research initiative funded by a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant and a Kule Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS) Cluster Grant, bringing together nine institutions from four countries at the intersection of history, archival studies, Indigenous studies, and computer science. The project seeks to decode the ideological language the Soviet KGB used to profile, undermine, and systematically erase the Indigenous peoples of Crimea from public memory and discourse. Its goal is to build a Digital Reading Room providing open, ethically governed access to these archival records, restoring historical and archival justice for communities long silenced by colonial repression.

Read more about the Adalet Project: “Undoing the language of the KGB files: collaborative partnership for archival justice and the Indigenous peoples of (Soviet) Ukraine (1944-1991).”