"The declassification process is supervised by the FSB central expert committee, led by a deputy FSB head. It comprises representatives from all leading branches of the service," said Vasily Khristoforov, head of the FSB Archives Directorate.
Last year alone, the agency declassified about 300,000 documents kept in the Central Archives.
However, there are certain files that will never be declassified, the official said.
"These are primarily files containing information on FSB operatives and agents, on the forms and methods of operative work," he said, adding that such practices are common among foreign security services worldwide.
The FSB official also said the rehabilitation of victims of political repression in Russia has not been completed, although the majority of cases filed at the Central Archives have been reviewed by prosecutors.
"The prosecutors have reviewed practically all cases [in the Central Archives] and either passed their own resolution or sent them to court for further consideration," Khristoforov said.
"There are some people who have not been rehabilitated for certain reasons," the FSB official said. "They or their relatives still have the right to send a new appeal to us to review their cases again," he said.
The Russian Prosecutor General's Office said in October 2006 it had completed inquiries into cases of political repression, and rehabilitated over 775,000 people.
"Since the introduction of the law On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression [enacted in January 1992], the Prosecutor General's Office has reviewed over 970,000 criminal cases involving over 1.2 million people who were accused of counter-revolutionary and extremely serious crimes," the Prosecutor General's Office said. "Over 775,000 people have been rehabilitated."
In 1991, Russian leaders renounced the Soviet Union as a totalitarian state, and moved to restore the rights, social status, military rank and awards of the victims of political purges. The government has also been paying compensation to the victims.
Tens of millions of Russian citizens, both ordinary people and Communist Party members, were sent to prison camps by Joseph Stalin for dissident views, or often for no particular reason at all.
The massive internal purges began in 1935 and lasted until Stalin's death in 1953. Many of the political prisoners were killed while others were sent to labor camps, forming a reservoir of forced labor that sustained the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union.
