Latvian ex-PM, supreme court judge, top list of KGB collaborators

A former prime minister, the current Supreme Court chief justice and a deceased Catholic cardinal are among Latvians who collaborated with the KGB during the Cold War, according to files released Friday.

The Latvian National Archives revealed all the former agents - many still active in politics and business - after a quarter century of legal and legislative battles in the Baltic state.

"The list of collaborators shows that KGB contacts were recruited from all professions and ages," political scientist Didzis Senbergs wrote at local news portal Pietiek.com.

The KGB enlisted nearly 24,000 Latvians as collaborators and agents between 1953 and 1992.

Unlike other countries under Soviet rule at the time, Latvia managed to save its KGB archive from being destroyed when it regained independence in 1991.

The Latvian authorities took over the KGB building in Riga and threw the documents into huge sacks that they transported to a secure location.

Dubbed "the KGB sacks" ever since, the archive contains an index of all the collaborators as well as their codenames, real names, birthplaces and other data.

"The entire archive is enormous," said computer scientist Ilmars Poikans, a member of Latvia's scientific commission on the files.

"It includes information gathered by KGB spies and criminal investigations involving the KGB and its agents," he told AFP.

"There are also cases fabricated against Soviet-era dissidents and pro-democracy activists. Everything will be scanned and eventually released."