For much of the 20th century in the Soviet Union, access to Jewish archives was restricted or outright forbidden, while those interested in Jewish studies risked repression, said Efim Melamed, Ukrainian Coordinator, Project Judaica, Kyiv. Speaking at a Kennan Institute lecture, Melamed discussed the history of these archives and the slow process of opening them to the public and making them accessible to scholars. As part of a joint project between the U.S.-based Project Judaica and the Russian State Humanities University, Melamed is co-editor of Jewish Documentary Sources in Kiev Archives: A Guide, which documents Jewish archival sources in the capital of Ukraine. This reference book was developed out of the need for a catalogue of Jewish documents located in 22 various Kyiv archives. Although Project Judaica covers archives in Belarus and Russia as well, the majority of documents on Jews in the Russian Empire and later in the Soviet Union can be found in Ukraine. This concentration of materials exists, because Ukraine made up the heart of the Pale of Settlement, outside of which Jews were not permitted to reside during the tsarist period.

Melamed stated that Jewish archives are scattered throughout many parts of Ukraine, and the published guide is the first of a planned five volumes. The archives range from the 16th century to the end of the 20th century, up through the time of Leonid Kravchuk, post-Soviet Ukraine's first president. The richness of the archives is reflected in the large number of languages featured in Melamed's recently published guide for Kyiv archives, including Polish, German, Yiddish, Hebrew, Ukrainian, and Russian. In addition to covering a vast array of places, historical periods, and languages, the archives reflect the shifting borders between countries and empires, with documents from Polish courts, Austro-Hungarian police records, and records of the German occupation of Ukraine. Tragically, many of the original documents were destroyed in Stalin's "cleansing campaigns." In addition, as a result of the Soviet regime's anti-Semitism, Melamed stated that many documents that were not destroyed were placed in secret storage. As a result, releasing them all to the public has taken a long time, because it is much easier to classify than to declassify a document, he observed.

Melamed also said that there was a shortage of scholars prepared to study Jewish documents, since Soviet era anti-Semitism and repression resulted in Jewish scholarship being in an "abysmal state." As a result, contemporary scholars from various disciplines are re-educating themselves, since working with Jewish archives requires specific training and an understanding of historical context and linguistic complexities. The process of declassifying documents allows new light to be shed on old historical questions. For example, new information is becoming available, such as evidence of Vladimir Lenin's Jewish ancestry, as well as the facts surrounding the participation of soldiers of various armies in Jewish pogroms during the Civil War. Furthermore, according to Melamed, the history of inter-religious relations on the territory of Ukraine is much more "interesting and complicated than it has appeared up to now." Melamed characterized the process of categorizing these archives as identifying the haystacks in which scholars can find their needles.