In August 1991, the Latvian National Archives started to take possession of documents that had been held in the archives of the defunct Latvian SSR Committee for State Security (KGB), including a collection of more than 53,000 files of people arrested and detained for political crimes. This process took several months, and in 1992 the collection was handed over to the Latvian State Archives, which is now part of the Latvian National Archives, although it was still held in the former KGB premises. In 1996, the collection was moved to the premises of the State Archives, and two years later to the building in which it is held today, and was made fully available to researchers and the general public. The collection contains numerous files about political cases brought against intellectuals who were accused of political crimes, such as the ‘French group’, Broņislava Martuževa, Knuts Skujenieks, participants in the Action of Light, and many others. Some of them were detained for real resistance to the Soviet regime; in many other cases the charges were false, but they contain a wealth of information about the attitudes of the intelligentsia to the Soviet regime, about attempts by the Communist Party and the security structures to suppress any manifestations of cultural resistance, and about the efforts by people to maintain their intellectual and moral integrity under an extremely repressive political regime. Since their acquisition, the files in the collection have been used widely in academic and popular publications, in exhibitions prepared by the National Archives, and in documentaries, etc. The material in the files is used also in virtual exhibitions prepared and published by the Latvian National Archives (available at: https://www.arhivi.gov.lv/content.aspx?id=498&mainId=127&mainId=127).