Abstract
More than 27 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the former Eastern Bloc country of Latvia decided to publish the KGB archival documents that had been left in the country before the fall of the USSR. Upon the 2018 release of these files, transnational discourse surrounding the publication illustrated Latvia's struggle to navigate the crossroads between its post-Soviet and emerging democratic identities. This paper compares Latvian, US, and Russian media representations of the Latvian KGB archival release and explores how these files constitute competing accounts of Latvia's agency on the international stage. When paired dialectically for analysis, the local and international journalistic coverage surrounding the archival release demonstrates how three themes of surveillance, democratic idealism, and transparency interact transnationally between these countries. Additionally, the themes provide rhetorical scholars a lens through which they can understand the event's significance for navigating post-Soviet identities and the process of lustration.