Krakovsky began doing genealogical research in 2011, and after requesting copies of original documents from archives in Lviv, was told that he would be required to pay 116,000 hryvnia (US$4,600) to obtain them.
"[5] He has successfully sued over a dozen Ukrainian governmental archive divisions in court under freedom of information laws due to restrictive policies that prevents fair access to archivists and researchers.
[6] He argues that free access to historical archives falls under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and is precedent under Kenedi v.
[9] In 2017, he spoke at a conference organized by the Office of the Ukrainian Parliament Commission for Human Rights and the Center for Democracy and Rule of Law on the lack of archival transparency in Ukraine.
[6][12][13][14] JewishGen, an online non-profit genealogical organization, has indexed over 1 million individual records contained in the books archived by Krakovsky allowing for free access to researchers.