‘A living society has its history. (...) For some time now history seems to be non-existent: we are losing our awareness of time slowly but surely, we are forgetting what happened when, what was earlier and what came later; what did happen at all—and we have the predominant feeling that we do not actually care,’1 this is what Václav Havel wrote to then president Gustáv Husák in 1975 to warn him of the consequences of a general apathy and all-penetrating demoralization. Even today, some thirty-five years later, the question of the relation of the individual person to his or her own history has not lost its importance.

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the communist regimes in the central and eastern European countries the events of the year 1989 became the subject of intense interest both among professionals and a non-professional public. French historian and sociologist Françoise Mayer wrote an interesting work which was published in the Czech language -‘Češi a jejich komunismus’ (The Czechs and their communism)— which is still based on the status of research in the late 1990s. A lot has changed since, and in 2007 the law on the formation of the ‘Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů’ (Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes) was passed. But it has become apparent that a need for coming to terms with one’s own past still exists today. There is still a lack of research on the relation between opposition, society and power. Until today, socio-political discourse has remained in a phase that centres on the ‘search for a fixed point’.

Some central legislative actions have without doubt driven the review of the past in the Czech Republic into the right direction. But the key problem is that legislative regulations alone can never substitute the other preconditions required for a successful reflection of the past. Rather, it is necessary to describe the functioning of totalitarian power. Without going too much into detail with the following, it is in particular dealing with and publication of the files of the former Czech State Security (Státní bezpečnost; Stb) that must be taken into account with regard to the legislative and institutional frame of coming to terms with the past in the Czech Republic.

The constructive elements of the process of coming to terms with the past after the revolutionary events in November 1989 include the legislative steps taken in the first half of the 1990s. These referred, firstly, to relieving the consequences of expropriation carried out between 1948 and 1989, and, secondly, were focused on protecting the newly developing democratic structures. As early as in 1990 the law on judicial rehabilitation was adopted (Law no. 119/1990 of 23 April 1990), as a result of which nearly 260,000 convicts from the period between 1948 until 1989 were vindicated. Later in 1991, the law on extrajudicial rehabilitation (Law no. 87/1991 of 21 February 1991) was published in the Law Gazette.

Two laws which also fuelled strong discussions across the political spectrum can be considered key laws. The first one, the so-called lustration law (lustrační zákon) of October 1991 was intended by the legislator to protect important state functions from the groups of people detailed in clause 2 of the same law: members of the corps of the People’s Police (Sbor národní bezpečnosti; SNB) according to their recordings in the files of the State Security (StB), members of the People’s Militia (Lidové milice), secret officers of the StB, secretaries of the Communist Parties of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) and Slovakia (KSS) from the level of district secretary upwards, and others (Law no. 451/1991 of 4 October 1991).

The law on the illegality of the communist regime of summer 1993 can be seen as a breakthrough in the review of the past. According to this law, not only the KSČ leadership is guilty of violating human rights in the period between 25 February 1948 and 17 November 1989, but the party members are, too. Clause 2 of the law refers to the KSČ as a criminal organization and as damnable. Resistance against the communist regime is highlighted as legitimate, which is considered a key sentence of the law, and in clause 3, this resistance is also termed ‘morally justified and venerable' (Law no. 198/1993 of 9 July 1993).

None of these laws, however, tackled the issue of access to the files of the State Security (StB). These were still being destroyed systematically during the first half of the 1990s. The Institute for the Documentation and Investigation of the Actions of the State Security (Úřad pro dokumentaci a vyšetřování činnosti Státní bezpečnosti) came into existence in 1992, to be transformed into the Institute for the Documentation and Investigation of the Crimes of Communism (Úřad dokumentace a vyšetřování zločinů komunismu; ÚDV) in 1995 under the leadership of Václav Benda. But this institute focussed on the criminal dimension in reviewing the past.

On the initiative of the historical commission of the ‘citizens’ forum’ (Občanské fórum) the Institute for Contemporary History (Ústav pro soudobé dějiny; ÚSD AV ČR) had already been founded in January 1990 at the Czech Academy of Sciences, with the aim of building a place for independent investigation of Czechoslovak history between 1938 and 1989. Initially, however, research focused on the actions of the former opposition, the history of the Communist Party, and, last but not least, on the historical landmarks of 1968 and 1989. The problem of the StB was not part of the research plans at first and was mainly tackled by individuals (in particular Karel Kapel and Pavel Žáček) working at the ÚSD.

Access to the files of the StB and their systematic examination proved to be one of the major problems in the process of coming to terms with the past. However, the legislative steps were taken much too slowly. It was only in 1996 that a law was adopted to allow Czech citizens to have a look into the operative files that the StB had kept about them (Law no. 140/1996 of 26 April 1996). One problem was the fact that the only place where people could study the files was at the department of the Ministry of the Interior at Pardubice (since September 1997)—80 kilometres from Prague. Since 1999 a group of senators had tried to amend the law. The result of their work came in the form of the law on the publication of the files created through the activities of the former State Security (Law no. 107/2002 of 8 March 2002). Using the words of Pavel Žáček, this law might be called a certain ‘progress in thinking’ with the Czech legislators but we cannot speak of free access for scientific purposes.

This situation has been criticized in public time and again. A proposal to form an Institute for the Documentation of the Totalitarian (Institut pro dokumentaci totality) had already been made at that time. A law on archiving and records management was adopted in 2004, which can be seen as a breakthrough in the access to archived materials that had been created through the activities of the organizations united in the National Front (Národní fronta) and the activities of the StB. This law still regulates access to most of these materials today. The main problem at that time was the fact that the Interior Ministry officials could handle the personnel files of the former full-time StB employees rather arbitrarily. There was thus a paradoxical situation in the Czech Republic: former full-time StB employees could find out everything about their former victims while the victim had no opportunity to find out anything about these people.

In 2005, a group of senators proposed a law on the establishment of an ‘Institute of the People’s Memory’ (Ústav paměti národa). After heated debates, the law on the creation of the ‘Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes' (Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů; ÚSTR) and the ‘Archive of the Security Departments’ (Archiv bezpečnostních složek; ABS) was finally adopted in June 2007 (Law no. 181/2007 of 8 June 2007). This created new opportunities for scientific research, but they have not been used to the full yet.

This fact can be attributed to the controversial process of the foundation of the institute, since the will—at first having positive effects—of that part of the political spectrum (above all the Civic Democratic Party, Občanská demokratická strana; ODS) without which the ÚSTR could hardly have been founded, has become the main obstacle in a natural progress of the institution. As early as in 2008 the newly founded institute and its director Pavel Žáček were accused of a politicization of the review process. Critics also claimed that a number of his appearances cast considerable doubt on the professional qualifications of his staff. In January, 2010, the repeated demand for a public selection procedure for the post of ÚSTR director was granted. A committee of seven members finally selected Jiří Pernes, historian and long-term member of staff at the Institute for Contemporary History (ÚSD AV ČR). In his concept for the development of the institute he pointed out that he would try to get rid of the suspicions of politicization against the Institute and improve qualification of his staff. Co-operation with academic research departments as well as universities and colleges, thus far non-existent, will be started, and the promising relations with similar institutions in the former Eastern bloc states will be continued.

Today, an especially liberal way of access to the files from the provenance of the StB in the Czech Republic can be observed. The staff of the ‘Archive of the Security Departments’ (ABS) is also very complaisant with regard to the researchers. Should the existing institutions dedicated to the different aspects of Czechoslovak history indeed succeed in building a good co-operation, this could possibly create the ideal conditions for a critical analysis of our past. The Czech historians might then be able to catch up with their German and Polish colleagues, who have a strong lead in this matter.

References:
MAYER, Françoise: Češi a jejich komunismus: Paměť a politická identita, Praha 2009.
ZNOJ, Milan: Hledání pevného bodu: O vyrovnání s minulostí – trocha teorie, in: Listy, roč. XXXI, č. 2 (2001), pp. 65-68.
ŽÁČEK, Pavel: Der tschechische Weg aus dem Kommunismus, in: Horch und Guck 14 (2005) 49, pp.58-61. PERNES, Jiří: Koncepce rozvoje Ústavu pro studium totalitních režimů ČR na dobu nejbližších pěti let. www. ustrcr.cz/cs/zverejneni-koncepci-kandidatu-na-reditele-ustr (as of 6 March 2010).

Dr. Tomáš Vilímek, born 1976, studied history and politics, member of the Institute of Contemporary History at the Academy of Sciences in Prague.