Visiting Prague

Summary: what was StB and how it worked as well as the hunger of condemning to its collaborators and agents.

For the period of World War II, Czechoslovakia vanished from the map of Europe. Czechoslovakia was now found itself within the Soviet sphere of influence. Thus the political and economic organization of postwar Czechoslovakia was largely the result of negotiations between Benes and KSC exiles in Moscow. The Third Republic began its work in April 1945. Its government, installed at Kosice on April 4 and moved to Prague in May, was a National Front coalition.
The StB, the secret police of Czechoslovakia is as old as the Russian authority. StB meaning State Security, in Czech: Státní bezpečnost. Its formation happened in 1945. The StB like any other secret police was created to maintain the national security, and of course acting in secret fighting any thing that might seem like a threat to the state. The StB was a law enforcement organization officially endowed with authority superior to civil police forces, operating outside the normal boundaries of the law, getting orders straight from the topmost executive officials. Their actions were mostly obscure, hidden from the general public and even from most of the members of the government, it showed to be an efficient political repression. It would be of the interest of the purview of StB, who served as an intelligence and counter-intelligence agency, any activity that could possibly be considered anti-communist.
The Communist Party of the Czechoslovakia was in the base of the creation of such police, who bounded and controlled it. The StB was allowed to spy on and intimidated political opponents of the Party and forged false criminal evidence against them, facilitating the Communists rise to power in 1948. However the repression fell on other kind of people as artist, writers, musicians and intellectuals who, in any way showed their position against the communist regime. The StB used forcing confessions by means of torture, including the use of drugs, blackmail and kidnapping, and all of these practices developed under the tutelage of the Soviet advisors.
The end of the secret police comes along with the end of the soviet regime in 1989 with the Velvet Revolution. The reported murder of a student by police in action against a peaceful demonstration in November 1989(Velvet Revolution) was the catalyst for wider public support and further demonstrations, leading to the overthrow of the communist regime.
After the end of the regime it can be said that people lived in an optimistic, but with time and rising of old memories the problems the Velvet Revolution start to show up. These consequences are pointed by the teacher at the University of Economics of Prague, Vladimira Dvorakiva as the following: split of the state without referendum, privatization which was not always accepted as legitimated and the lack of a Constitutional Court nor a Senate during the first five months of Czech Republic existence. However there are other problems more abstract such as the moral matter of the “purification” of the Society. After this the fall of an authoritarian regime falls people have the need to find the guilty and to know what to do with those who were responsible and collaborated with it. In the Czech Republic this demystification comes with the discovery of the files of the StB who were not destroyed meanwhile. But it would be impossible at the time or in nowadays or ever to determine who participated by free will or who was blackmailed or tortured to help the StB. Latter, in an attempt of justice or revenge the files of the secret police started to be used with political ends: either trying to make ministers who allegedly collaborated with the StB renounce or to ruin electoral campaigns.
In 1991 a law was approved to make public who had held any kind of position connected to the communist regime, secret police, People’s Militia, National Security and so on. This law brought up a big issue of discrimination in the labor world, therefore many organizations such as International Labor Organization protested against this law and there were also several the appeals to the Constitutional Court arguing that this law was seriously interfering with the Human Rights. Later the law opened an exception to those who collaborated with the liberal reforms of the Prague Spring and Alexander Doubcek. After 1992 nothing chanced legally but a list of agents and collaborators was published in anti-communist newspapers. These lists also contained names of intellectuals who were well known for, exactly being against the regime.
This resulted in an easier way to an individualization of the society without solidarity and responsibility of the future. This law also brought again the fear and mistrust among families and neighbors. Regime…

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