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Be prepared when you demand the truth


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February 14th, 2007 issue

It seems that everyone’s in favor of full disclosure — just as long as it doesn’t cause embarrassment to anyone you respect or admire. The rising tide of revelations as to who served as agents for the communist secret police and in what capacity has, inconveniently, failed to satisfy this requirement.

That’s because of a curative pill that’s tough to swallow.
Perhaps just as tough as learning that the Czech Republic’s most beloved folk singer, and a virtual icon of the intellectuals and artists who refused to go along with the pre-1989 regime, Jarek Nohavica, was registered as a “willing collaborator” by the StB.
Or as painful as the discovery that Josef Tošovský, widely respected as a capable former governor of the Czech National Bank and an equally able former prime minister, could be listed in the same category in those communist-era files.
Equally humiliating StB records disclosures have wreaked havoc with other lives, threatening to decapitate important state entities in the media and security sectors: Czech Interpol Director Pavol Mihál was dismissed last week when his former secret-police connections were publicized. The vetting certificate that cleared Mihál was filled out with a slightly altered spelling of his name and the case so outraged newly appointed Interior Minister Ivan Langer that he has ordered more thorough background checks on hundreds of top cops and ministry brass.
And Czech Television programming director František Lambert is facing calls for his ouster after admitting he served in the people’s militia, an armed group charged under the old regime with protecting the Communist Party.
But here’s that poison pill: You don’t get full and frank disclosure without hurting or embarrassing someone — generally someone who would have otherwise been free to age gracefully without having the consequences of their moment of weakness broadcast to the world. And it may well be someone who has moved on and left those dark years miles behind, building a successful new life and career, maybe even offering this young democracy a valuable service.
There’s also a powerful argument that those of us who know we have not always been true to ourselves and our neighbors have the most compelling motive of all to do better, and will make the most tireless contributors to a society that’s hard at work rebuilding the structures that the communists eroded for two generations.
But you come back to the same problem: How do you truly move on from the past until you’ve confronted it with open eyes?
The respected scholar Miroslav Vaněk of the Institute of Contemporary History told the Prague Monitor in an article Feb. 13 that he advocates “an open dialogue about this country’s past,”  but added a curious observation about the current disclosures: “I have doubts about the usefulness of naming well-known names,” he said. “Mostly, it’s fodder for the media. They lap it right up.”
Others have argued that releasing the names of public figures listed as former agents is probably selective and being used for political purposes — though just how the current administration would benefit from embarrassing a folk singer, a banker, a public television executive and a police agency chief remains unclear.
Mihál, admittedly, was known for outing former StB agents himself, by many accounts, but the others hardly have long lists of enemies.
So perhaps the one that’s really troubling everyone is the enemy that’s now finally emerging after all these years in the shadows: real full disclosure.


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