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Slogging through the past

ČSSD deems plan to increase public access a violation of rights

By Hilda Hoy
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
April 4th, 2007 issue

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST
Archivist Zdena Vyskočilová sorts through thousands of dusty boxes of Interior Ministry files, which some are in no hurry to modernize.
As political debate continues to swirl around the proposal for a National Memory Institute (ÚPN), there is also controversy over the state of the nation’s existing communist-era archives.
In various offices around the country, researchers and historians spend their days sorting through box after dusty box of documents.
It’s a difficult task, evidenced by sheer numbers: The Interior Ministry’s archives alone have so many boxes of yellowing papers, containing some 850,000 names, that placed end to end they would stretch 17 kilometers (10.5 miles). Documents are also stored in places such as the Justice and Defense ministries and in civilian and military intelligence offices.
The yellowing records contain some 850,000 names.
Pavel Žáček, director of the Interior Ministry’s archives, blames years of underfunding and neglect for the “unsatisfactory” state of the nation’s records.
“It could be said that, in the past, neither the leadership of the archive nor the previous governments were sufficiently interested in solving this problem,” he said in a February interview with The Prague Post. As a result, archive centers were understaffed and used outdated technology.
When Žáček was appointed last fall by Interior Minister Ivan Langer, one of his first acts of business was firing several longtime archive employees who themselves had alleged communist ties. Now, Žáček and Langer are working to improve the records, possibly by digitizing them for easier searching, and opening more of them to the public. The plans for the Interior Ministry archives mirror those for the proposed ÚPN.
A can of worms
But the opposition Social Democrats (ČSSD) are staunchly opposed to further opening the archives, believing the process to be a violation of human rights.
“Our Constitution [says], ‘Everybody has the right to be protected against the illegal invasion into their private and family life,’ ” ČSSD spokeswoman Květa Kočová says.
“The totalitarian regime did not follow these rights. … Is Langer going to continue this practice? We say we have to try to cope with the past, but we can’t do it in this way, by freely using information that was gathered illegally.”
At the Office for the Investigation of Communist Crimes (ÚDV), workers are weathering the storm of controversy unfazed. The ÚDV uses Žáček’s archives at the Interior Ministry, plus those at other ministries and offices.
Whatever the government decides is unlikely to affect work at the ÚDV, spokesman Jan Srb says.
“For our needs and purposes, it is not necessary to have centralized and digitized archives. They’re probably good for researchers and scholars, but we don’t need it,” he says.
But Langer says better archives are for the benefit of everyone.
“Consolidating the document collections of the former communist secret police (StB) would enable faster and quality research not only for state institutions, but also for citizens,” he said in a February interview.
Allegations in recent months against high-profile figures have given Langer fuel for his fight.
In February, for example, the daily Mladá fronta Dnes accused former Prime Minister Josef Tošovský of aiding the StB while adviser for the Czechoslovak Central Bank in 1986. His name had emerged on documents in Slovak archives, while similar Czech documents remain classified, the Czech News Agency reported.
Such roastings in the media have left the public hungry for more revelations.
Here even Senator Jaromír Štětina, an outspoken advocate for opening the archives, admits there can be some risks to unsealing the records.
“The key thing is not to let the truth from the archives be turned into a tool or instrument for political battles” or smear campaigns, he says.
Naďa Černá contributed to this report.

Hilda Hoy can be reached at hhoy@praguepost.com


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