The Prague Post Online: News: StB infiltrated founding of KPV

September 7th, 2008

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StB infiltrated founding of KPV

'Shocking' ministry file strains political prisoners' group

By Markéta Hulpachová
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
April 2nd, 2008 issue

The post-revolutionary atmosphere in the early 1990s gave rise to a spectrum of political movements formerly suppressed by the communist government. One of the largest and most outspoken of these groups is made up of individuals who suffered the harshest injuries at the hands of the former regime — political prisoners.

With about 80,000 original members, the first political prisoners’ civic association, K-231, was formed during the 1968 Prague Spring movement, but was dispersed three years later by the communist leadership. By the time the 1989 revolution legitimized the dissident movement, its numbers were down to 5,000. Nevertheless, the former K-231 diaspora organized itself into a group with lobbying power by founding the Confederation of Political Prisoners (KPV).

Representing the interests of about 8,000 surviving prisoners, today’s civic associations possess all the resources of a strong political lobby. But recently verified evidence of infiltration by the StB, or communist secret service, is rattling their unity.

In the beginning, KPV members maintained the close ties they’d developed in prison. They addressed each other as “brother” and “sister” and described themselves as MUKLs — an acronym for “man designated for liquidation,” which was the communist government’s official label for political prisoners.

“Back then, it looked as though the whole MUKL family was coming together,” recalled former political prisoner Stanislav Stránský, who spent 10 years in Stalinist-era prisons during the 1950s.

Despite this fraternal approach, the harmonious atmosphere did not last long. Shortly after the organization’s founding, the KPV leadership began sniffing out StB collaborators in their ranks.

“It was impossible for any of us to know who was an agent and who wasn’t, but there were a few people I suspected from the beginning,” Stránský said.

In light of these suspicions, the KPV appointed Stránský in 1991 to head a committee investigating the organization’s members. With the government’s permission, the committee accessed Interior Ministry documents left behind by the officially defunct StB, where it uncovered evidence that shocked even Stránský.

“It was always my goal to purge the organization of these agents,” he said. “What I didn’t know at the time was that an entire StB mafia was hiding in the KPV.”

The most controversial discovery of Stránský’s committee threatened to shatter the KPV’s foundations. According to a series of documents, including a December 2007 letter from the Interior Ministry, at least seven of the 39 political prisoners who congregated at a Prague pub to found the KPV in November 1989 collaborated with the StB.

“The StB was still a fully functional organ. They thought the regime change was only temporary, so it was their duty to keep people like us in our place,” Stránský said. “By installing their agents into the KPV, they wanted to break up our family.”

The KPV leadership found Stránský’s allegations difficult to stomach, and in 1992 expelled him from the organization and sued him for defamation. In the end, a judge who Stránský describes as a “communist relic” allegedly excluded the incriminating documents from the case, and ordered him to pay the plaintiff 100,000 Kč.

Appalled by the behavior of the confederation, Stránský transformed his branch of the KPV into the breakaway Association of Former Political Prisoners, which today has around 300 members.

Meanwhile, his relationship with the KPV remains tense. “[Stránský] continuously attacked us, and the court ruled in our favor because we proved that those StB agents were no longer our members during the trial,” said KPV Chairwoman Naděžda Kavalírová, responding to a March 27 Idnes.cz article publicizing the Interior Ministry’s December 2007 letter that reaffirms Stránský’s allegations.

Her associate, KPV Deputy Chairman Čestmír Čejka, however, concedes that Stránský was right. “I don’t deny that StB agents were members in the first years of the KPV’s existence,” he said. “Some of them even had active roles in the organization’s founding.” It is also possible, he added, that some of these agents remained in the organization until as late as 1995.

Unhappy ending

Leafing through a binder of incriminating documents, Stránský pointed out the names of StB collaborators who were expelled from the KPV. Some initially threatened to sue the KPV for marring their good name. Others, like Adolf Rezek, confessed their guilt. “He came to me in tears and handed me his membership card,” Stránský recalls.

Like many StB collaborators, Rezek allegedly succumbed to the pressure of authorities, who, in his case, threatened to confiscate his utility truck unless he cooperated. Ailing and estranged from his son, who distanced himself upon discovering his father’s collaboration, the aging Rezek recently died alone at his cottage, Stránský said. “When they signed the collaboration agreement, the StB promised them no one would ever find out,” he added. “Some of their destinies are terrible, but what can you do? I considered the guy a friend, and an honest man. He wasn’t.”

According to Pavel Žáček, director of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, which documents the crimes of the communist government, uncovering such dark pasts is a task that cannot be avoided.

“This sort of catharsis is necessary for society to move forward, and it affects us all,” he said. “It is important for any societal group to discover the truth about its past at all costs.”

Markéta Hulpachová can be reached at mhulpachova@praguepost.com

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