Institute overpoliticizes research, critics say

History is a weapon, goes a saying. But a weapon also comes with responsibility.

Critics of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (ÚSTR) say the research center fails to live up to its responsibility in its examination of 20th-century Czech history. By conducting politically motivated research with a drive to make headlines, the institute, they say, is using its exclusive access to archive material for settling old scores.

The latest questions about the ÚSTR are being posed by, ironically or not, the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM), which says the state-financed institution's decision to publish a database of secret police (StB) agents on the Internet Nov. 9 endangers people's safety. In fact, names and pictures published online exposed some who continued working in intelligence services for the democratic Czech Republic.

The KSČM is now pushing for the ÚSTR to be stripped of its mandate for examining government documents from the communist-era and have the task returned to the National Archives. And, while the present-day Communist Party is open to charges of partiality, the KSČM is not alone in its criticism of how the ÚSTR is handling reconciliation with the country's past.

"Since the beginning, the institute has been populated by people who deal with history in a Jacobian way," said Jiří Pehe, a former aide to Václav Havel and now the director of New York University in Prague. "They love to scandalize people."

ÚSTR spokesman Jiří Reichl declined to comment on specific criticisms, referring questions to ÚSTR Director Pavel Žáček, who was in Ukraine and unreachable for this story.

"They are not using professional research methods. I would call them very provocative," said Vladimíra Dvořáková, director of political science at the University of Economics in Prague. "The institute is reproducing nonscientific research based on ideology."

Apart from making former StB agents' names and faces public, the institute made international headlines after the Czech weekly Respekt published a story in October 2008 saying author Milan Kundera had been a secret police informant in the lead-up to the arrest of Miroslav Dvořáček in 1950. The source of that story was ÚSTR employee Adam Hradílek, who had come across a police report mentioning Kundera after a prompting to look for it by the son of his great aunt, Iva Militká. In the same police report, Militká is herself named as the key source leading to Dvořáček's arrest, which actually transpired in Militká's college dorm room. The Respekt article fails to mention Militká's role and only mentions Hradílek's possible conflict of interest in its closing paragraphs.

"This was published in a popular magazine without other views. It did not undergo the standard social science review," Pehe said. "It came from a minor employee who was a relative of the person accusing Kundera, someone with a bone to pick."

It is the occurrence of incidents like this, in addition to the public outing of intelligence operatives, that the KSČM says is pushing them to act now.

"The institute is the exception among all research institutions, including the Academy of Sciences," said Deputy Kateřina Konečná, who spearheads the KSČM proposal. "Everywhere else, researchers must function according to certain rules and cannot handle archival documents at their will. The latest case is so dismal, even compared with abroad, that we cannot wait for something similar to occur in the future."

Konečná has initiated legislation to move the work done by the ÚSTR back under the auspices of the National Archives. The ÚSTR's mandate to comb through and organize documents from the communist-era is due to expire in 2030; Konečná advocates ending this mission in 2010.

"Any limitations on the powers of the institute and the Archive of the Security Forces as laid out under existing law would make the uneasy journey of coming to terms with our past all the more difficult," Reichl said.

While the KSČM initiative remains unlikely to gain traction in Parliament, it does shed light on other questions about the ÚSTR, many of which date to its founding in February 2008. For example, the Senate nominates the board that oversees the ÚSTR.

"The board reflects the political reality of whoever is in power," Pehe said.

Pehe is critical of the whole idea of a research institute being state-run, and said he would rather see something more closely resembling public radio or television - institutions that are publicly financed but have greater autonomy.

Whatever the alternatives, it seems the present-day Communist Party is hardly the only one with misgivings about the ÚSTR's work.

"It is a question of security," Dvořáková said of the decision to publish lists of those who worked with the secret police.

Pehe says the list is a sign the ÚSTR is overstepping its duty to work in the public interest.

"You can actually read about these people's private lives," he said.

Benjamin Cunningham can be reached at
bcunningham@praguepost.com