State Security (Czechoslovakia)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The State Security ( Czech : Státní bezpečnost , short StB or Slovak : Štátna bezpečnosť , short ŠtB ) was the secret police and a secret service of Czechoslovakia from 1948/49 to 1989.

In addition to the normal police force, public security , the StB was part of the National Security Corps ( Sbor národní bezpečnosti , SNB for short , or Zbor národnej bezpečnosti , ZNB in ​​Slovak ) and was the successor to the Obranné zpravodajství (OBZ) founded in 1945 . In addition to the StB, there was also Rozvědka , the SNB's international espionage department, as an independent secret service.

Former seat of the tax office in Bartolomějská ulice , Prague

history

Letter opener from the inventory of the StB

The StB was founded in 1945 by the Czechoslovak Ministry of the Interior as part of the state security apparatus. It was already under the control of the Communist Party before the February revolution in 1948 . Since then, the secret service, which was set up under the guidance of Soviet advisors , has been the most important repressive organ of the communist regime, which, especially in the period of late Stalinism under state and party leader Klement Gottwald, pursued and terrorized real and supposed opponents of the new rulers with all means. Its tasks were comparable to those of the Ministry for State Security in the GDR .

In the years 1948 to 1951, the StB attempted to catch republic fugitives with Operation Grenzstein . Several false border posts were set up near the German border. Some of the fugitives were persuaded to flee by agents of the StB who operated undercover. If the fugitives thought they were already abroad in Germany, they willingly gave the fake border officials in German or US uniforms information about relatives and friends who were critical of the regime, who were then also arrested.

Was affiliated with the StB one by KGB created -Vorbild Department of foreign espionage, the "intelligence headquarters," code name: "1. Administration “( Hlavní správa rozvědky, 1. správa ; Slovakian Hlavná správa rozviedky, 1. správa ), which was particularly active in Austria and the USA due to the large number of Czechoslovak exiles there. In October 1962, the StB brought the Slovak refugee Emil Švec into its power through a kidnapping from Austria. During the Prague Spring , tensions arose between the StB and Rozvědka. While the StB remained loyal to Moscow, the Rozvědka distanced itself from Stalinist methods and submitted to the Dubček government . For a short time, international espionage was even completely removed from the competence of the Ministry of the Interior. After August 1968, however, the Rozvědka was cleared of supporters of reform communism and put back under the umbrella of the SNB together with the StB.

In 1977 the StB was able to install one of its agents in the west. Josef Hodic was one of the signatories of Charter 77 and then fled to Austria with numerous other politically persecuted people, where he was very active in emigrant circles. It was only when he returned to the ČSSR in June 1981 that it became clear that he had not been a refugee, but an agent.

At the end of the 1980s, the StB employed around 18,000 full-time employees before it was dissolved on February 15, 1990 on the instructions of Prime Minister Marián Čalfa to the then Interior Minister Richard Sacher in the course of the Velvet Revolution .

The domestic secret service Úřad pro ochranu ústavy a demokracie (Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Democracy) and the foreign secret service Úřad pro zahraniční styky a informace (Office for foreign relations and information) were established as indirect successor institutions .

Problems of coming to terms with the past

After 1989, when Czechoslovakia was in the process of coming to terms with its own past, the documents of the secret police were kept under lock and key for a long time, which among other things meant that defamation could not be defended against. The state-organized access to the StB archives took place in three phases - 1996, 2002 and 2007:

  • In 1996 a law was passed guaranteeing every citizen access to their personal files; a total of 20,000 applications were submitted, but no files were found for around 90 percent.
  • A law of 2002 made access easier and stipulated that the lists of employees had to be published - which then happened, but the files only contained basic data such as name, date of birth and alias.
  • A law of 2007 established the Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů (Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes), which began to actually make the archived files accessible (the Úřad dokumentace a vyšetřování zločinů komunismu - Authority for Documentation and Investigation has existed since 1995 the crimes of communism - with similar goals).

The historian Jan Pauer judges on the one hand that the opening of the secret police archives in the Czech Republic was comparatively radical, but at the same time criticizes the fact that the informers' reports were presented to the public without comment and thus created space for denunciations. Numerous fates of such denounced persons were described in a well-known novel by Zdena Salivarová . The historian Muriel Blaive takes a similar view. In total, there were more than 750 lawsuits up to around 2006 by people who were certified by a court to be wrongly in the tax records.

Public lists of employees

Service ID of the StB

Regardless of the legal situation, a total of three different lists of alleged employees of the secret police have been published since the early 1990s.

In 1992, the former dissident Petr Cibulka made available what would later become known as Cibulkas Lists , which included around 160,000 alleged secret police employees. Cibulka himself spoke of 200,000 names. This directory is controversial to this day because, in addition to the actual employees, it also contained the names of completely uninvolved or even spied on victims.

About ten years later, the Czech Interior Ministry published its own lists of the employees of the former secret police, which were less extensive. The 75,000 or so names were supposed to be only Czech citizens and active employees, but this turned out to be inconclusive, as in the case of actress Jiřina Bohdalová , who obtained clarification in court, and others who openly admitted their activities not there.

In mid-2009 the ecologist and regional politician Stanislav Penc published another directory of the employees of the former secret police, which is said to include more than 770,000 people. This list also turned out to be controversial.

The files of the StB secret police are in the archive of the security services in Kanice .

Employees (selection)

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Igor Lukes: Showdown in the chapel. The Czechoslovak Secret Service 1968 , In: Stefan Karner: Prager Frühling: Contributions, Böhlau Verlag Köln Weimar, 2008, ISBN 9783412202071
  2. ↑ a b c d Muriel Blaive, Zpřístupnění archivů komunistické tajné policie…, online at: www.pwf.cz/cz/archiv ...  ( page no longer available , search in web archives ), Czech, accessed on July 14, 2010@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.pwf.cz
  3. ↑ a b Jan Pauer, The coming to terms with the dictatorships in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, in: The Parliament , Supplement from Politics and Contemporary History , Issue 42 of October 16, 2006, online at: bundestag.de ( Memento of June 28, 2007 on the Internet Archives )
  4. ↑ Zdena Salivarová-Škvorecká (ed.), Osočení. Pravdivé příběhy lidí z 'Cibulkova seznamu' (Defamation. True stories of the people from 'Cibulka's List'), Brno 2000 (1st edition 1993)
  5. ↑ O seznamy StB je enormní zájem , report of the Hospodářské noviny (business newspaper) of March 21, 2003, online at: hn.ihned.cz/c1-12519760 , Czech, accessed on July 12, 2010
  6. ↑ Report of the television channel ČT24 of 20 March 2003 (2003: Ministerstvo vnitra zpřístupnilo seznam spolupracovníků StB), online at www.ct24.cz/kalendarium ( Memento of 24 March 2010 at the Internet Archive ), Czech, accessed 11 July 2010
  7. ↑ A report by the Český rozhlas radio station (Jiřina Bohdalová není agentkou StB, přesto v jejich seznamech zůstane) from January 22, 2004, online at www.radio.cz , in Czech, accessed on July 11, 2010
  8. ↑ Minulé vedení ÚSTR a jeho rada porušila zákon a po 4 letech prohrála soud na základě žaloby Stanislava Pence , available at svazky.cz , in Czech; detailed report in English: Communist secret police database goes online. Former dissident publishes list, rush of visitors crashes web server , Prague Post March 10, 2020, online at: praguepost.com / ...
  9. ↑ Byli jste v hledáčku StB? Pencovy seznamy už fungují, a report by the centrum.cz agency from July 16, 2009, online at: Künstne.centrum.cz , in Czech, accessed on July 12, 2010

Web links