Reckoning with Informers and the Communist Past

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 3 unwraps the Czech Republic’s socio-legal reckoning with the repressive past, notably in the case of informers. This chapter elucidates transitional justice laws and practices implemented in Czechoslovakia after the fall of the Communist regime in 1989, as well as in the Czech Republic after the country’s dissolution in 1993. Transitional justice measures included proclamations, prosecutions, lustration, opening of StB archives, rehabilitation, property restitution, architectural remodelling, monument building, and creation of memory institutes. Although, taken as a whole, these transitional methods were not prima facie retributive— after all, there were hardly any criminal trials—they were still starkly condemnatory when it came to informers. Informers were cast as dangerous loyalists to the Communist regime and its ideology. Transitional justice stigmatized informers instead of pursuing reconciliatory goals. Political expediency was key in this regard, in particular, to bolster the legitimacy of the new liberal successor regime.