Problematics of Digital Archives in the Czech Republic: Security Services Archive and Its Role in the Public and Academic Sphere

Abstract

Security Services Archive, as a part of Czech "reconciling with the past" after the era of Communist Party rule (1948-1989), enables anyone to search through their collections and based on a nickname, a name or a date of birth also to find out whether a certain person plays any role in the Archive's database. The main attention is often given to the State Security (secret political police) and to the question: was the State Security ever interested in him or her (either in terms of "secret cooperation" or as its "victim")? It is understandable in the post-communist Czech Republic, but the problem is, that - based only on the on-line evidence - we cannot find the answer although it may seem so.

Any researcher knows that we cannot make conclusions until we read the actual archival sources to which the information on the web leads. You can certainly find out whether someone is listed as an "agent" (or in a different category), but you cannot know what it actually means until you do your standard research.

On the other hand, for the general public searching the web often seems to be sufficient, which raises many problems, misunderstandings, broken friendships, false accusations, trials... This case opens a question of on-line accessibility of archives and, in my opinion, it would be interesting to see whether it is a specifically Czech/post-communist episode, or not.