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CIAO DATE: 03/01
Foreign Policy
The Czechs' Unfinished Business
Kazi Stastna
Edited by Zdena Salivarova-Skvorecka
420 pages, Toronto: Sixty-Eight Publishers, 1993 and Brno: Host, 2000 (in Czech)
"They're Back!" screams the headline framing the large hammer and sickle planted on the cover of the November 20, 2000, issue of Tyden (The Week), the Czech Republic's leading newsweekly. Hard to believe that 11 years after the Velvet Revolution toppled communism, fears of the red menace persist. Granted, support for the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM) is on the rise, hovering near the 20 percent mark, but this headline also reflects a larger phenomenon, namely, "coming to terms with the past," a phrase that litters the pages of the Czech press on any given day.
Czech intellectuals and commentators love to bemoan the‹in their minds‹hasty way in which Czech society has swept its communist demons under the table.
In the final months of 2000, some of these demons reemerged in more ways than one: in the KSCM's strong second-place showing in the country's regional elections, ahead of the ruling Social Democrats, and in the publication of Smears: The True Stories of the People from "Cibulka's List," a book that grapples with a particularly slippery demon‹collaboration with the former secret police, known in the former Czechoslovakia as Statni bezpecnost, or StB.
Unlike East Germany, which since 1991 has carried out a determined effort to make available its wealth of secret-police material, the Czech Republic has, for the most part, kept its StB files out of the public eye. But a list of the names, birthdates, and code names of several thousand alleged StB collaborators has been circulating since May 1992, when former dissident and political prisoner Petr Cibulka first published it in Rude kravo, a magazine whose title spoofs the former communist newspaper Rude pravo.
Speculations and controversy over the origin of what came to be known as "Cibulka's list" have since run rampant, and copies of it continue to sell well. (In fall 1999, a second printing in book form sold nearly five times the average print run for a work of fiction in the Czech Republic.) Government authorities have never officially confirmed or denied the list's legitimacy, and Cibulka has refused to reveal his source. But some Interior Ministry representatives have unofficially stated that certain errors introduced during the data-transfer process match with those on Cibulka's list, which in general is seen as incomplete rather than inaccurate.
Although many people used the lists to confirm what they already suspected about neighbors or co-workers, a few "shockers" did appear in the form of prominent dissidents, intellectuals, writers, and artists. One of those was Zdena Salivarova-Skvorecka, wife of author Josef Skvorecky and cofounder of the Czechoslovak emigré publishing house Sixty-Eight Publishers, based in Toronto, Canada. Many rumors surrounded her entry, with one commentator speculating that the StB had perhaps used Salivarova-Skvorecka to spy on Josef Skvorecky and, through the publishing house, control the opposition at home and abroad.
Smears represents Salivarova-Skvorecka's effort to clear her name. The author sets about collecting the testimonies of others who, like herself, felt that they had wrongfully appeared on the list and had been stigmatized on account of it. While the resulting book first came out in July 1993 as Sixty-Eight Publishers' last publication, it did not find a Czech publisher and appear on Czech bookstands until October 2000.
In his introduction, Josef Skvorecky presents the testimonies as a form of "self-defense" against unsubstantiated slander. Cibulka himself has said that his list couldn't help to uncover the layers upon layers of motives, contexts, and circumstances behind the individual names. Since it was purely the StB's register, the list does not say anything about the length, nature, or degree of collaboration, only that the person was considered a collaborator. "Of course I'd prefer to print the biggest bastards in bold and those who just coasted along, say, in italics. Maybe I wouldn't include some people at all. I don't know. But I'm not God and I don't have access to the archive to know who was who and what exactly he did or didn't do," said Cibulka in an interview for the Czech daily Lidove noviny in January 2000.
Smears focuses on the particular circumstances that brought the book's 100-odd contributors in contact with the StB. The letters are organized into nine sections according to commonalities in the authors' experiences. The first section consists of letters (from living relatives) describing experiences of people who appeared on the list but are no longer living. The second collects testimonies from political prisoners and dissidents. Sections three to six, in which Salivarova-Skvorecka's own testimony is found, cover those people who did not sign binding collaboration documents but rather statements vowing to do the civic duty required of them by law or to keep quiet about a meeting with StB agents. In some cases, they did not sign anything at all. Section seven covers those who did sign statements of collaboration but under various forms of duress, or those who signed reports regarding business trips abroad. Section eight includes those who caught the eye of the StB because of their affiliation with the anti-Nazi resistance, or who had relatives abroad, contact with foreigners, or were themselves foreigners. The last section is devoted to the testimony of people considered by the regime to be "class enemies."
Aside from her own account of contact with the StB, Salivarova-Skvorecka contributes a short essay near the end of the book titled "The Guilty and the Innocent," in which she suggests a reorganization of categories of collaboration along the lines of those used by the Interior Ministry in 1978 to differentiate types of collaborators: those who collaborated on ideological grounds; those who did so in exchange for material or other advantages; and those who were blackmailed into doing so. In Salivarova-Skvorecka's view, only the first two groups represent true culprits who should be incriminated on any public list, while those in the third category are victims of physical or psychological blackmail and should not be publicly smeared. Instead, she suggests that those among them whose actions caused serious harm should be barred from top positions in the public sector for five years.
Many common details and refrains resonate throughout the book's individual accounts, but probably none more so than the fear and feeling of having to play a game without knowing the rules. This state of anxiety is particularly predominant in texts describing conditions in the 1950s (when the mere sight of a black Tatraplan, the infamous car of choice of the secret police, could be enough to incite a false confession), as opposed to, say, the 1970s or 1980s, when dissident circles and international support made it easier to refuse to cooperate with the StB.
It all makes for rather uncomfortable reading. It is sometimes hard to reconcile the contributors' shock at finding their names on "the list" with their admission that at some point in their life they did meet with StB officials and perhaps even sign something. At times, the writers seem to assert their innocence a bit too ardently. The testimonies often come off as too reactionary and sentimental to carry the necessary weight. "My conscience is clear" appears one too many times.
The claim of Smears contributors that their appearance on Cibulka's list is unjustified rests on the automatic opprobrium that comes with the mere appearance on the list. The Skvoreckys and other opponents of Cibulka's list argue that to say that whoever appeared in the StB register was a collaborator is misleading, because placement on the register encompasses such a plethora of conditions and circumstances, including outright misinformation. Salivarova-Skvorecka herself lied to the StB about a friend's contacts with some Yugoslavs: Thinking it would be better for her friend if she volunteered misinformation rather than none at all, Salivarova-Skvorecka purposefully wrote a false and what she considered intentionally harmless account, claiming they were Bulgarians not Yugoslavs.
Another argument supported by both Skvoreckys is that the list turns victims of the StB into culprits and diverts attention from those who formed the backbone of this criminal organization‹and of the regime itself. After all, there were those who did not even need to sign anything, because their loyalty to the party and its organs was unquestionable, or those who informed completely voluntarily, and thus will not appear on any such list. Indeed, one of the most common complaints repeated in many of the letters is that the real "big shots" and well-known collaborators are missing.
Smears succeeds insofar as it provides the missing context and human experience behind some of the names on Cibulka's list. But whether it convinces readers that its contributors are innocent and that the only true culprit was the Communist Party is less certain. Some readers have argued that by unrightfully presenting themselves as victims, the contributors trivialize the hardship of those who "really" suffered, or even died, at the hands of the regime. These testimonies are also unlikely to provide the public rehabilitation that their authors seek. For starters, sales of the book have been lackluster, with some bookstores refusing to carry it on ideological grounds.
While Czechs may concede that the issue is not as simple as "on the list" or "off the list," the majority does not want to dig too deep for fear of having the finger pointed at themselves. A list of names is easier to digest than human tales, which may recall their own uncomfortable experiences or compromises.
Many people feel that only the complete opening of the archives to the public will shed the necessary light onto an increasingly cloudy debate. A draft amendment to the 1996 law granting Czechs the right to view their StB files aims to provide greater public access to the files. But an equal number of voices claim that such a move would only prove more destructive. With incomplete and often falsified data, missing records, huge political and self-interests at stake, and complicated moral issues, any systematic attempt to get to the bottom of the whole collaboration dilemma seems doomed. For now the most that can be hoped for is a move away from sensationalistic finger-pointing toward a more fruitful, honest confrontation with the past.
Kazi Stastna is a freelance journalist and cofounder of the Internet journal Central Europe Review