A Few Words of Introduction (Securitas Imperii)
The release of the first issue of the professional journal Securitas Imperii under the banner of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes is a very personal act for me, forcing me to recall the year 1993, when, as the head of the documentation section of the then still Office for the Documentation and Investigation of the Activities of the State Security Service, I founded this anthology on the issue of the security services. It is impossible not to recall the bright memories of the director of the Military History Museum, PhDr. Zdeněk Jelínek, CSc., who was the co-author of the journal‘s fitting title Securitas Imperii.
The publishing of this type of magazine within the scope of the Ministry of the Interior, or the Police of the Czech Republic, was connected with many problems in the mid-1990s. At random: the grudgingness of the “old” structures, the intelligence games of the “new” structures, the extensive cover-ups, the inaccessibility of archive documents, their disarray, the politicization of the theme, and last but not least the shortage of sufficiently unrelenting experts and capable authors. It is good to recall the reality of that time, which has today already in many ways been fundamentally and irreversibly overcome.
The collection Securitas Imperii essentially copied, for better and for worse, the development of the Office for the Documentation and Investigation of the Crimes of Communism. It was initially guided by the idea of presenting documents and knowledge on the activities of the State Security Service from the last years of the communist totalitarian regime’s existence. We tried to penetrate the blockade on classification and show mainly the expert public that there is no reason to hold on to classified archive materials from the end of the 1980s (and thus neither the ones older than that). After the politically motivated change in leadership of the Office for the Documentation and Investigation of the Crimes of Communism at the end of 1998, the concept of the anthology changed: the goal became the selective publishing of chosen articles and studies. Some themes remained taboo.
Only the founding of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and its subservient Security Services Archive, two independent institutions that came into being on the basis of Act No. 181/2007 Coll. and which are merged into chapter no. 355 of the state budget, made possible the assumption of the relevant archive materials and documents out of the control of central power organs, including the intelligence services, and the creation of a research section focused primarily on security aspects of the communist and Nazi totalitarian regimes in our Central European conditions.
The creation of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and its subservient Security Services Archive meant, after many mishaps, the fulfilling of requisite conditions for a non-censored approach to the totalitarian past – the establishment of institutional foundations. It was therefore logical to take over, along with the relevant civilian employees of the Office for the Documentation and Investigation of the Crimes of Communism, the anthology Securitas Imperii. It was not our mistake that this did not happen by February 1, 2008 – the day of the opening of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes – but much later.
It is however not necessary to fear the previous classification mania, the calculated tools of previous archive material administrators who were thus able to negatively influence the range of accessible materials as well as the content of published texts, nor the lack of financial means from grudging grant sources. The exponents of the pre-November security services have left their positions and the law limits the influence of these former members of the Communist party, who still try to politicize and trivialize the research and archive efforts related to the reconstruction of mechanisms of totalitarian power.
Few get a second chance in their professional life. Securitas Imperii has received one. It is an informed, time-tested project, supported by a young, albeit already established institution with both the domestic public, and abroad, in the expert domain, as well. I believe that its professional ambitions will last a long time.
PhDr. Pavel Žáček, Ph.D.
Director, Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes