Decommunization as a digital utopia: digitization of the communist state security archives in the Czech Republic

• Authors: Vítězslav Sommer
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This article discusses the issue of the digitization of the archival materials of the Czechoslovak State Security (StB), the most important instrument of repressive policy during the communism (1948–1989). After 1989, a number of public disputes arose around the issue of the vast archive of the communist ministry of the interior. This situation reverberated in historiography, as well as in a broader public debate on what was called “coming to terms with the communist past”. With the arrival of digital technologies, digitization became a central point of this long and politicized debate. Seemingly a technical problem – digitization of archival materials that had been created by the State Security between 1948 and 1989 – became a battlefield of bitter disputes over who and how these materials should be stored, made accessible and interpreted.

Keywords

EN

digitization; post-socialism; Czech Republic; archives

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Masaryk's Institute and Archives, ASCR
• Journal: Střed. Časopis pro mezioborová studia Střední Evropy 19. a 20. století. / Centre. Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies of Central Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries.
• Year: 2021
• Volume: 13
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 82-109
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Vítězslav Sommer

• Masarykův ústav a archiv AV ČR, v.v.i., Gabčíkova 2362/10, 182 00 Praha 8, Czech Republic