Communists and Their Victims: The Quest for Justice in the Czech Republic

by Roman David

Overview

In Communists and Their Victims, Roman David identifies and examines four classes of justice measures—retributive, reparatory, revelatory, and reconciliatory—to discover which, if any, rectified the legacy of human rights abuses committed during the communist era in the Czech Republic. Conducting interviews, focus groups, and nationwide surveys between 1999 and 2015, David looks at the impact of financial compensation and truth-sharing on victims' healing and examines the role of retribution in the behavior and attitudes of communists and their families. Emphasizing the narratives of former political prisoners, secret collaborators, and former Communist Party members, David tests the potential of justice measures to contribute to a shared sense of justice and their ability to overcome the class structure and ideological divides of a formerly communist regime.

Complementing his original research with analysis of legal judgments, governmental reports, and historical records, David finds that some justice measures were effective in overcoming material and ideological divides while others obstructed victims' healing and inhibited the transformation of communists. Identifying "justice without reconciliation" as the primary factor hampering the process of overcoming the past in the Czech Republic, Communists and Their Victims promotes a transformative theory of justice that demonstrates that justice measures, in order to be successful, require a degree of reconciliation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812250145
Publisher:	University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Publication date:	05/04/2018
Series:	Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Roman David is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at Lingnan Universityin Hong Kong. He is author of Lustration and Transitional Justice: Personnel Systems in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

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Preface

For more than four decades, communist ideology divided the world. After 1989, most communist regimes collapsed but their legacies refused to disappear. Facing their history, citizens of formerly communist countries sought justice for both perpetrators and victims. The Czech Republic has been a leader in dealing with the past in postcommunist Europe. It implemented far-reaching reparation and rehabilitation programs for the victims of communist rule, it returned properties to their original owners, expropriated the assets of the Communist Party, extended the statute of limitation for communist crimes, and enriched the world's vocabulary by reviving the forgotten word "lustration" as a process for dealing with secret collaborators. The implementation of these measures was unprecedented in their scale and speed; many of these measures remain unique. Yet the results are disappointing for many Czechs as historical divisions persist twenty-five years after the regime change. This book therefore raises a question about the role of justice measures in overcoming the communist past. Did justice measures transform the divided society in the Czech Republic?

This book is a culmination of my research into the topic of dealing with the past that dates back to the 1990s. Since then, my research interest in what became known as "transitional justice" has taken me to Poland, Hungary, Croatia, South Africa, and South Korea. Although I found only a few of their citizens satisfied with the outcomes of dealing with the past, I was glad to learn from their experiences. In particular, the issue of "reconciliation" helped me to revisit the Czech process of dealing with the past, which has been dominated by an emphasis on retributive and reparatory justice. I believe that the Czech experience can inform academics in the fields of history, political science, sociology and law; policymakers; and civil society members about the positive and negative features of the process of dealing with the past. My recent research and consultancy trips to Ukraine and Myanmar confirm this belief: The stakeholders of other societies divided by fundamental conflict have much to draw from the Czech experience in trying to bring justice to a divided society.

The annexation of Crimea is another motivation for writing this book. Continuing Russian interference in Ukraine and a growing Russian appetite to regain control of territories once under its occupation and influence expose the ideological vulnerability of Eastern Europe. Russian propaganda uses communism as a vehicle to attract supporters in the former Eastern bloc for its territorial drives. The membership of most Eastern European countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) may be useless if Russian propaganda sways people in these young democracies against NATO. Hence, dealing with the communist past successfully continues to be politically relevant.

The book is dedicated to my teachers Vladimír Čermák and Vojtěch Cepl. Both professors belonged to the remarkable first bench of justices who served in the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic in 1993-2003. Being professors of social philosophy and law, respectively, both acknowledged that law itself does not have answers to the dilemmas of justice after political transition. Although they searched for answers deep within themselves, they set me on a journey abroad. Justice Cepl, known for his cutting humor, then "banished" me from the country. My crime was nothing less than becoming a "part of the establishment at too young an age." Justice Čermák, a more conciliatory figure, added that I should not worry because my life during totalitarianism, transition, and democracy had provided me with a unique experience that allowed me to view the political world differently than others.


A word is due about the nomenclature used in this book. The critical notion of justice is used as a means and as an objective: I refer to "justice measures" when I speak about a means, a set of methods, laws, and other legal measures and informal societal responses devised or taken to deal with the past. "Justice measures" encompass measures of retributive, reparatory, revelatory, and reconciliatory justice, which serve as four clusters for all justice measures (see Chapter 2). When I refer to justice as an objective of dealing with the past I speak of "justice" or the "perception of justice."

The nomenclature of reconciliation is simpler because "reconciliation" has a noun and an adjective, "reconciliatory." When speaking of "reconciliation" or the "perception of reconciliation," I refer to an objective of dealing with the past. When speaking about "a reconciliatory measure" or its synonyms "a measure of reconciliatory justice" and "a reconciliatory justice measure," I refer to the means of dealing with the past. For instance, an apology is a measure of reconciliatory justice but it needs to be investigated to see whether it actually leads to reconciliation.

The term "Czech Lands" is a historical name for the territory of today's Czech Republic. It is a more accurate term than "the Czech Republic" because it also refers to the Czech part of the Czechoslovak Federation that ceased to exist in 1992. "Restituee" refers to a person whose property was returned during the restitution process. "Lustrator" refers to a person who searches secret police archives, that is, performs lustration. Since the archives have been put into the public domain, every person can search the archives for any name. I do not capitalize communism, which is an ideology such as fascism. Even Nazism does not linguistically elevate communism, since Nazism comes from Nationalsocialism, a word in the German language that capitalizes all nouns. As a matter of curiosity, in the Czech language both "komunismus" and "nacismus" appear in the lower case.

Table of Contents

Preface
List of Acronyms

Introduction

PART I. HISTORICAL AND SOCIOLEGAL CONTEXT
Chapter 1. The Communist Regime in Czechoslovakia: Were People Coerced?
Chapter 2. Justice After Transition: Retributive, Revelatory, Reparatory, and Reconciliatory Measures

PART II. JUSTICE AT THE POLES OF SOCIETY
Chapter 3. Did Justice Measures Heal Victims? Compensation, Truth, and Reconciliation in the Lives of Political Prisoners
Chapter 4. Did Justice Measures Transform Communists? Personal and Intergenerational Transformation

PART III. JUSTICE IN A POLARIZED SOCIETY
Chapter 5. Could Justice Measures Transform the Divided Society? Experimental Evidence About Justice and Reconciliation
Chapter 6. Did Justice Measures Transform the Divided Society? Class and Ideological Divides

Conclusion: From Observations to the Transformative Theory of Justice

Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

"Roman David interviewed communists and political prisoners-two groups whose experiences are vital to understanding both the communist regime and the democratic responses to it. Communists and Their Victims is a valuable and important contribution."

Macalester College Nadya Nedelsky

"Utilizing an effective and critical combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, Roman David presents the first comprehensive case study of a postconflict or postrepression country that goes beyond description and platitudes."

Harvey M. Weinstein

"Roman David has written a perceptive and wise book on transitional justice in Eastern Europe that transcends his focus, the postcommunist Czech Republic, in time and place . . . [A] refreshing contrast to perspectives dominating transitional justice research and analyses and a myth-shattering contribution to this field . . . It is exemplary for its nuanced perspective and detail, and this is exactly the quality that makes it myth shattering."

American Journal of Sociology

"David's findings should be required reading for everyone interested in postconflict and postrepression justice, and his methodology supplies a template that could and should be replicated elsewhere."

Times Literary Supplement

"David's findings should be required reading for everyone interested in postconflict and postrepression justice, and his methodology supplies a template that could and should be replicated elsewhere."—Times Literary Supplement

"Roman David has written a perceptive and wise book on transitional justice in Eastern Europe that transcends his focus, the postcommunist Czech Republic, in time and place . . . [A] refreshing contrast to perspectives dominating transitional justice research and analyses and a myth-shattering contribution to this field . . . It is exemplary for its nuanced perspective and detail, and this is exactly the quality that makes it myth shattering."—American Journal of Sociology

"Utilizing an effective and critical combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, Roman David presents the first comprehensive case study of a postconflict or postrepression country that goes beyond description and platitudes."—Harvey M. Weinstein, University of California, Berkeley

"Roman David interviewed communists and political prisoners—two groups whose experiences are vital to understanding both the communist regime and the democratic responses to it. Communists and Their Victims is a valuable and important contribution."—Nadya Nedelsky, Macalester College

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