“Prague Through the Lens of the Secret Police” Exhibition Tour Continues with Opening at Harvard University
PRAGUE/BOSTON, November 5, 2009 – The one-of-a-kind exhibition of photographs and films taken by the surveillance unit of the Czechoslovak secret police in the 1970s and 1980s, “Prague Through the Lens of the Secret Police,” will soon make the second stop on its U.S. tour when it opens at Harvard University on Sunday, November 15. The exhibition, which had its U.S. premiere in Washington, DC at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars this summer and fall, will be on view at Harvard’s Center for Government and International Studies, 1730 Cambridge Street, through December 21. The exhibition, sponsored by the Cold War Studies Program of Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, coincides with the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution that led to the Communist regime’s demise.
“Prague Through the Lens of the Secret Police” introduces the visual products of the activities of a special unit of the Communist secret police (Státní bezpečnost, or StB) – the Surveillance Directorate of the Interior Ministry – which carried out surveillance of Czechs, Slovaks, and foreigners whom the Communist regime deemed hostile or suspicious in any way. The secret police succeeded in capturing on film not only these “subjects of interest,” but also the likeness of the city of Prague during the period known as “normalization” that followed the Soviet-led occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and lasted through the collapse of the regime in late November 1989.
The exhibition and accompanying bilingual English-Czech publication, which features a much more extensive selection of photographs as well as complementary texts, are the work of two Czech institutions created by the Czech government in 2008 to disclose and evaluate the repressive state mechanisms used by former regimes to sustain power – the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (ÚSTR) and the Security Services Archive (ABS). The ÚSTR focuses on research and analysis, publication, exhibitions, and education, and the ABS concentrates and makes accessible to the public the state security documents themselves. The Archive holds roughly 280 million pages worth of documents, amounting to over 18 kilometers of material. The ÚSTR and ABS are further mandated by law to digitize all of the documents in their possession. Institutions with a similar mission exist in many of the other countries of the former East Bloc.
One of the exhibition’s aims is to show those who never experienced life in a Communist dictatorship what the secret police actually did at the behest of Czechoslovakia’s Communist regime. The repressive functions of the secret police, carrying out arrests, beatings, and executions, are well known, but the surveillance function has often been unappreciated. “These photographs illustrate both the strength and the weakness of Czechoslovakia’s Communist regime — strength in being able to keep constant track of anyone who fell under suspicion, and weakness in being so obsessed by people who could not conceivably pose any threat,” said Mark Kramer, Director of the Cold War Studies Program at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, who is also a member of the ÚSTR’s Academic Advisory Board.
“Prague Through the Lens of the Secret Police,” opens in the Concourse Gallery of the South Building of Harvard’s Center for Government and International Studies, 1730 Cambridge Street, on Sunday, November 15, and will be on view through December 21. The exhibition is co-organized by the Cold War Studies Program and Kathryn W. and Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University.
For further information about the exhibition, including information about how to obtain print quality photographs, please contact Institute spokesperson Jiří Reichl at press@ustrcr.cz or +420 725 787 524.