Two Letters from Czechoslovakia
Přidáno: September 19, 2023
The plenipotentiary of Boris Yeltzin, the President of the Russian Federation handed over to Vaclav Havel, the President of the Czechoslovak Federative Republic a collection of seven verified copies of documents on 16 July 1992 that had up to…
“Friendly Help” in 1968 and the Outbreak of the So-called Normalisation of Society
Přidáno: August 21, 2023
In the late evening of 20 August 1968, the invading armies of five Warsaw Pact states, namely the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, East Germany and Bulgaria, crossed the borders of the former Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Next day, tanks of…
Foreign Equipment at the Danube Border Guard
Přidáno: July 10, 2023
After the end of the Second World War and the restoration of the Czechoslovak Republic, the question arose as to how to protect the state borders on the Danube. After the change of the Czechoslovak-Hungarian border in 1947, when…
Honoured against His Own Will
Přidáno: June 12, 2023
One of the characteristic features of the post-war period were the efforts of the security forces to track down and punish any collaborators of the Protectorate regime as they deserved. Many of these persons were awarded the so-called St….
Assassination in Strasbourg
Přidáno: May 5, 2023
Sixty-six years ago, on 17 May 1957, Henriette Tremeaud, the wife of the Prefect of the French department of Bas-Rhin, was murdered. She was killed in the explosion of a tripwire device placed in a cigar box. It turned…
Prominent Foodstuffs
Přidáno: April 17, 2023
One of the sections of the State Security Corps was the Department of Party and Constitutional Officials Security, codenamed Directorate 5. It had a specific task – to provide security for the highest state and Communist Party officials. One…
Encrypting according to The Grandmother
Přidáno: March 6, 2023
The investigation file Arch. No. V-2016 MV dated 1956 contains one of the prosecutions charged against the Sokol (a gymnastics organisation founded in 1862) officials who “did not agree with the unification of gymnastics in Czechoslovakia” after the 1948…
Zigzag Cap
Přidáno: February 1, 2023
The Security Services Archive regularly prepares data retrievals following researcher inquiries on diverse topic. These can be sometimes quite peculiar. Last month a foreign researcher turned to the Archive who conducts research on how the popular Czech woven cap…
The Black Barons
Přidáno: January 11, 2023
After the so-called normalisation of society started in Czechoslovakia in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the cultural life also began to be “normalised”. In the sphere of literature, some previously successful book titles became officially forbidden. Not only…
Regular Yet Unusual Training Course
Přidáno: December 6, 2022
Sometimes a material is found during the cataloguing process that has no direct link to the collection being catalogued, but can still provide interesting information and sometimes also an entertaining piece of reading. An example of this is the…