The Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes is a state institution active since 2008 that conducts scholarly research on the Nazi occupation and the communist regime.
The Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (ÚSTR) is a Czech state research institution which, since its establishment in 2008, has studied two periods of unfreedom in modern history: the Nazi occupation in the years 1939 to 1945 and communist rule in the years 1948 to 1989, including related overlaps.[1]
Focus
The institute concentrates on the anti-democratic activity of the state's security services. It also deals with the circumstances in which an authoritarian regime can develop from democratic conditions. It proceeds from the assumption that better knowledge of the principles on which the control of society rested in the past helps in defending against present and future threats of restrictions on human rights.[1]
Statutory definition
The activity of the institute and of the Security Services Archive is regulated by a separate law, Act No. 181/2007 Coll. It obliges the institute to study and impartially assess the period of unfreedom and the period of communist totalitarian power. It is to study the anti-democratic and criminal activity of state bodies, especially the security services, and the criminal activity of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and of other organisations based on its ideology.[1] It is further to analyse the causes and manner of the liquidation of the democratic regime, to document the share of persons from the Czech lands and from abroad in supporting the communist regime and in resisting it, and to obtain documents about the period of unfreedom, especially about the activity of the security services and about forms of persecution and resistance, and make them available to the public.[1]
Publishing and educational activity
Unlike other research institutions, the institute devotes itself intensively to popularisation and education. By its own description, it cooperates with Czech and foreign schools and contributes to the modernisation of history teaching.[1] Its activities include:
free provision of history teaching materials to primary and secondary schools, educational seminars for teachers, approximately twenty exhibitions a year in Czechia and abroad, publication of scholarly and popular books, publication of two journals (one scholarly and one popular), regular lectures and seminars for the public, organisation or co-organisation of scientific conferences, and digitisation of documents, which it makes available on its website. The institute also states that it supports the fight against totalitarianism at the international level.[1]
Relation to the Security Services Archive
The partner organisation of the institute is the Security Services Archive, which shares with it the same budget chapter. The archive holds the records of all security services from the Nazi and communist periods, that is, not only the State Security but also the Public Security, civilian and military intelligence and others. Under the archives act they are accessible to everyone.[1]
The institute itself is not an archive and does not collect archival records, including documents of the State Security. The Security Services Archive is a separate institution, even though the same law applies to it. Requests for information from archival records concerning specific persons are therefore directed to the archive, not to the institute.[1]