Czechs play down totalitarianism

A change of leadership in the Czech Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (USTR) has caused a stir in the country. Following in the footsteps of Pavel Žáček, a former student leader from 1989, is Jiří Pernes, who had close ties to the former communist regime. The liberal daily Mladá fronta Dnes cannot approve: "The worst thing is that Pernes hasn't even said in recent weeks that he wants to continue making historical documents accessible to the public. He wants to turn the body into a 'normal historic institute' dealing with 'day to day life in totalitarian society'. What he fails to see is that in so doing he will be banalising reality. If we can no longer learn what means of repression the regime applied we will end up distorting history. But what we really need is an analysis of how it was possible to behave decently and say no under totalitarianism."

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