Informers up close : stories from communist Prague

Author / Creator

Drumbl, Mark A., author

Available as

Online

Summary

Informers contribute to the power of repressive regimes. While informers may themselves be victims, and are enlisted by the state, their actions cause other individuals to suffer significant harm. ...

Informers contribute to the power of repressive regimes. While informers may themselves be victims, and are enlisted by the state, their actions cause other individuals to suffer significant harm. Informers, then, are central to the proliferation of endemic human rights abuses. Through a case study of Communist Czechoslovakia (1945-1989) - and drawing from secret police archives, oral histories, and a broad gamut of secondary sources-this book unearths what fuels informers to speak to authorities in repressive times and considers how transitional justice should approach informers once repression ends and a successor regime emerges. This book unravels the complex drivers behind informing and the dynamics of societal reactions to informing. It explores the agency of both informers and secret police officers. By presenting informers 'up close', and the relationships between informers and secret police officers in high resolution, this book centres the role of emotions in informer motivations and underscores the value of dignity in transitional reconstruction. This book also leverages research from informing in authoritarian states to improve our understanding of informing in so-called liberal democratic states which, after all, also rely on informers to maintain law and preserve order.

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