Description of the Collections
The operative agenda of the Security Services Archive contains materials that were created in the course of activities of State Security Service (Státní bezpečnost – StB) operative services, chiefly intelligence (the so-called Directorate I), counterintelligence (in various periods, counterintelligence operative activities concerned Directorates II, III, IV, V, XI), military counterintelligence (Directorate III or VI), the Surveillance Directorate (Directorate IV or VII), directorates of operative technology (Directorate VI or earlier IX), StB investigation directorates, Intelligence Services of the general staff, and the Ministry of Justice’s Section of Internal Protection (Odbor vnitřní ochrany – OVO, literally Section of Internal Protection, or the equivalent of a prison intelligence agent network).
The largest group contains dossiers created in the course of activities of the unit called, for the better period of its existence, the StB Investigation Directorate, or Directorate II of the Ministry of the Interior.
The activities of the StB Investigation Directorate and its related units embedded into the organizational structure of regional StB units created investigation files that were organized into collections broken down into individual groupings based on origin (unit). These are unique archival materials documenting StB practice against real and potential enemies as well as against inconvenient persons of the then communist regime in the wider spectrum of society. The investigation files can generally be characterized as very valuable historical material of great predicative value.
Directorate II of the Ministry of the Interior (including its subservient organizational units on the regional level) followed and intervened against potential and real opponents of the regime of that time, both Czechoslovak citizens and foreigners. The counterintelligence units were thus interested in subjects (primarily physical premises or groups) and persons from the widest branches of society, embassies of “western states” and other related institutions. Within the directorate of the department of counterintelligence operative dossiers and investigation files are stored archive materials created in the course of the activities of Directorate II and its subservient territorial units, that is, the operative agenda maintained on individual persons or subjects. In the dossiers are of course also documents of other origin.
The dossiers stored in the Security Services Archive can be divided into several groups:
- Agent dossiers (Agenturní svazky)
Concentrates dossiers of counterintelligence collaborators and secret collaborators, that is dossiers on residents, agents or candidates for secret collaboration, holders of loaned or conspiratorial apartments, informants (or informant candidates) and confidants acquired by the StB for collaboration on so-called ideological grounds, an offer of various advantages or compromising facts. - Dossiers of Counterintelligence elaboration (Svazky kontrarozvědného rozpracování)
Contains so-called operative dossiers, that is counterintelligence surveillance or elaboration of individuals (or groups of individuals); from the perspective of typology of the StB operative agenda, this concerns mainly operative volumes on individuals (maintained on so-called screened or enemy persons) and groups. It further contains so-called search, or agent-search volumes (searching for individuals suspected of anti-state activity who hid or lived abroad), surveillance volumes (long-term observation of individuals whom the StB presumed to be engaged in anti-state activity) and signal (the verifying of “signal,” or cautionary, information concerning anti-state activity, acquired through investigation, the agent network, offices’ reports or denunciation by citizens). - Dossiers on subjects of interest (Objektové svazky)
Contains chiefly the so-called dossiers on subjects of interest (primarily physical premises or groups), especially concerning the “protection” of important companies and state and public institutions in the face of “enemy activities,” as well as for the purpose of continual StB supervision and surveillance of the activities of groups and potential groups of regime opponents (e.g. organizations, clubs, parties functioning during the period of the First Republic, professional, religious or other groups of citizens). - Tactical Dossiers (Svazky taktické)
Contains set aside parts of shredded dossiers, including so-called dossiers on subjects of interest or operative dossiers on individuals whom the StB considered useful from the operative perspective, as well as loose material on individuals or facts which could not be organized by type into any main category of the operative agenda (intermediary information or knowledge, materials on persons screened for contact with state secrets, etc.). - Investigation files (Vyšetřovací spisy)
In the investigation files, the “pre-realization” phase (before an individual‘s arrest) of StB activities can be followed (in some dossiers, the so-called operative material is attached; for example, agent reports), as well as the entire interrogation mechanism through prosecution. Final verdicts are also included, and in some cases, repeals or the decision for rehabilitation. - Rehabilitation files (Rehabilitační spisy)
This collection was created in the context of fulfilling the order of the Minister of the Interior No. 28/1963, which mandated the removal of materials on fully rehabilitated persons (on the basis of a list of the Supreme Court, which carried out revisions of political trials from the years 1949-1954) from the collections of the operative archives of State Security. The basis for the fulfilling of this order became the collection of investigation files. Only a part of the collection has been preserved, as a result of re-manipulation (part of the files were re-incorporated into the original collections) and shredding in the 1970s and 1980s. - Materials of lasting value (Materiály trvalé hodnoty – MTH)
Archive materials were stored in this collection after being separated out from the dossiers of counterintelligence elaboration, agent and subject of interest dossiers. This separating out of materials resulted in the conversion of dossiers into microfiche form. The original dossiers were usually shredded. The originals that were considered by the StB to be so important that it was necessary to keep them in their original form were gathered in this MTH collection. The collection likewise contains materials which for technical reasons were not able to be converted into microfiche.