The Cold War Studies Project at the Davis Center for Russian and
Eurasian Studies (Harvard University), in cooperation with the Institute
for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and Security Services Archive in
Prague, Czech Republic, is pleased to announce a special exhibition:
*Prague Through the Lens of the Secret Police*
November 15 - December 21, 2009
Harvard University
Center for Government and International Studies
South Building, Concourse Level
1730 Cambridge Street
*Opening reception: Sunday, November 15, 4:30 p.m.*
Please circulate to anyone who may be interested. All are welcome.
*Twenty Years After the Demise of Czechoslovakia's Communist Regime, an*
*Exhibition of Secret Police Surveillance Photographs Opens at Harvard
University*
A one-of-a-kind exhibition of photographs and films taken by the
surveillance unit of the Czechoslovak secret police in the 1970s and
1980s, "Prague Through the Lens of the Secret Police," will soon make
the second stop on its U.S. tour when it opens at Harvard University on
Sunday, November 15. The exhibition, which had its U.S. premiere in
Washington, DC, at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
this summer and fall, will be on view at Harvard's Center for Government
and International Studies, 1730 Cambridge Street, through December 21.
The exhibition, sponsored by the Cold War Studies Project of Harvard's
Kathryn W. and Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian
Studies, coincides with the twentieth anniversary of the Velvet
Revolution that led to the Communist regime's demise.
"Prague Through the Lens of the Secret Police" introduces the visual
products of the activities of a special unit of the Communist secret
police (/Státní bezpec(nost/, or StB) -- the Surveillance Directorate of
the Interior Ministry -- which carried out surveillance of Czechs,
Slovaks, and foreigners whom the Communist regime deemed hostile or
suspicious in any way. The secret police succeeded in capturing on film
not only these "subjects of interest," but also the likeness of the city
of Prague during the period known as "normalization" that followed the
Soviet-led occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and lasted through the
collapse of the regime in late November 1989.
The exhibition and accompanying bilingual English-Czech publication,
which features a much more extensive selection of photographs as well as
complementary texts, are the work of two Czech institutions created by
the Czech government in 2008 to disclose and evaluate the repressive
state mechanisms used by former regimes to sustain power -- the
Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (ÚSTR) and the Security
Services Archive (ABS). The ÚSTR focuses on research and analysis,
publication, exhibitions, and education, and the ABS concentrates and
makes accessible to the public the state security documents themselves.
The Archive holds roughly 280 million pages worth of documents,
amounting to over 18 kilometers of material. The ÚSTR and ABS are
further mandated by law to digitize all of the documents in their
possession. Institutions with a similar mission exist in many of the
other countries of the former East Bloc.
One of the exhibition's aims is to show those who never experienced life
in a Communist dictatorship what the secret police actually did at the
behest of Czechoslovakia's Communist regime. The repressive functions of
the secret police, carrying out arrests, beatings, and executions, are
well known, but the surveillance function has often been unappreciated.
"These photographs illustrate both the strength and the weakness of
Czechoslovakia's Communist regime --- strength in being able to keep
constant track of anyone who fell under suspicion, and weakness in being
so obsessed by people who could not conceivably pose any threat," said
Mark Kramer, Director of the Cold War Studies Project at Harvard's Davis
Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, who is also a member of the
ÚSTR's Advisory Board.
"Prague Through the Lens of the Secret Police" opens in the Concourse
Gallery of the South Building of Harvard's Center for Government and
International Studies, 1730 Cambridge Street, on Sunday, November 15,
and will be on view through December 21. The exhibition is free and open
to the public on weekdays from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. For further
information about the exhibition, including information about how to
obtain publication-quality reproductions of exhibition photographs,
please contact Laura Beshears (daviscenter(a)fas.harvard.edu
<mailto:lbeshear@fas.harvard.edu>), 617-495-4037, at the Davis Center.
**
----------------------------------------------------
Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
Harvard University
1730 Cambridge Street, 3rd Floor, Suite 301
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: 617.495.4037
Fax: 617.495.8319
http://www.daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu