Czech Republik: Manipulation of History?

Six decades after the communist takeover in Czechoslovakia, four decades after the Prague Spring of 68, the Czech Republic is again confronted with it’s most recent past. The State-funded “Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes”, which opened in the begin of this year, is in the center of an extremely polemical debate: The Institute gives access to millions of pages of secret police files. But the communist party objects that no communist party member is allowed to join the Institute’s council.

Left-wing opposition deputies asked the Czech Constitutional Court to abrogate the law on the basis of which the new research tool has been established, accusing the Institute of biased, right-wing interpretation of contemporary History. euronews invited the Institute’s director and the chief advisor of the communist party to fight it out: manipulation of the past? Yes or No?

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