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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