The former Socialist countries tackle the problem of revealing the state security past in a different way. In Czechia the problem was handled in time and by employing radical sanctions. The summary of the Information Office claims that in Hungary like in most Comecon countries, a part of the secret service documents have been liquidated or have disappeared. In Czechoslovakia the so-called lustration law was accepted back in 1991 while in Poland the law was brought in 1997-98. In Poland they set up the National Memory Institute to preserve secret service documents but the access to them is highly limited. In Germany the first law was passed in 1991 and it was amended five times. In Romania the law was passed in 1999 mainly to give access to documents for the affected persons. In Slovakia the law of 2002 permits access to state security documents from the period 1939-1989 with the exception of documents affecting Slovakian nation security interests. The documents of military intelligence remained in Czechia. In Bulgaria the problem has not been solved since 1990 though there was a committee set up to reveal the network of agents but the political circumstances has not favoured an effective progress in the matter.
Translated by Péter Szentmihályi Szabó
origo.hu
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