Kraus shares secret Czechoslovak security files

On Friday, April 9, a full-to-capacity conference room of students, professors and community members were given a vivid reminder of the freedoms and privacy we take for granted in the United States every day. Michael Kraus, Frederick C. Dirks Professor of Political Science and director of Russian and East European studies, presented his research from the Czechoslovakian secret police archives to a packed audience at the Robert A. Jones ’59 House and revealed some of his and President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz’s Cold War-era “secrets.”

Visitors lucky enough to get a seat for “Reading My Family’s (and Ron Liebowitz’s) Secret Police Files in Prague” heard tales of the pervasive spying done on citizens of and visitors to Czechoslovakia before the fall of the Iron Curtain. Since the collapse of the communist regime, the new government has made the classified files available to the former victims of the government snooping, of which there are certainly many.

The archives house 18 kilometers of files, comprised of over 208 million pages documenting the daily lives of persons the government suspected of various anti-communist activities. Kraus estimates that the State Security (as the secret police force was known) had 15,000-20,000 full time personnel as well as over 150,000 collaborators who informed on their fellow citizens.

Two of the many people who have files in the State Security archives are Kraus and Liebowitz. Kraus was born in Czechoslovakia, but eventually left to study in the United States, making him one of four children to try to escape the country. A sister and brother were each tried in absentia for their escapes and sentenced to one year each in prison, despite the fact that they were no longer in the country. Kraus received a similar sentence.

“I was also sentenced to one year and was given the opportunity to appeal within eight days of the judgment,” said Kraus. “Of course, the system was so inefficient that the letter only arrived six months after the fact.”

The secret police also targeted Liebowitz because of his study in Prague sponsored by the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) and subsequent associations with local dissidents. Before he even made it to Europe, the secret police were aware of him, as they cleared his visa. In fact, the local authorities were told they “should try to work him over” because they believed he had potential to became an agent for them.

Liebowitz’s mail soon dissuaded them of the idea when he started complaining of the repressed political environment at the university. Many of his letters home — all surreptitiously read by secret police analysts — expressed disappointment that none of his Czechoslovak colleagues had any interest in his research. He had expected a more open environment than he had encountered previously in the Soviet Union.

“Looking back, I was very naïve to assume that Czechoslovakia would be different,” said Liebowitz, “but I was under the impression that I would not encounter the censorship I had come to expect in the Soviet Union.”

Although most of Liebowitz’s activities were innocuous — including the postcard with NFL scores that appeared to be a perplexing code to the Czechoslovak analysts — he did become an unwitting accomplice to a smuggling operation. A Canadian diplomat he befriended offered to take him to England in his BMW. A few miles from the border crossing he insisted on making a pit stop at a local bar.

“I had one beer and he had about eight, basically forcing me to go through the meticulous search by myself while he passed out sprawled across the backseat,” said Liebowitz. “I found out only much later that he had sewn secret documents into the seat cushions of the backseat.”

Harrowing stories such as this got audience members thinking.

“Although he wasn’t aware that he was being used to transport the documents,” said Heather Pangle ’10, “it spurred me to consider what choices I would have made in a similar situation if I’d been asked to help in such a risky operation.”

The authorities did not catch on to the bold diplomat for years, though they did intercept most other forms of communication. Kraus joked about the positive side of the meticulous records of his correspondence.

“I never kept a diary,” said Kraus. “It’s actually kind of useful because I can see what I was thinking back then.”

On a more serious note, Kraus commented on what he referred to as “the banality of evil.” While the code words used in the secret records may seem humorous, they actually served to insulate the State Security personnel from the intrusive nature of their work.

“The code words anesthetized the agents from thinking about what they were doing,” said Kraus. “It created a barrier between them and the lives they were documenting.”

The presentation prompted Pangle to contemplate the difficulties of living under a totalitarian government.

“It was a chilling reminder of how little privacy might be left to us if we lived under a regime less free than the United States,” said Pangle. “We take privacy and freedom of expression for granted, but there are a lot of people who have had to live (or who still do live) with the state watching their every move.”