Abstract
In the wake of a radical regime change, especially away from one viewed as illegitimate or even criminal, states may choose to implement trials, lustration legislation, reparations, or other methods to address the past injustices. Who do these efforts benefit and which will best lead to the public’s sense that justice has been served? In Central and Eastern Europe, the Czech Republic implemented some of the most extensive measures to punish perpetrators and rehabilitate victims after the end of the Czechoslovak Communist Regime in 1989. Scholars of transitional justice, as well as social scientists studying political memory, may ask “How effective were the justice measures that were adopted in the Czech Lands to overcome the legacy of human rights violations committed during the communist regime?” (p. 7). To answer this, Roman David’s new book, Communists and Their Victims, identifies the justice measures Czechs took since 1989 and attempts to assess their effects on Czechs of all strata: the communists, their victims, and society at large. The book argues that Czechs implemented a strategy that pursued justice (both retributive toward perpetrators and reparatory toward victims), while neglecting reconciliation measures. Thus, while some victims were successfully restored to their previous class or status groups, other group divisions endured.
David begins by underlining the strengths of the Czech case for theory building. Many human rights violations and totalitarian repression during the 40-year regime followed by extensive transitional justice measures after 1989 make it an empirically rich case. These measures included prosecuting the previous regime’s crimes, returning state property seized during collectivization to the owners or their descendants, rehabilitating and paying reparations to former political prisoners, lustration of communists, and opening of the secret police archives. David includes all of these measures in his analysis. Another commendable strength is the book’s extensive and complementary, multiple methods. Public opinion survey data are supported by focus groups and interviews with surviving former political prisoners and communists, an original analysis of the Czech secret police archives, and an experimental survey testing the potential of justice measures for transforming social divisions. Especially, the qualitative data, collected in 1999, 2006, and 2014, are crucial to our understanding of the effects of transitional justice as both the victims and communists of the previous regime age. Thus, the research represents quite an impressive undertaking to grasp the many dimensions of a complex, historical process.
David divides the book into three sections, each with two substantive chapters. The first section provides a succinct yet rather complete summary of the historical and sociolegal contexts for the Czech case of transitional justice, including both the injustices of the regime and the later attempt to address those injustices. The second section analyzes the effects of different transitional justice measures on communists and their victims in separate chapters. In a third section, one chapter tests the capacity of justice measures in transforming social divisions using an experimental survey research design, and a final substantive chapter assesses the extent to which justice measures did transform social divisions in Czech society. Excerpts from interviews and individuals’ stories presented as vignettes give a human face to the analysis of quantitative and archival data.
David’s overarching argument is that Czechs privileged a strategy of “justice without reconciliation” highlighting the revelatory measure of illuminating “hidden repression” through the opening of secret police archives and publishing the names of collaborators. This strategy, while quite extensive and resulting in some positive outcomes for victims, still reinforced or even renewed social divisions in the transitioning Czech society, especially through shaming accused perpetrators. Attacked communists became defiant in the face of relatively harsh lustration legislation and the limited and confusing information in secret police archives. This defiance created the impression among victims and the wider Czech public that transitional justice was failing. Furthermore, individuals who had been arrested or imprisoned by the previous regime felt further persecuted when their names appeared on lists of police informants. David’s impressive survey experiment reveals that while apologies have a great potential for perceived reconciliation, Czechs did not widely implement them, ideological divides endured, as did dissatisfaction with the transitional justice process. The book leads to a conclusion that “…justice and reconciliation are entwined in the sense that the assessment of both justice and reconciliation is a function of whether the former adversaries have been transformed” (p. 208). Thus, David advocates a transformative theory of justice, positing that reconciliatory justice measures such as apologies and confessions are most likely to lead to public assessment of adversaries’ transformation and hence the sense that justice has been served.
The research is remarkable in that it is truly multimethodological, inspiring confidence in the postulated relationships between justice measures and their effects on relevant populations. Yet David unevenly presents the methods. For example, while Chapter 5’s survey experiment design is explained and justified in detail, for Chapters 3 and 4, the reader is left guessing how David selected interview and focus group respondents or even how many participated in the study. If this information would have crowded the text, a short qualitative methodological appendix could have increased transparency. This oversight undermines confidence in the method, which is particularly disappointing since David does seem to value the explanatory power of qualitative data for the analysis.
David’s book is a thorough and systematic exploration of the effects of transitional justice on the Czech population. This book will most appeal to transitional justice scholars. Although others, such as political scientists and sociologists studying transitioning political cultures or political memory, will also find this work methodologically rigorous and useful for theory building. David’s book could also serve as an informative reference volume for the Czech public’s reception and assessment of these transitional justice measures over the nearly 30 years since the Velvet Revolution and a general understanding of this aspect of contemporary Czech society and politics.