Communist secrets

Today I attended the first day of an amazing three-day international conference in Bratislava organized by the Slovak Nation's Memory Institute: "NKVD/KGB Activities and its Cooperation with Other Secret Services in Central and Eastern Europe 1945-1989."

The conference was held at the SÚZA conference center operated by the Slovak government. It houses several large meeting rooms, a hotel, restaurant, and bar.

The location northwest of Old Town has amazing views of the city, here, looking to the northwest. City bus line #41 stops one block from the entrance, so it was easy to get to the conference.

The entrance flies flags from the Slovak Republic (left) and the European Union (right). The entire complex has a ponderous 60s/70s Soviet feel to me, but perhaps I am getting jaded about Communist architecture.

This is the auditorium where the panels are being held. I asked staff about the history of the building and was told it had been built for a worker/labor group by the Communists, but I have been unable to confirm this. One pointed to the big red stripes decorating the walls and laughed -- Communists!

Panelists are representatives of the memory institutes and scholars from the various countries of the former Soviet bloc, all of which had secret police collaborating with the KGB. Those records are now being opened and studied. Panelists urged Russia to open up its old KGB files so studies of their activities throughout the region can continue.

A Slovak panelist showed chilling images from records of the Communist regime in Slovakia. Simultaneous translation was provided in Slovak, German, and English. As we entered, we were handed a headset with a radio receiver with a dial to select the language we preferred.

Several documentary films about KGB techniques and one about people who survived the Soviet Gulag are playing throughout the conference in an adjoining theater. With or without translation, I look forward to seeing these remarkable stories.

The conference literature provided information about the Slovak Memory Institute, with this quotation from the legislation that established it: "Those who do not know their past, are condemned to repeat it, and no unlawful act on behalf of the State against its citizens may be protected by secrecy or forgotten."

After the conference, I checked my favorite Internet news sites for the latest information on another country which spies on its citizens without probable cause, engages in torture, scoffs at the Geneva Conventions, and refuses to release government records on the grounds of "national security" -- not the first time I have been depressed by the current state of affairs in my home country.

For more information about the conference: http://www.upn.gov.sk/konferencia-kgb/en/

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