Adding Insult to Injury? The Role of Retributive Transitional Justice in the Intergenerational Transmission of Psychosocial Legacies of Political Repression in Czechia

• In Event: Past Meets Present: Navigating the Relevance of History in Today’s Context

Abstract

The 20th century witnessed unprecedented gross human rights violations within the former Soviet sphere of influence. Such violations, as prior research suggests, can result in long-lasting psychosocial consequences, affecting not only immediate victims but also succeeding generations. While contemporary scholarly efforts have focused on understanding the mechanisms by which these psychosocial legacies are passed down, the possible modulatory role of transitional justice policies has not yet been considered. To address this gap, we set out to examine the role transitional justice policies play in the intergenerational transmission of psychosocial legacies of political repression in an explorative case study of Czechia. Owing to the country’s communist past, marked by 40-year-long political repression and its subsequent adoption of large-scale lustrations and exposure of former secret police collaborators, Czechia offered a rich backdrop for our investigation. Using a survey, we queried three successive generations of Czech citizens about their direct or familial exposure to political repression, involvement in transitional justice measures, and current psychosocial functioning to ascertain: (i) what psychosocial legacies of political repression are transmitted to the post-communist generations and (ii) what role lustration and exposure as a secret police collaborator play in the process of intergenerational transmission. In this presentation, I will present and discuss the study’s preliminary findings, along with the methodological challenges encountered during the research.

Author

• Lucie Pěntáková, The Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR)