How it all happened

A photo exhibition reflecting the activities of the Czechoslovak State Security’s surveillance department in the 1970s and 1980s is being held at the Prison on Lontskoho Street National Memorial Museum of Victims of the Occupation Regimes.

It has been organized by the Czech Center, Consulate General of the Czech Republic in Lviv and Liberation Movement Research Center.

The exhibition traveled to Simferopol in April 2011 and to Belgium, Sweden, and the US before that. “The Communist secret police’s activities are an important topic in this country, too, since the dictatorships in the USSR and Czechoslovakia functioned in similar ways,” the memorial museum’s director Ruslan Zabily said in his opening speech. “We can see the 1970s Prague on these photos.

The city serves as a backdrop against which we see how the government spied on disloyal individuals who might be just ordinary people as well as the church leaders such as Cardinal Tomasek, famous dissidents, and foreigners, including academics from foreign universities who came to visit Prague.” The exhibition tells how the camera helped the secret police control people. Similar photos remain inaccessible in Ukraine thus far, while the Polish and East German ones have been destroyed, leaving the Czech exhibition a unique opportunity to look into the Communist past.

Participants of the opening ceremony were greeted by the Consul General of the Czech Republic in Lviv David Pavlita, who said: “A nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat its mistakes. So it is not by accident that we are holding this exhibition at the premises of the Prison on Lontskoho Street museum.

The events of the past, unpleasant as they may be, must be recalled by us if we are to learn how to avoid mistakes.” The photo exhibition reflecting the activities of the Czechoslovak State Security’s surveillance department in the 1970s and 1980s can be seen in the Prison on Lontskoho Street National Museum at 1 Bandery Street till May 31. As always, admission is free, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week.