Study Institute of the Ministry of the Interior

Abstract

In context of the social development in communist Czechoslovakia, voices calling for the need for fundamental reforms also began to be heard in the security apparatus in the mid-1960s. Following the example of the Soviet Union and according to the instructions of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (KSČ) leadership, a study‑analytical group was established in 1963 in the Ministry of the Interior, which was expanded to the Study Department in 1966 and to the Study Institute during the Prague Spring in early August 1968. It brought together highly educated workers who maintained contacts with reformists in the ranks of the Communist Party. Against the leadership of the Ministry of the Interior and the State Security (StB), defending the continuation of the tendencies of the strictly repressive component following the 1950s, they advocated the modernization of the ministry, where the State Security would significantly reduce its activities, especially against Czechoslovak citizens. The conflict culminated in 1968 during the Prague Spring, when Josef Pavel became Minister of the Interior. The reforms prepared by the Study Institute were to become a new program for the reorganization of the security apparatus. The subsequent entry of the troops of the five states of the Warsaw Pact into Czechoslovakia in August 1968 definitively resolved that the security forces, and in particular the StB, would remain the mainstay of the regime, still associated primarily with repression against internal opponents.