Lustration
Another motivation was the fear that undisclosed past confidential collaboration could be used to blackmail public officials by foreign intelligence services of other former Warsaw Pact allies, in particular Russia.[3] After the fall of the various European Communist governments with the Revolutions of 1989 between 1989 and 1992, government-sanctioned policies of "mass disqualification of those associated with the abuses under the prior regime" were initiated as part of the wider decommunization campaigns.As of 1996, various lustration laws of varying scope were implemented in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Germany, Poland, and Romania.Moreover, if the past collaboration is contested in a court, the verdict depends to some extent on testimonies of former communist secret police officers who engaged with the alleged informant, thus making those orchestrating the repressions de facto the ones deciding the case.[citation needed] According to a law passed on 4 October 1991, all employees of the StB, the Communist-era secret police, were blacklisted from designated public offices, including the upper levels of the civil service, the judiciary, procuracy, Security Information Service (BIS), army positions, management of state owned enterprises, the central bank, the railways, senior academic positions and the public electronic media.
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