ABSTRACT
Communist regimes have left their successors a poisonous surveillance legacy. The personal, political, and economic stakes in the struggles over communist surveillance records are so high that they dominate the aftermath of a regime’s collapse. This is especially true for countries where due process protections for guardianship, access, and use of the secret archives were not swiftly established by new democratic laws. This includes the introduction of lustration laws, which are obligatory measures designed to identify former securityservices functionaries, and their secret collaborators among those who seek or hold specified public offices. In this paper, I ask how and to what extent current social/political power
relations and practices in post-Communist democracies are affected by the former regime’s surveillance records and mentalities. My query goes beyond “the policing of the past” (Cohen, 1995) and focuses on how the past may actually be policing the present, and possibly the future. What happens when secret information gathered by a totalitarian regime becomes available for use by its successor-a budding democratic state-and by other players in the murky waters of such so-called transitions? Does this body of information retain its surveillance potential under the changed political circumstances? If so, does this make the new surveillance culture of post-Communist countries significantly different from that currently evolving in well-established, neoliberal democracies? Are old habits of resistance useful in responding to these new challenges? To address these questions, I point first to the main characteristics of the
communist surveillance practices and habitual ways that people resisted or adapted to those measures. I also explore the sources and mechanisms of the lingering power of the Communist secret archives. Legal measures designed to deal with that legacy are briefly discussed and assessed for their compatibility with democracy. These laws are placed within the context of ongoing political struggles over the records of Communist surveillance practices, particularly in countries that delayed passing lustration laws. Next, I briefly explain how the old fear of the state was replaced initially by
a culture dominated by fear of crime, which eventually evolved into new forms
of insecurity related to an unexpected bypassing of modernist processes and a direct move towards new, post-industrial forms of continuous surveillance. As post-Communist societies are faced with an uneasy combination of lingering police powers related to the old secret files and the new awareness of digital dataveillance, the suitability of old habits of resistance must be examined. To address this issue, I explore the main differences between the new and old surveillance practices, with a special focus on surveillance of the body and the self. By comparing contemporary biometric surveillance and the old form of monitoring practiced by Soviet states, I examine possible implications for the resisting self. The closing section of this paper briefly summarizes and discusses my findings.
Soviet-style surveillance was essentially one-directional, centralized, and territorial; it was based on a scheme of immobilization, static visibility, state monopoly of surveillance technologies, and a rigid regimentation of life. It aimed to prevent the spread of contagious ideas and its surveillant logic was akin to that traditionally reserved for the control of epidemics (as depicted, for example, by Foucault, 1979:195-98). Its success was buttressed by strict controls over access to communication tools such as telephones, photocopiers, printing presses, and, naturally, computers. Surveillance practices employed by Communist countries were part of a
complex scheme of manufacturing fear. Fear was the principal premise of the control mechanism and was used by officials to break individuals, erode trust, and destroy social solidarity. The principle of fear was systematically applied as a tool of humiliation, while secret surveillance practices served both to promote and document this process. As I elaborate elsewhere, this led to the formation of the taboo mentality, whereby many areas of life were relegated to the forbidden land of topics automatically excluded from a conscious, rational reflection (Los, 2002, 2004). The key strategies for coping with the constant presence of fear included practices of invisibility and withdrawing into oneself, known generally as “internal immigration.” Under Communist regimes, any possible lines of flight or resistance were
located inside a relatively static grid of continuous secret surveillance of stateowned workplaces, housing projects, leisure venues, and practically any other social space. This grid was underpinned by controls that immobilized population movement within and across state boundaries. The Soviet Bloc did not survive long enough for its surveillance/control measures to be tested by the inevitable invasion of borderless, interactive, postmodern, and post-panoptic technologies. Judging by the frantic efforts of Communist China, in collusion with international software producers, to curtail and subvert new communication technologies, such devices undoubtedly pose an enormous threat and challenge to the totalitarian system, while also providing it with new tools to track and control citizens (see Open Net Initiative, 2005).
