ABSTRACT
The word lustration is derived from the Latin lustratio, which means purification by sacrifice or by purging. Lustration is the process of screening individuals in positions of political or economic influence in order to determine whether they once had ties to the former state security service. Informally, lustration had already appeared in Czechoslovakia before the first free election in June 1990. In September 1991, the federal government proposed lustration on a person-by-person basis. This 1991 "debolshevization law" was partly shaped by the attempted coup d'etat in the USSR. After the breakup of Czechoslovakia, Vladimir Meciar's government in Bratislava announced that it would repeal the lustration law in Slovakia, but this was never done. The Slovak Christian Democratic Movement suggested that the abolition of the law would send a negative signal to the rest of the world, while the Slovak Statistical Office conducted a survey finding that more than half of all Slovaks favoured retaining the law.
