Lustration

Lustration is the process of making something clear or pure, usually by means of a propitiatory offering.

Drawing of a relief from the Karnak temple in Egypt showing a pharaoh lustrating with incense

It is also the purge of government officials once affiliated with the Communist system in Central and Eastern Europe. Various forms of lustration were employed in post-communist Europe. The concept might resemble de-Nazification in post-World War II Europe, and the de-Ba'athification in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, and therefore resonates with concepts such as possible accountability for past human rights abuses, corruption or injustice. The term is taken from the Roman lustrum purification rituals.

Policies and laws

After the fall of the various European Communist governments in 1989–1991, the term came to refer to government-sanctioned policies of "mass disqualification of those associated with the abuses under the prior regime". Procedures excluded participation of former communists, and especially of informants of the communist secret police, in successor political positions, or even in civil service positions. This exclusion formed part of the wider decommunization campaigns. In some countries, however, lustration laws did not lead to exclusion and disqualification. Lustration law in Hungary (1994–2003) was based on the exposure of compromised state officials, while lustration law in Poland (1999–2005) depended on confession.

Lustration law "is a special public employment law that regulates the process of examining whether a person holding certain higher public positions worked or collaborated with the repressive apparatus of the communist regime". The "special" nature of lustration law refers to its transitional character. As of 1996, various lustration laws of varying scope were implemented in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, the Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia), Germany, Poland, and Romania. As of 1996 lustration laws had not been passed in Belarus, nor in former Yugoslavia or the former Soviet Central Asian Republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) (Ellis, 1996).

Negative and Positive Outcomes

Lustration can have a positive or negative outcome. On the one hand it can mean purification as in denazification, on the other it can have a negative meaning, political purification that leads to unbridled lust for political cleansing, as in ethnic cleansing, and other forms of ideological madness. Generally used by political theorists in its negative sense. Periods under Pol Pot in Cambodia and also the Gang of Four in Communist China, may also be termed "lustrations". In these cases, people were purged, often via firing squad.

Results

Lustration can serve as a form of instant revenge for those who were abused by a past government, and prevent those who colluded with past abusers, any benefits they might have gained from their positions of power. It is claimed that lustration systems based on dismissal or confession might be able to increase trust in government, while those based on confession might be able to promote social reconciliation.

Examples

Lustration in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic

Unlike many of the neighbouring states, the new government in the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic did not adjudicate under court trials, but rather took a non-judicial approach to ensure changes would be made and purify the country of past human rights abusers.

Per a law passed on 4 October 1991, all those involved with the StB, the Communist-era secret police, were blacklisted from certain high public offices. This included upper reaches of the civil service, the judiciary, procuracy, the security service (BIS), army positions, management of state owned enterprises, the central bank, the railways, high academic positions and the public electronic media. This law continued in effect in the Czech Republic after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, and expired in 2000.

The lustration laws in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic were not meant to serve as a form of justice, but to ensure that events such as the Communist coup of February 1948 would not happen again.

Lustration in Germany

Further information: Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records

Lustration in Latvia

The Baltic nations took a unique view on lustration. Latvia, along with other Baltic nations of the Soviet Union, were free countries recognized by the League of Nations prior to being adsorbed into the USSR. The governments of these nations viewed Kremlin as an occupying power and not a legitimate government. Therefore, after declaring independence from the USSR Latvia inherited the diplomatic ties that it had prior to the Soviet occupation. This allowed for Latvia to shift the blame to the former Soviet regime for most problems the nation has faced, the Soviet legacy was easily dismissed as a problem of the occupying regime and not the occupied Latvians. Instead of applying strict lustration laws Latvia instead refused to automatically grant citizenship to anyone whose forebears arrived after June 1940, this policy affected mostly Russians living in Latvia and as they were seen as occupiers in Soviet times prevented them from running for public office, therefore having a similar effect as a lustration law.

Lustration in Poland

Further information: Lustration in Poland and Institute of National Remembrance

Lustration in Ukraine

Further information: Lustration in Ukraine

See also

• Proclamation of Timișoara
• Truth and reconciliation commission
• Denazification and Indignité nationale after World War II
• Berufsverbot
• Vergangenheitsbewältigung
• De-Ba'athification in Iraq

Further reading

• Williams, "A Scorecard for Czech Lustration", Central Europe Review
• Jiřina Šiklová, "Lustration or the Czech Way of Screening", East European Constitutional Review, Vol.5, No.1, Winter 1996, Univ. of Chicago Law School and Central European University
• Rohozinska, "Struggling with the Past - Poland's controversial Lustration trials", Central European Review
• Human Rights Watch - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1993/WR93/Hsw-03.htm
• Roman David, Lustration and Transitional Justice: Personnel Systems in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.
• 1904 (Merriam) Webster's International Dictionary of the English Language says: "a sacrifice, or ceremony, by which cities, fields, armies, or people, defiled by crimes, pestilence, or other cause of uncleanness, were purified"