“Against Myself ”: Ego Documents in the Archives of the State Security
“Against Myself ”: Ego Documents in the Archives of the State Security

Summary/Abstract: The present study is concerned with the issue of ego documents that were created in the second half of the 1940s and at the turn of the 1950s at the request of the Commission of Interior of the Slovak National Council in Bratislava, Slovakia. The documents are of a strong ideological character. Their authors, who were of Jewish origins, were employees of the State Security Service, who were active in the communist partisan resistance movements during the World War II. After it ended, with the support of the Communist Party they joined the State Security Service, the repressive body of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). Their mission was to promote the interests of the Communist Party in the security forces. In the early 1950s along with other members of the State Security Service, they were convicted in a fabricated political trial. This study analyses how the authors of the biographies consciously worked with the contemporary ideological discourse and constructed a self-image that corresponded to contemporary demands. It answers the questions of why and how they sought to distance themselves from their origins, as well as their family and religious back-ground. This paper also responds to long-standing debates among scholars regarding the diversity of ego documents, their use and interpretation in the historical and social sciences. The aim of the study is to draw attention to the specificity of working with documents produced under totalitarian conditions, which primarily testify to the era that constructs the subjectivity of authors rather than reflecting their individuality. In terms of methodology, the study is based on a discursive analysis of source materials.

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