StB

State Security (, ), or StB / ŠtB, was the secret police force in communist Czechoslovakia from 1945 to its dissolution in 1990. Serving as an intelligence and counter-intelligence agency, it dealt with any activity that was considered opposition to the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the state.

==History== thumb|Former headquarters of the StB, Old Town (Prague) thumb|Letter opener used by StB From its establishment on 30 June 1945, the StB was controlled by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. The Party used the StB as an instrument of power and repression; State Security spied on and intimidated political opponents of the Party and forged false criminal evidence against them, facilitating the communists' rise to power in 1948. After the arrival of Soviet advisors in 1949, nearly a year after the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia seized power, the StB began to undergo a fundamental ideological change as the older generation of experienced, educated, and mostly middle-class secret police began to be replaced or purged. The replacements were a younger generation of secret police who were mostly from working class backgrounds and were drowned in the intense rhetoric of class struggle and political loyalty. Under the tutelage of Soviet advisors, the younger generation adopted a Stalinist ideology and obtained forced confessions by means of torture, including the use of psychoactive drugs, blackmail, and kidnapping.