Paranoids may be persecuted: post-totalitarian retroactive justice

Retroactive justice against perpetrators in post-totalitarian, as distinct of post-authoritarian, democracies is constrained by the absence of human resources for the rule of law and the weakness of civil society. The limited application of lustration and other sanctions in postcommunist countries is understood in the context of politics of transition, political actors, motivations, constraints and beliefs. With special attention to the Czech Republic, the ineffectiveness of lustration is exemplified by the damage inflicted on post-communist societies by the nomenklatura and the former secret police.