Źáček, Pavel, collector

Biographical Note

Born in 1969, Źáček earned his PhD in mass communication at Charles University, Prague in 2001. His dissertation topic was the illegal magazine "V Boj." From 1993 to 1997 he served as head of the Documentation Section, Office for the Documentation and Investigation of the Activities of the State Security Service/Crimes of Communism, and was editor of the anthology Securitas Imperii, a periodical concerned with state security documents and studies, from 1994 to 1999. In 1997 he became head of the team for the documentation of the role of Czechoslovak officials in Korea and Vietnam, in cooperation with the U.S. Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs. In 1998 he was appointed deputy director, Office for the Documentation and Investigation of the Crimes of Communism, and then served as senior researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History, Academy of Sciences in Prague from 1999 to 2006. After a short period as acting director of the Security Services Archive from 2007 to 2008, Źáček was appointed director of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes in January 2008. He was a visiting scholar at the Hoover Archives Summer Workshop on Soviet Communism in July 2009.