What is the StB? – the repressive communist secret service linked to Jeremy Corbyn

For Czechs and Slovaks old enough to remember the dark days of the Cold War and Communism the Statni bezpecnost, or StB, has a grim reputation.

The organisation has been thrown into the spotlight once more after reports linking Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to a Czechoslovakian secret agent. 

Founded in 1945, three years before the communists even took power in what was then Czechoslovakia, the organisation was at the forefront of the repression of anything and anybody considered a threat to the one-party state. 

It resorted to blackmail, torture, arrest and a variety of dirty tricks aimed at keeping an iron lid on opposition to communist rule, which, as in the case of 1968’s Prague Spring, sometimes…

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