Pavel Žáček

Pavel Žáček (born 18 May 1969 ) is a Czech academic and politician who served as the first Director of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, the Czech government agency and research institute tasked with investigation of the crimes of the Communist regime of Czechoslovakia that was declared to be criminal in 1993. In 2017, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies and serves as a Civic Democratic MP.

Education and early career He holds an M.A. (1992) and a PhD (2001) in Mass Communication from Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University. He is a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism. In 2010, he was succeeded as Director by Jiří Pernes. He served as adviser to Daniel Herman who was elected director of the Institute in August 2010. After a dispute about Herman's removal in April 2013, Pavel Žáček was fired by the new director Pavla Foglová.

A collection of Žáček's papers, including transcripts of interrogations of Czech secret police personnel and documents about Václav Havel, is held in the collection of the Hoover Institution.