Ideological collaborator

Ideological collaborators were a category of informants of the Czechoslovak intelligence service. Ideological collaborators were Czechoslovak citizens, politically advanced and fully devoted to the socialist system, recruited for secret and regular cooperation with the intelligence service abroad. Ideological collaborators could also operate in Czechoslovakia when establishing bases for buildings of intelligence interest or as ancillary informants (holders of cover addresses, borrowed apartments, etc.). Membership in the Communist Party was available following recommendation. Ideological collaborators could not be recruited from the ranks of nomenklatura functionaries or workers of party bodies. The use of ideological collaborators had to correspond to the aim of recruiting informants with regard to their opportunities, abilities and degree of readiness, i.e. from providing information to the agency's operational environment and buildings, to typing and transmission of messages, to practical jobs for the workers of the intelligence service, including political and material production, protection of the economy of Czechoslovakia and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and recruitment of other people as informants. Ideological collaborators were also actively used in the area of protection of Czechoslovak offices abroad and foreign colonies and as a base for hostile special services.

Intelligence service workers abroad as a rule maintained direct personal contact with ideological collaborators, who conspired according to the conditions of legalisation of intelligence service operatives, the position of the ideological collaborator and took into account the specific conditions of the agency's operational environment.

also see: categories of secret collaborators