exposure of compromised state officials, while lustration law in Poland (1999–2005) depended on confession. Lustration law "is a special public employment law that regulates the process of examining whether a person holding certain higher public positions collaborated confidentially with the repressive apparatus of the communist regime." The "special" nature of lustration law refers to its transitional character. As of 1996, various lustration laws of varying scope were implemented in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Germany, Poland, and Romania. As of 2019, lustration laws had not been passed in Belarus, nor in former Yugoslavia or the former Soviet Central Asian Republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan). Results Lustration can serve as a form of punishment by anti-communist politicians who were dissidents under a Communist-led government. Lustration laws are usually passed right before elections, and become tightened when right-wing governments are in power, and loosened while social-democratic parties are in power. It is claimed that lustration systems based on dismissal or confession might be able to increase trust in government, while those based on confession might be able to promote social reconciliation. There are, however, some paradoxal side effects of the process. For example, in spite of the fact that some informants were coerced or blackmailed into collaboration and may thus be also considered victims themselves, or in some cases despite terminating later the collaboration in favor of genuine dissident activity, the public attention and condemnation has focused primarily on them rather than on the communist government officials or secret police officers. Moreover, if the past collaboration is contested in a court, the verdict depends to some extent on testimonies of former communist secret police officers who engaged with the alleged informant, thus making those orchestrating the repressions de facto the ones deciding the case. Examples In Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic Unlike many neighbouring states, the new government in the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic did not adjudicate under court trials, but instead took a non-judicial approach to ensure changes would be implemented. According to a law passed on 4 October 1991, all employees of the StB, the Communist-era secret police, were blacklisted from designated public offices, including the upper levels of the civil service, the judiciary, procuracy, Security Information Service (BIS), army positions, management of state owned enterprises, the central bank, the railways, senior academic positions and the public electronic media. This law remained