Magazine / Society / Communist Secret Services / Analysis | 05/02/2008

Sluggish processing of the past

In 2006, the first Commission for analysis of the communist past started work in Romania. In January 2008 the Romanian Constitutional Court decided that the law which has regulated the dealing with the documentation of the Securitate so far is unconstitutional.

The year 2008 will be election year in Romania1. Parliament elections are planned for November, and it is "time to stir around in the tar pot again, meaning that some people will become scared”, as the prominent Romanian author Mircea Dinescu said recently, who has for years belonged to the leadership committee of the Romanian Authorities for Analysis of the Securitate files; CNSAS (Consiliul Naţional pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securităţii).

Nicolae Ceauşescu
Photo: AP

Whether this will actually happen is questionable. At the end of January, the Romanian Constitutional Court decided that the law which has regulated the work of the CNSAS Authority since 1999, is partly unconstitutional. It thereby granted a lawsuit taken up by the politician and businessman Dan Voiculescu, who the Authority in 2006 - shortly before he was named as Romanian Vice-President – exposed as a Securitate spy and a foreign currency procurer for the former dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu.

The Romanian Parliament now has until the middle of March to change the file analysis law accordingly. If this does not occur, the CNSAS Authority will be closed down, and all cases which they have discovered will be nullified. It would mean the end of analysis on the severe crimes committed by the infamous Romanian Secret Service, the Securitate. For Mircea Dinescu, this is unimaginable. He hopes that "the citizens will now go out and protest on the streets”.

Nomenclatures prevent analysis

However, the CNSAS has never really managed to become an influential institution since its foundation in 1999. They have only been able to stir the "tar pot", as Mircea Dinescu calls it, with a mere toothpick. There are many reasons for this. While the Stasi files were secured by civil-rights activists in the GDR; in the revolution days of 1989 in Romania, no-one knew where the Securitate archive might be, according to Ticu Dumitrescu, the Head of the Association for former Political Prisoners in Romania and one of the trailblazers for a file analysis law. The nomenclatures which took over political domination in Romania after the turning point "was able to stow its secrets away in peace and quiet”, according to Dumitrescu. There have been many scandals due to the whereabouts of the files. For example, in 1991, journalists found tonnes of Securitate files in a gorge in the community of Berevoişti (near Bucharest), which the secret Service had partly buried and partly burned. Only one command from the Parliament or the government at the beginning of the 90's would have been sufficient to rescue the Securitate archive, which comprehended around two million files, in as original a condition as possible. The political nomenclatures were simply not interested in analysis - as the material on their own past would have been too incriminating. For almost a decade, the suggestion made by the civil-rights activist, Ticu Dumitrescu, for analysis of the Secret Service files was discussed in Parliament and considerably diluted. It wasn't until 1999 that Romania, as the last East European country, regulated file access and founded the Analysis Authority, CNSAS, which was to function modelled on the German Stasi Documentation Authority. In reality, however, this was not the case.

The Authority was forced to defend itself against denunciations from the start. The former Social Democratic Premier, Adrian Nastase, called the CNSAS "File-snufflers” and said that they were an Authority for "opening up graves”. The Romanian Orthodox Church, too, attacked the CSNAS, and still refuses today to allow the Authority to analyse files held on church representatives, who worked closely with the Secret Service during the Communist regime. The largest farce of all, however, remained the archive, which not the CNSAS but instead the National Secret Service – the subsequent organisation to the Securitate – were allowed to administrate for many years. Only under pressure caused by the EU entry was the Authority able to take possession of the files. When the National Secret Service SRI (Serviciul Romăn de Informaţii) announced at the end of 2006 that all files had been handed over, the news sounded disheartening: the Secret Service had had 16 years to sort out the dossiers at their discretion. The most interesting files have therefore probably disappeared.

The years of delay for analysis of the files were a blatant taunt at the Securitate victims. Their number is estimated at one million people. Among them is, for example, the prominent Romanian-German authoress, Herta Müller, who was persecuted by the Securitate for her system-critical literature. She still has not been able to gain access to her files; merely receiving a few loose pages from the CNSAS, which Müller called "collated rubbish... which insults my intellect".

Politicians have nothing to fear from the files

At the political turning point, Securitate, which had been founded in 1948, had 15,000 employees. Up until today, it remains unclear how many spies worked for them. Experts estimate around one million people. So far, only a small number of a few hundred officers and informants have been discovered. In individual cases, Securitate officers have had to answer for their repressions in court. Most of them, however, have no such worries: Secret Service personnel were integrated into the new National Secret Service, or profited from old networks in order to establish economic businesses, or today receive a pension seven times as high as an average Romanian pension. Those who went into politics after the turning point, too, obviously have no fears about the analysis. According to law, the State President, Ministers, Members of Parliament and Mayors must declare before the elections whether they have acted as spies for the Securitate. However, no politician has as yet been convicted for a false statement on his own past. Experts suspect that a quarter of the Romanian Members of Parliament could be proved as having been active for the Securitate – and yet the appropriate files are missing. This number becomes frightening when one remembers that they command the democratic development of Romania. "The tragedy lies”, says Ticu Dumitrescu, who was in a political prison before the turning point, "in the fact that the hangmen from yesterday are judging us once more”. To make matters worse, only the Securitate victims are complaining about the delays in analysis. Most Romanians are more concerned with other things, such as surviving or careers.

Lustration law put on hold

Today, even the State President Traian Basescu is still flirting with his past. "I was a faithful servant to my country”, says the former Captain about his position as an ambassador of the Romanian Merchant Shipping Association in Antwerp, which he held at the end of the 80's and which, it is said, must have been part of contacts with Securitate. So far, no proofs have been found, but rather Basescu has managed to emerge as a trailblazer for analysis of the files. In 2006, the Head of State summoned a commission of experts headed by the political scientist Vladimir Tismaneanu to analyse the Communist past in answer to pressure from civil-rights activists. In only a few months, the committee produced the most detailed and comprehensive representation of Romanian Communism so far, on the basis of which the Romanian Head of State was able to condemn the Communist regime as being illegitimate and criminal. Basescus' appearance in front of the Parliament was a strong symbolic one, also due to the time chosen to make it in – at the end of 2006 and shortly before the Romanian entry to the EU – but remained unfortunately nothing more than that. One of the central demands from the commission of experts – a lustration law – has been discussed fruitlessly in Parliament for years. This should refuse decision-making members of the former Communist Party for Romania (RKP) from taking on political roles for several years. The lustration law could also spur on the analysis of the repressive Secret Service apparatus and expose its decision-makers. For example, party secretaries worked on a regional basis, giving instructions to the Securitate as to whom they should observe or arrest. The historian Stejarel Olaru, who has done research on the Securitate and who is now Security Advisor for the government, does not believe that a lustration law will ever be passed in Romania. "It is all the more important that the CNSAS analyses the files, so that at least a part of the repressions under the Communist Regime can be punished”.

Annett Müller

Annett Müller is a freelance journalist working in Bucharest and Leipzig for ARD, n-ost and euro|topics. She studied journalism and psychology in Leipzig and Edinburgh.
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