The beginning of the CNSAS Online Collection dates back to 2006, when the CNSAS College took the decision to initiate the digitisation of documents relating to the history of the Securitate and of the Romanian Communist Party. Since 2007, various types of documents have been uploaded on the official website of CNSAS, but the systematic activity of digitising documents and publications began in 2010. The materials available online are of very different types, ranging from documents created by the secret police, which are currently preserved in the Penal, Informative, and Documentary Fonds of the CNSAS Archives, to top-secret publications for the training of Securitate personnel, and from classified documents, which regulated the structure and activity of this institution, to once widely distributed volumes relating to the Communist Party and its history. On the whole, the CNSAS Online Collection includes materials that directly reflect either the perspective of the communist regime and its key institutions, beginning with the Party and the secret police, on persons and groups in opposition to the regime, or the perspective of the latter upon the former. Accordingly, the materials of the CNSAS Online Collection at CNSAS can be grouped in four different categories taking into account their format (unpublished materials or publications) or their nature (classified or freely available).(1) The most important section includes top secret documents regarding the functioning of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, later renamed Ministry of the Interior, during the period 1948 to 1989, to which the Securitate and other repressive communist institutions, such as the Militia, were directly subordinated. This section includes a substantial amount of information on the institutional evolution of the Securitate, its functioning mechanisms and the mobility of its cadres. These inner documents of the Securitate are fundamental sources both for the history of this key institution in supporting the communist regime and for the history of opposition to the communist regime. (2) Second, the online collection contains documentation materials, such as periodicals, brochures and volumes that were used as learning materials for the political education and practical training of the permanent personnel of the Securitate. Among these materials, one of the most relevant is the top secret periodical Securitatea, which was published between 1968 and 1989 as an “internal bulletin for the state security apparatus.” This periodical served as learning material to be used alongside other formative activities to train secret police personnel. Equally important, this periodical mirrors all ideological changes of the official discourses and their impact upon the mission of the secret police in annihilating any opposition to the communist regime. (3) Another part of the CNSAS Online Collection includes volumes and brochures relating to the history of the Communist Party published between 1945 and 1989. Many of these volumes no longer exist in libraries, as most of them were destroyed after the regime change. These materials are extremely important because they reflect the continuous changes in the official policies, which directly determined the position of nonconformist individuals and groups in relation to the regime at a given moment. For instance, a more restrictive policy in the cultural field, such as Ceaușescu’s Theses of July 1971, turned tolerated cultural activities into prohibited ones and pushed the individuals who epitomised these newly prohibited activities from the mainstream to marginality. (4) Finally, the online collection contains an archive of documents focusing mainly on the employment of terror and repression by the Securitate against those categories of Romanian citizens arbitrarily considered hostile to the communist regime. Additionally, this part of the collection includes selected examples of the repressive activities of the Securitate against individuals and groups in each county of Romania, collected and uploaded under the name România supravegheată (Romania under surveillance). A special part of the collection is dedicated to the historical personalities who contributed to the making of the modern Romanian state but were later repressed by the communist regime; many of them perished in various prisons, some without trace as they were buried in common graves. These documents represent a symbolic commemoration of all those historical personalities whom the communist regime sent to exterminating prisons and wiped out from history books. All these four categories of online materials are exceptionally important primary sources for the study of the recent dictatorial past in Romania. The digitisation of the first three categories of online sources was been gradually initiated from 2007 and systematically pursued from 2010 by Dragoș Petrescu, the president of the CNSAS College between 2010 and 2018. The fourth category resulted from the initiative of various members of the College. Of the four categories of online sources, the first, third and fourth are parts of the collection which can be further developed by continuing the digitising project, while the second part is completely available in digital format.
(1) The legislative framework regarding the functioning of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Romanian acronym MAI), later Ministry of the Interior, reflects in detail the transformation of the mission entrusted to the Securitate and other repressive institutions subordinated to this ministry between 1948 and 1989, the institutional evolution of the Securitate and its changing relationship with the Party leadership. This part of the online collection is organised as a searchable data base with some 10,200 entries organised chronologically from the foundation of the Securitate in 1948 until the demise of the communist regime in 1989. The entries in the data base includes the year and the exact date when each document was issued, its title, the identification details of the document, the download link for it and the date when it was published on the CNSAS website. More precisely, the data base contains decrees and orders about the creation and subsequent reorganisation of the Securitate or other institutions subordinated to the MAI at central and local levels; appointments, promotions, removals, transfers, and other types of evidence regarding the personnel of the secret police, etc. A different set of materials approach the specific nature of the activity of the institutions subordinated to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, such as the preparing of military operations or exercises, the protection of officials, informative and counter-informative actions, etc. Finally, other internal documents deal with organisational details regarding repression and the violation of human rights, such as the functioning of “work colonies,” internments and releases from “work colonies” or prisons, censorship of correspondence, and the application of so-called “socialist legality” against acts considered to constitute hooliganism, illegal trespassing of national frontiers, illicit commerce with goods, etc. (http://www.cnsas.ro/acte_normative.html).
Another part of this section of the online collection is Fosta Securitate: Cadre și colaboratori (The former Securitate: Cadres and collaborators), which is divided in three parts. The first part is a documentation synthesis of the structure of the Securitate, which outlines the evolution of this institution since its creation and the subsequent reorganisations of the departments at central and local levels between 1948 and 1978. The second part includes the list of the personnel (officers) of the Securitate, who have been identified as such following either specific requests of disclosure by those individuals who had read their secret police file or the vetting of individuals holding public office, which CNSAS carried out according to the law (Law 293/2008). The list is organised alphabetically and contains the names and surnames of the Securitate officers, their code names, and their personal record sheets containing details of their careers. The third part contains the list of individuals identified as collaborators of the Securitate. This part is also organised alphabetically and also includes a scanned copy of the final verdict in a court of law confirming the collaboration of the individual in question with the Romanian secret police, based on evidence beyond any reasonable doubt discovered in the CNSAS Archives, which CNSAS provided to this court of law (http://www.cnsas.ro/fosta_securitate.html).
(2) The part of the online collection focusing on teaching materials for the use of Securitate personnel originates from the library of the communist secret police. It is divided into three categories: top secret periodicals for the internal use of the secret police, propaganda brochures and other materials for training the Securitate apparatus, and readings about Marxism-Leninism, which were discovered in the library of the secret police. At Dragoș Petrescu’s initiative, the CNSAS College decided in 2010 to digitise these documents, and they were published in their entirety on the CNSAS website by 2014. The section on Marxism-Leninism is by far the smallest and includes only a few volumes of selected works by Stalin, Lenin, Marx and Engels on problems ranging from proletarian internationalism and dialectical and historical materialism to religion (http://www.cnsas.ro/marxism_leninism.html).The resources for training the Securitate personnel can be further divided into two types: general works regarding espionage or counter-espionage and internal regulations. The first category includes documentation materials on Western espionage agencies, information about successful espionage operations, latest developments in economic espionage, and counterintelligence. The second category includes internal regulations referring to diplomatic contacts, diplomatic immunity and privileges, the defence of state secrets, the issuance of exit visas, the interrogations of suspects, the recruitment and handling of informers, informative surveillance, terrorism and counter-terrorism, etc. (http://www.cnsas.ro/brosuri_propagandistice.html)
The same themes were to some extent explored in the Securitate periodicals, Studii și documente (Studies and documents) and Securitatea. Only nine issues of Studii și documente were published between 1969 and 1971. As the title indicates, this short-lived periodical included documentation materials which analysed the historical context of the problems encountered by the secret police officers in their work for the purpose of improving their understanding of the situations they were dealing with. Therefore, the subjects tackled in these articles were mostly related to the extreme-right interwar movement, the Iron Guard, and the democratic interwar political parties in Romania, for the former members of these organisations were prime suspects of organising oppositional activities against the communist regime with the support of their colleagues in the exile communities. The activity of the so-called neo-protestant denominations, such as Jehovah's Witnesses or Pentecostals, which raised problems for the Securitate due to their unofficial connections to the West, was another recurrent issue in these articles. Articles about minorities are also well represented, focusing especially on Germans and Hungarians and dealing with their so-called “nationalist orientations,” which, from the point of view of the secret police, threatened communist Romania and supported the opposition to its leadership. Last but not least, the Securitate officials were invited to learn from the experience of the interwar Romanian secret service, the Siguranță, in dealing with internal and external acts of “subversion” and opposition (http://www.cnsas.ro/studii_documente.html).
Published quarterly between 1969 and 1989, Securitatea was the main publication designed to improve the training of the officers of the Romanian secret police. In comparison to Studii și documente, its articles addressed practical problems faced by Securitate officers in their operative work or in the analysis and interpretation of the evidence and information they collected. Accordingly, a great part of the articles dealt with “the fight against the hostile activities of enemy elements in the country” and with methodological and legal issues regarding their identification and prosecution. The categories of individuals suspected of “hostile” activities against the Romanian state were extremely heterogeneous and included: foreign citizens who came to Romania as tourists, as journalists, or on business; members of the pre-communist political parties or of the exile communities; young people who adopted Western-style non-conformist behaviour or clothing; ordinary Romanians listening to foreign radio stations; clergymen and religious believers; national minorities; and individuals who tried to clandestinely cross the border. The articles describe in great details the nature of their “hostile” or oppositional activities, the role played by external factors in supporting or inspiring their actions, and the means used by the Securitate to deal with them. The methodology of discovering and neutralising the oppositional activities was also a much debated subject in the pages of the quarterly. Consequently, the articles discuss the organisation of stakeouts, the use of technical means for informative surveillance, the investigation, the use of specific means for the identification of “the enemies” of the communist regime and their oppositional deeds, the manner of conducting interrogations, the collection and interpretation of evidence, and the preparation of files for the prosecution of those considered culpable. Particular cases were also discussed as a way of sharing the experience of field work and investigation. Particular attention was paid to preventive measures, such as the dismantling of oppositional groups or the organisation of public debates on some forms of non-conformism that did not constitute activities “hostile” enough to justify putting their perpetrators on trial. Other practical details regarding the field work of the Securitate officers concerned the recruitment of “sources” according to their psychological profile, the handling of “sources” with special backgrounds, such as those originating from rural settlements or from foreign countries, the development of informative networks in various social, cultural, and economic contexts, etc. Espionage and counterespionage represented another well debated topic. Consequently, one could read interesting materials regarding the development and working methods of foreign intelligence agencies, famous spies or espionage operations during WWII or the Cold War. The quarterly Securitatea also published a series of articles about economic counterespionage in research institutes, military units and transportation systems, about prevention of recruitment of Romanian citizens by foreign agencies, Radio Free Europe included, or on the role of the Securitate in guarding state secrets. These articles are particularly important for understanding the conspiratorial universe of the Securitate, which read most acts of the opposition against the communist regime in Romania as being the result of successful Western espionage operations (http://www.cnsas.ro/periodicul_securitatea.html).
(3) Official documents relating to the history of the Communist Party published between 1945 and 1989 constitute another important part of the CNSAS Online Collection. Entitled Surse pentru Istoria Partidului Comunist din România/Partidului Muncitoresc Român/Partidului Comunist Roman (Sources for the history of the Communist Party in Romania/ Romanian Workers Party/ Romanian Communist Party), this section contains over eighty entries organised chronologically in a database. Few of these materials can still be found in public libraries, as many were burned during or immediately after the Revolution of 1989. Initiated by Dragoș Petrescu, the digitisation of these publications was carried out with the collaboration of the Nicolae Iorga History Institute of the Romanian Academy. The digitised publications came from the library of this institute, from the CNSAS library, and from Dragoș Petrescu’s personal library. Thus, various series of publications could be reconstructed in their entirety and made available to a wide public interested in the history of Romanian communism. The great majority of the sources for the history of the Communist Party were uploaded into the online database between 2013 and 2015. The database is searchable on three criteria: the year of appearance, the type of document, and its title. In addition to these elements, the database includes the cover of the publication, its content and the download link. There are four types of documents in this section of the online collection. Documente programatice (Programmatic documents) includes main official papers defining the activity of the Communist Party, such as the statutes, rules and procedures relating to the party and Party-controlled organisations, transcripts of Party meetings, politburo decisions and resolutions of the plenums of the Central Committee concerning important ideological turns in economic, administrative, cultural, or foreign policy issues. Volume (Volumes) comprises selected speeches by the two Romanian communist leaders, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and Nicolae Ceaușescu, several volumes of documents regarding the history of the Party during the interwar period, and some publications about Ceaușescu’s visits abroad. Conferințe și plenare (Conferences and plenums) includes, as the name suggests, volumes with transcripts of Central Committee and Party plenary meetings or brochures with the reports and speeches of the Party leaders at these national conferences and plenums. Finally, Congrese (Congresses) includes transcripts of all congresses of the Party, published in their entirety in volume form or partially as reports of the Party leader on activity during the period elapsed since the previous congress or directives of the congress regarding the economic and social development of the country during the next five-year plan (http://www.cnsas.ro/surse_PdCR_PMR_PCR.html).
(4) The repressive dimension of the Securitate as an institution designed to protect the communist regime and its leaders is well represented in the online collection. It encompasses an impressive number of archival documents about the use of terror and repression against those segments of the Romanian society who dared to oppose the communist regime or were arbitrarily profiled as hostile to its interests and goals. An important part of the collection (over 34 files, each of them containing approximately 500 folios) deals with the infamous “re-education” experiment that took place mainly in the Pitești prison between 1949 and 1952, hence the name “Pitești phenomenon” in the relevant literature. This “re-education” meant the round-the-clock use of extreme psychological and physical torture, which some of the political prisoners inflicted upon their fellow inmates to determine them to give up their values and beliefs, thus turning into “new men.” As the communist authorities decided to abandon “re-education,” scapegoats for the atrocities committed were needed, so a penal investigation was initiated. The files in the online collection originate from the Penal Fonds of the Securitate and trace step by step the development of the Military Tribunal’s investigation of the inmates who were pushed to torture other inmates and the officers of the secret police who supervised the entire operation. The 34 files contain documents gathered by the Securitate between 1954 and 1957 to build a strong case against those involved in the “re-education” (ACNSAS, P 1114 – 24 volumes, and P 1126 – 10 volumes). They contain transcripts of the interrogations of those who participated directly in the infamous experiment, their handwritten testimonies, the testimonies of witnesses, the evidence collected against those prosecuted (letters, declarations, list of the deceased inmates, death certificates), and the conclusions of the investigation. The rest of the files focus on the organisation of the trial, the pronouncement of the sentences, the appeals made by the defendants, the rejection of their appeals, their admission to prison, and other documents regarding their imprisonment (http://www.cnsas.ro/reeducarea.html).
The subject of forced labour in penal colonies as a means of punishment against the opponents of the communist regime also features in the online collection. These archival documents, which amount to 90 files from the Documentary Fonds of the Securitate, paint an overwhelming picture of the forced labour camps and the use of those suspected of being “enemies of the regime” as unpaid workforce in the hardest activities and in the most inhumane conditions (ACNSAS, D 55 vol. 1–54, D 8896, D 11646, D 010335, D 008616, D 008754, D 008755, D 008180, D 008179, D 011647, D 011647, etc.). Between 1950 and 1960 almost 29,000 individuals were abusively sent to “work colonies” based on the orders of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which played the double role of judge and prosecutor, collecting real or fake evidence against persons suspected of anti-communist sympathies, and at the same time making decisions about their guilt based on that evidence. These files contain administrative decisions or proposals for sending people to “work colonies,” reports, statistics, and tables about those sentenced to forced labour, information on forced displacement of the population and on the measure of mandatory domicile, and legislation detailing the motives for internment in “work colonies” (http://www.cnsas.ro/colonii.html).
Another part of the files dealing with the repression against the opponents of the communist regime contains the results of the investigation which Nicolae Ceaușescu ordered in 1967 into the “illegal and abusive” nature of Securitate activity. These documents, amounting to 24 volumes, were preserved in the Documentary Fonds of the Securitate Archives (ACNSAS, D 19 vol. 1–24). In order to consolidate his political legitimacy as Party leader, neutralise his political adversaries and reinforce Party control over the secret police, Ceaușescu established a commission to investigate the violation of basic human rights committed by the Securitate during the rule of his predecessor, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. The partial results of the investigation were presented publicly in a Plenum of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party on 22–25 April 1968. The CNSAS Online Collection contains all the files of the Party investigation, most of which remained secret until their transfer to CNSAS. The part of the investigation that was made public referred to abuses committed by the Securitate against Party leaders. It was meant to illustrate that the secret police had escaped the control of the Party, so it documented the involvement of this institution in the power struggle at the top of the Party leadership, and the use of repressive methods and informative surveillance against Party members. The files of the inquiry made by the Party commission gathered evidence about secret police abuses not only against Party leaders, but also against ordinary Romanian citizens. Unfortunately, the organisation of the documents is rather chaotic, which illustrates the carelessness of the secret police in handling its documents. The files do not observe the correct chronological order, as the first volumes open with the complaints made after the Plenum of April 1968 and continue with the materials prepared for this meeting of the Central Committee, which document how Gheorghiu-Dej used the Securitate to get rid of his political rivals and keep them under strict surveillance during the 1950s. The materials concerning individuals persecuted by the Securitate for various reasons are placed in these files in a reversed order starting with the conclusions of the investigation, a larger report on the case reconstructing the events using extracts from the interrogations of the victims, the witnesses, and the Securitate officials involved in the operation, and lastly the memorandums of the victims or their relatives addressed to Nicolae Ceaușescu, the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party, local Party organisations, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, etc. In the great majority of the cases the conclusions are surprising when compared to the official discourses of the period as they underline serious legal infringements committed by the Securitate, the Militia, or the Prosecution. These documents bluntly state that innocent people were sentenced to terms in prison without solid evidence, that prisoners were savagely beaten or tortured by prison guards, and that some of them died as a result of this harsh treatment (http://www.cnsas.ro/ancheta_1968.html).
Finally, in this part of the online collection we may also mention România supravegheată (Romania under surveillance). Documents about the repressive means used by the Securitate against various categories of individuals and groups in each county can be read by clicking on the respective administrative unit on the map of Romania. This section includes rich visual materials and documents mostly from the Documentary Fonds, but also from the Informative and Penal Fonds of the CNSAS Archives. Some of these materials were used in the making of the exhibition “Securitatea – instrument al dictaturii” (The Securitate – Instrument of Dictatorship) and now constitute the basis of a developing online exhibition (http://www.cnsas.ro/romania_supraveg.html). Besides, under the label of România centenară (Centenary Romania), there is a special section including the files created by the Securitate on some of the political leaders involved in the making of Greater Romania. Each leader represents a different historical province incorporated in Romania after WWI: from Bessarabia – Pan Halippa and Ion Pelivan; from Transylvania – Ioan Flueraș, Iosif Jumanca, and Iuliu Maniu; and from Bukovina – Ioan Nistor. These files originate from the Documentary, Informative, and Penal Fonds and trace the destiny of these political personalities, who were persecuted by the communist regime due to their anti-communist stances (http://www.cnsas.ro/romania_centenara_dosare.html).
