Keys, Mikes, Spies – How the Securitate Stole Romania’s Privacy

For those who did not experience it, however, it is hard to imagine the levels of fear and oppression generated by an army of secret police agents that peaked at 500,000 informants out of a population of 22 million.

A good way of getting closer to understanding it is having a look at the formidable archives that Romania's communist secret police produced since it was established in 1948.

Despite initial resistance from most politicians and from the old Securitate cadres that remained in charge of the post-Communist secret service, democratic Romania has now given the public access to a significant part of the archive.

It has done so through the Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives, CNSAS. Established in 1999, the council gradually receives files previously held in the custody of the secret service, and makes sure they are made available to those who were spied on by the Securitate but also to professionals and members of the public who show a legitimate interest.

Two Romanian workers are removing the canvas cover of a truck full of files compiled by Securitatea, former communist secret police, at the warehouse of National Council for Studying the Securitatea Archives (C.N.S.A.S.), in the village of Popesti Leordeni, near Bucharest, Thursday March10 2005. Archive photo: EPA/ROBERT GHEMENT

"The CNSAS is in charge of a volume of files that would stretch for 26 kilometres, if we were to put them in line," explains Ionel Ivascu, director of the archive facilities on the outskirts of Bucharest. 

The millions of informative notes kept at the warehouse, Ivascu remarks, offer a unique and rich picture of all aspects of life in Romania between the late-1940s and December 1989, when Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was...

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