COURAGE

connecting collections

The National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (Consiliul Național pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securității – CNSAS) is the official authority in Romania which operates under the control of Romanian Parliament and administers the archives of the former communist secret police, the Securitate. The CNSAS Archive is the third largest archive of its kind in Europe. Beginning with the so-called “Proclamation of Timișoara” of March 1990, which was conceived among others by underground poet Ion Monoran and typewritten with a featured item from his private collection currently described in the COURAGE registry, the emerging civil society in Romania pressed for the opening of the secret police archives and the enforcement of lustration. This goal was partially achieved only after a decade, with the establishment of CNSAS, in accordance with Law 187/1999. The current legal framework governing the activity of CNSAS consists of Governmental Emergency Ordinance (OUG) 24/2008 modified and completed through Law 293/2008.  According to the law, CNSAS has a triple mission.

(1) As an archive, CNSAS ensures the free access of individuals – Romanian citizens and foreign nationals who were citizens of Romania after 1945 – to their personal files devised by the former Securitate during the period March 6 1945 to December 22 1989. Regarding the accessibility of these archives, a major change occurred when a massive transfer of documents to CNSAS was made during the period March–December 2005, and consequently the holdings of the CNSAS archive increased from approx. 9,400 files comprising approx. 19,000 volumes (around 700 linear metres) to some 1.3 million files comprising over 1.5 million volumes. Currently, the archival holdings amount to over 2 million volumes (around 25 km). The Archives of the CNSAS are arranged according to the logic of its founder, that is, the former Securitate. The main collections which preserve documents related to activities of cultural opposition are: the Penal Fonds (files of those put on trial), the Informative Fonds (files of those put under surveillance), the Romanian Exile Fonds, the Manuscripts Fonds (confiscated materials), and the Documentary Fonds. To these collections of documents created before 1989, either by the secret police or by those it kept under surveillance, we may add the Oral History Archive, which includes interviews with former victims of the Securitate who came to consult their files. From the documents included in these collections, it is possible to define – to the benefit of potential researchers – a multitude of ad-hoc collections, which gather all those records related to the repressed cultural activities of a certain groups or isolated persons. This is especially important in the case of those individuals who did not or could not preserve anything related to their pre-1989 underground cultural activities.

(2) As a public authority entrusted with transitional justice, CNSAS contributes to the process of restitution by providing to victims in search of legal compensation and rehabilitation the necessary documentation on the basis of Law 221/2009 regarding political sentences passed between 1945 and 1989. Above all, on the basis of its founding legal frame and additional legislative changes, CNSAS discloses former agents and informal collaborators and exposes the repressive actions of the former communist secret police in accordance with the principles of the rule of law. The founding Law 187/1999 was intended to accomplished what might be called “one-dimensional lustration” (D. Petrescu 2007), which focused only on former secret police agents and collaborators, but spared former nomenklatura members and party bureaucrats, who had actually supervised the activity of the Securitate. The Romanian law identifies the wrongdoers not on the basis of the office they held, but on the basis of the past deeds. In other words, it defines the acts of collaboration with the former secret police on the principle of individual guilt, proven beyond reasonable doubt on the basis of individual deeds which represented violations of fundamental human rights and thus infringements of the communist constitution. The current legislation, passed in 2008, restricted this definition of collaboration by introducing the “principle of simultaneity,” which incriminates only those past deeds that not only violated fundamental human rights, but also represented denouncements of actions or attitudes against the communist regime. In the absence of a legal lever to enforce lustration, however, the main accomplishment of the CNSAS activity is “public exposure without lustration” (D. Petrescu 2017). In this respect, the screening of the former Securiate documents by CNSAS has triggered constant public debates on the meaning of resistance to, and collaboration with, the pre-1989 regime in Romania, and fundamentally changed the black-and-white description of Romanian society under communism by revealing the multitude of lived experiences of individuals seeking to cope as best they could with the system (C. Petrescu 2014, D. Petrescu 2014).

(3) As a research institute, CNSAS creates and disseminates knowledge on the repressive dimension of the communist regime, playing a fundamental role in the process of coming to terms with the communist dictatorial past. Its political, social and cultural role resides in educating younger generations, who do not have a direct experience of the communist past, in the spirit of democratic values by emphasising the non-democratic essence of the former regime, which is epitomised by the acts of violation of human and citizen rights and liberties. Accordingly, CNSAS is engaged in a wide range of dissemination activities. (3.1) The institution reaches the general public through travelling exhibitions on the communist period, of which the most popular are “The Securitate as instrument of the dictatorship” and “My youth under communism.” (3.2) CNSAS addresses in particular the young generation by offering internships to university students and organising documentary visits in collaboration with high-schools and universities. (3.3) The most efficient dissemination is performed via on-line resources. CNSAS has devised an educational section of its website dedicated to digital resources, where it posts original documents from the Securitate archives, as well as scholarship and teaching support materials produced by its own researchers. All materials can be downloaded for free.

CNSAS is a founding member of the European Network of Official Authorities in Charge of the Secret Police Files, which was established on 16 December 2008 in Berlin. This network comprises seven institutions entrusted with transitional justice: the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the Former German Democratic Republic, Berlin; the Institute of National Remembrance, Warsaw; the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and Security Services Archives, Prague; the Nation’s Memory Institute, Bratislava; the Historical Archive of the Hungarian State Security, Budapest; the Committee on Disclosure of Documents and Announcing Affiliation of Bulgarian Citizens to the State Security and the Intelligence Services of the Bulgarian National Army, Sofia; and the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives in Bucharest. These institutions cover the territory of the countries where communism collapsed in 1989 and are based in the Federal Republic of Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania. This network collaborates in the field of education, research and dissemination of knowledge regarding the former communist secret police agencies in the Soviet bloc.

One of the central questions of the transition from communist regime to democracy in Bulgaria was the question of what should be done with the archives of communist state security. In contrast to the countries of Central Europe, the initial energy was not sufficient to bring about their opening. In the 1990s this question disappeared from the political agenda. The demand for opening up the archives did not disappear completely; it was supported by non-governmental organizations and journalists. The public pressure, reinforced by the demands of the EU in the accession negotiations led at the end of 2006 to the adoption of a law decision on the use of archival materials, and in 2007 the Commission was established.

The Commission was quick to gain confidence by revealing the names of those who had worked for the State Security, beginning with the political elite of the transitional period, with influential social groups such as the media, churches and religious communities. Another important success of the Commission is that it has succeeded in gathering documents on the former structures of state security and bringing them together in a separate archive administered by the Commission.

The rich materials are processed and published in thematic documentary collections containing the facsimile of documents. Up to now (April 2018), 46 thematic collections have been issued, each of which can be defined as a collection of documents.

The church district was established in the sixteenth century thanks to the spread of Calvinism in Upper Hungary. After the Peace Treaty of Trianon (1920), five eparchies (Abaúj, Gömör-Torna, Felsőbordos, Alsóborsod, and Alsózemplén) remained in Hungary. The others went to the Church district west of the Tisza River in Czechoslovakia. The Church district was added to the Church district east of the Tisza River in 1952. In 1957, it became independent again, but with the new eparchies created in 1952 (Heves, Borsod, Abaúj, Zemplén). Today, the Church district includes the Eparchies of Abaúj, Borsod-Gömör, Egervölgy, and Zemplén.

It was after the Velvet Revolution in the year 1989 that possibilities arose for the creation of CU in Slovakia. The Slovak bishops endeavoured to form a Faculty of Pedagogy which would educate Catholic teachers. The charter of the Pedagogical Institute of St. Andrew in Ružomberok was signed on 29 June 1995, in Dolná Krupá, and the first director was prof. RNDr. Jozef Ďurček, CSc.

The Academic Council of the University of Trnava created a Catechetical-pedagogical Faculty of St. Andrew (KPF) in 1996, through the transformation of the Pedagogical Institute of St. Andrew. The KPF was incorporated into the University of Žilina in 1997. Its statute, with the right of Church audit, as is usual for theological faculties, was registered at the Ministry of Education of the Slovak Republic. The first deans of KPF were prof. RNDr. Jozef Ďurček, Csc. (1996-1998) and prof. RNDr. Pavol Kluvánek, CSc. (1999-2000).

Later, on the basis of KPF, CU came into existence. The Law of the National Council of the Slovak Republic from 10 May 2000, concerning the establishment of the Catholic University in Ružomberok (CU) (this is the official name), established the creation of CU from 1 April 2000, with two faculties: a Faculty of Pedagogy and a Faculty of Philosophy. The Faculty of Theology, with its seat in Košice, was established on 1 July 2003, and the fourth, the Faculty of Health, on 1 July 2005. Although Law 167/2000 created CU as a non-governmental university, with the Law of the National Council of the Slovak Republic about universities, CU became a public university with religious character from 1 April 2002.