crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
Marius Oprea
The Securitate legacy – terror in Romania
The legacy of the Securitate, the brutalities and the arsenal of violations of the rights of man that
made up the “cutting edge of the sword” that the latter used to support the Communist party in its fight
to impose Marxism and Leninism, whether of Stalinist leanings, or even, later, domestic leanings (Dej,
Ceausescu) are not fortuitous. The ideological foundation of violent acts directed against the enemies
of the communist regime had already been established by the writings of V. I. Lenin, an ideologist
which has never been amended by any party activist or by any Romanian “rescuer”: “The necessary
feature, the sine qua non condition of the dictatorship of the proletariat lies in the violent repression of
the exploiting class, and consequently in the violation of pure democracy, i.e. the equality and freedom
granted to this class.” 1
Romanian communists applied Leninist dogma and its later interpretations to the letter, at the time of
Stalin, Khrushchev or Brezhnev. Of course there were differences – and not always negligible ones –, but that
never cast doubt on the position of Romania within the politico-military block, founded on Marxist-Leninist
doctrine. Whether of Stalinist or Maoist tendencies (during the last years of Dej), of Khrushchevian inspiration
(during the first years of the Ceausescu regime), Castrist or North Korean, leaning towards collaboration with
Middle Eastern socialism or towards the regimes that manifested themselves as the cruellest dictatorships
(the Pol Pot regime or those of African countries with whom Ceausescu had forged strong friendships),
Romanian communism asserted, throughout all eras, the same ideological basis, common to all these regimes
and at the same time unknown to their own people.
Romanian communism promoted the same type of institutional construction, built on repression
and on the primacy of ideology concerning the well-being of its own people. The much-discussed gesture
made by Ceausescu not to allow the Soviet army to enter Romanian territory during the difficult days
of the Prague Spring was not an active act of dissidence against this system, simply because there is no
common measure between this gesture and that of the communist leaders of Czechoslovakia which led
to the national identity crisis of communism. The country was soon governed exclusively by a dictator
who imposed the culture of his personality, exercising his power through the intermediary of the party
machine and the Securitate, whilst conferring upon him, to mask his true face, a caricature of nationalism.
In fact, Romania in the 1980s was not very different to Romania in the 1950s, when Soviet advisors were
in charge of all matters and the country was full of Sovromes (enterprises created to despoil the country in
favour of the Soviets). Romania’s national wealth continued to be wasted in the same outrageous way, but
this time it was no longer to profit Moscow, but for the plans of the megalomaniac dictator and those who
supported them, for ideological reasons, not yet clearly distinct from the former ones.
There was only weak opposition against this policy, cruelly repressed by the Securitate, the
summit of a repressive triangle having as its base the communist party, and at its sides, for support, the
judicial system and the Militia. The Securitate was hand in glove with the system which “obstructs or
suppresses judicial activity and transforms the government into an active agent in the fight for power”,
because it devoted itself to state terrorism, according to the definition given by the Argentinean political
expert Ernesto Garzon Valdes, following an analysis of South-American totalitarian practices. 2 The
three elements of state terror theorized by Garzon were widely used by the Romanian Securitate. They
consisted firstly of the practice of violence, by abusive arrests, imprisonments, illegal even with regard
to the communist legislation, and by the torturing of political opponents. Secondly, the State institutions
proceeded to organise a black-out of public information, thus imposing control and monopoly over it,
and thirdly the process of control and manipulation of population was increased by the development
by the political police of an enormous network of informants. Violence, the passing in silence of
information and control were the tools used by the Securitate to maintain the communist regime. These
three elements of State terror represented at the same time a legacy used by the current post-communist
regime to maintain as large a part as possible of the former system.
1
V. I. Lenin, The Infantile Sickness of “Leftism” in Communism, Romanian edition: P. C. R., 1948, p. 31 (second edition).
2
Ernesto Garzon Valdes, “El terrorismo de estado”, in: Revista de estudio politicos, No. 65, Madrid 1989.
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