REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

THE INTERROGATION STAGES,
STRATEGIES, AND TECHNIQUES OF THE
SECURITATE (1948-1964). CASE STUDY: THE
CLUJ REGIONAL DIRECTORATE FOR THE
SECURITY OF THE PEOPLE
Corneliu PINTILESCU 1
The topic of the present study has been approached in numerous works and articles on
the justice system as an instrument of political repression and manipulation in the
communist regimes. One can mention here the already classic works of authors, such as
F. Beck, W. Godin, Annie Kriegel, George Hodos and Robert Conquest, who approach
the great show trials from the time of the “Great Terror” and the similar trials from
Eastern Europe from 1948-1964. 2 Apart from focusing on the great “show trials,” another
feature of these works is their use of mainly press sources as well as witness and victim
accounts. Only after the political changes from 1989 did researchers have access to the
archives of the former USSR (less to the judicial archives however). From among the
works that were the result of this opening, one can mention those of Michael Ellman,
David L. Hoffmann, Roberta T. Manning and Elizabeth A. Wood. 3 The opening of the
archives of the former USSR was limited however. That is why these important works on
the justice system as an instrument of repression in the Communist Bloc did not contain
an analysis also from the perspective of the files based on which the respective trials were
held. The present study tries to fill this historiographic gap. It will analyze the
interrogation stages of the Securitate as well as the strategies and techniques that this
oppressive institution widely used based on the source material from the criminal files
held in the archives of the National Council for the Study of the Archives of the
Securitate (NCSAS), which are related to the activity of the Cluj Military Tribunal
between 1948 and 1964, as well as the interviews with victims and witnesses of the
studied trials. Through strategies we understand the ways in which the inquiry was
organized and developed of the inquiry in order to concoct a political criminal felony
according to the existing legislation.
1 Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
2 See F. Beck, W. Godin, Russian Purge and The Extraction of Confession, London, 1951; Annie
Kriegel, Les grands procès dans les systèmes communists: La pédagogie infernale, Paris, 1972;
George Hodos, Show Trials : Stalinist Purges in Eastern Europe, 1948-1954, New York, 1987;
Robert Conquest, The Great Terror – A Reassessment, Oxford, 1990.
3 See Michael Ellman, “The Soviet 1937-1938 Provincial Show Trails Revisited” in Europe-Asia
Studies, vol. 55, No. 8, December 2003; David L. Hoffmann, “The Great Terror on the Local
Level: Purges in Moscow Factories, 1936-1938” and Roberta T. Manning, “The Soviet
Economic Crisis of 1936-1938 and the Great Purges” in J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning
(eds.), Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, Cambridge, 1993; Elizabeth A. Wood, Performing
Justice: Agitation Trials in Early Soviet Russia, Ithaca, 2005.