REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

Manuela MARIN: Aspects of the „Creative Resistance” in Communist Romania 89
addressed local authorities expressed views that questioned the performance of the
Romanian communist regime and that of its leader. Thirdly, the letters were the most
often used form of dissemination of documents containing ‘hateful content’ as shown by
data from the internal documents of the central bodies of Securitate. 14
Since the documents issued by the Securitate about this type of letters were mostly
informative reports, they gives only general details regarding the motivation of their
classification as documents of "hostile nature". Thus, a person sent in 1977 to the central
bodies of the party and state and to some private individuals seven letters "in which they
slander the party’s and state’s policy on the rights and freedoms of the citizens". 15 A
professor of Romanian language and literature from Cluj sent two anonymous letters to
“Flacăra” magazine and a letter to the Central Committee of the RCP during the 1983-
1984s "whose content brought serious slander to the socialist system in Romania, while at
the same time it derided some aspects of the economic and socio-political situation, using
both offensive and indecent language". 16 In some cases, the letters’ signatories complete
their "slander" and "hateful comments" with threats of acts of violence. Due to personal
grievances, a worker from Sibiu sent a letter threatening with "acts of violence against the
state leadership", while a priest in Cluj found it necessary to turn his threats towards the
Romanian national broadcasting institution and to the editorial committees of Făclia and
Scânteia newspapers. 17
Letters of the Romanian citizens addressed to foreign radio stations (Radio Free Europe,
Voice of America, BBC, Deutsche Welle) entered from the Securitate’s point of view in
the category of documents with “hateful content” for two main reasons. Firstly, the
activity of these radio stations was considered to be hostile to the communist regime in
Bucharest, because their programs were "systematically denigrating the Party and the
Romanian state policy, the achievements in the construction of socialism ...", aiming at
"undermining the state’s authority and the moral-political unity of the people ...
incitement to disorder and protest". 18 Secondly, by their subject (by asking help for
immigration, describing the difficult political and economic situation, the limitation and
violation of rights and freedoms), these letters gave a touch of truthfulness and an
argumentative basis for the criticism aimed by this media radio stations to the Romanian
Communist regime.
Starting from the above, including both types of letters among the creative resistance
means of the population to the communist regime is justified for several reasons. Firstly,
the simple man used a tool officially sanctioned, that of the system of studying and
solving letters in order to articulate and express the different views on the official
political line. Secondly, the formulation of different opinions based on information from
external sources is in itself an act of resistance because it involves linking and comparing
the information content of that officially distributed with that received through alternative
channels of information. In this context, the awareness of the common people of the
existence of a discrepancy between the official version and the one formed from personal
experience and the information received from outside stand behind the articulation of
14 Arhiva CNSAS, D16302, vol. 17, f. 31 f, f. 37 f.
15 Arhiva CNSAS, D16302, vol. 17, f. 31v.
16 Arhiva CNSAS, D8833, vol. 15, f. 380 f.
17 Arhiva CNSAS, D 16302, vol. 17, f. 37 v, 39 v.
18 Arhiva CNSAS, D16632, vol . 2, f. 189 f-v.