The need for moral clarity

The Romanian political life experiences moral convulsions.

Informers and officers

By not coming forward at the right time and some of them playing the role of moral guardians in society, they contributed to the spreading of imposture. But the securist officers and communists (members and ideologists) were the ones formulating the Evil. We should see how deep go these examinations of the past and what would the effects look like. We should see how much these actions will affect real people or if we will just wander, yet another time, in a forest of misguiding shadows. Will we just fiercely attack informers that delayed too much their public confession? Did we defulate enough to just go back to the promiscuous normality of day-to-day transactions? Will we yet again level the responsibilities only to save this one or that one only because they look nice to us? The scandal surrounding delators must not be allowed to hide the supreme infamy of Securitate as an ideological and political instrument for the communist dictatorship. The informers worked for the officers and the officers were party activists sent in the secret police. The control of the Communist Party over Securitate was the stronghold for the gloomy institution. And the crimes against humanity were committed in the name of some ideological precepts dictated by the utopia vision promoted by the Communist Party.

The web of lie

Nobody can deny the time has come to open the files of all people who are now leaders, of all politicians. There is the need for unlimited transparency and total truth. Otherwise, the web of lies becomes more and more oppressive, the impenetrable midst goes on and on, and the state of moral perplexity hatches into cynical thought, anxiety and despair. In this atmosphere of misty ambiguity, populism and other similar demagogical-authoritative temptations thrive. (...)

The sense of proportions

We are meeting with ethical falls in the cases of people we have admired. But not everybody collaborated, not everybody believed in the eternity of the system. For me, above all, delation is a form of sordid indecency. You enter somebody's life and report about this person without any right. Signing the engagement is a moral sin, but choosing not to speak about this only makes it worse. But it's also important to whom you were reporting. Delators worked with officers, not with other delators. In the scandalized explosions of the past two weeks, there lays the risk to loose the sense of proportions. To be disgusted is one thing, to believe we are forever doomed ethically is yet a totally different thing.

Two Securitate

Simply said: we need moral clarity as we need air and water. This should be the theme of today's discussion: the need for embellished truth, the courage to assume this past that won't go away. Securitate was a criminal and terrorist organization from the first to the last day.

Too often we hear Securitate has lived two lives: the first, miserable and hog, in the cominternist-cominformist times (1948-1964). Back then, we are told, the "foreigners" were in power. It doesn't matter anymore that the internal affairs minister was Alexandru Draghici (Romanian). The second period would have been one dedicated to the national cause. This is what former securists and their today's followers say. (...)

2006: denials

The increasing numbers of national-securist discourses that try to rehabilitate the "patriotic" Securitate must be met with great power. The repression of miners rebellion in 1977, the persecution of Paul Goma's movement, the annihilation of the revolution in Brasov in 1987, the killing of engineer Gheorghe Ursu, the unsuccessful killing of Romanian exiled personalities, the massacres in December 1989 are proofs Securitate was a criminal organization. Those negationist theses come from those who feel threatened by the exposure of communism as a system based on crimes against humanity. The crimes must be remembered without second thoughts or embarrassment.

Unequal guilts

The choice of the victims must be listened and honored. Without delators, Securitate would not have functioned. That's why we need confessions, so that these tragedies would not happen again. So that we can look into our friends' eyes. We must remain calm and see what we have done ]n the past 16 years. The guilts are not equal, responsibilities differ too. The heads of the communist party were in this sense the main guilty part for the terror in Romania, terror manifested through Securitate, DEA and Militia. Recently, the ex-prime minister, the last communist Prime Minister Manea Manescu turned 90. The nationalists celebrated him as a great state man. Who amongst us were vexed by this scene?

The moment of truth

When I speak about nuances, I mean the need to name the people guilty in a great degree. Some have collaborated and kept silent afterwards. They even minimalized what this collaboration meant. This is regrettable. But the order didn't come from them. They served because they were blackmailed or out of a detestable opportunism, they were the wheels in an infernal mechanism, legitimated by their ignoble compromises or condemnable abdications. But the institution had departments and sub-departments, units and sub-units.

Securitate (internal and external) was exactly this thing: a morbid institution designed to terrorize, to control, to be feared by the people. Inside the country and inside the Diaspora communities. Using all means. It is a civic, political and moral duty to speak out this truth. The great lesson of those opposing the system in Eastern Europe is the distinction between the lives lived in truth and the pseudo-life lived in lie. In Romania too the moment has come for this distinction to be more than just a word.

(published in "Cotidianul", 17 august 2006, translated by Lucian Dragos)

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