Securitate - WikiHQ

The Department of State Security (), commonly known as the Securitate (, ), was the secret police agency of the Socialist Republic of Romania. It was founded on 30 August 1948 from the Siguranța with help and direction from the Soviet MGB.

The Securitate was, in proportion to Romania's population, one of the largest secret police forces in the Eastern bloc. The first budget of the Securitate in 1948 stipulated a number of 4,641 positions, of which 3,549 were filled by February 1949: 64% were workers, 4% peasants, 28% clerks, 2% persons of unspecified origin, and 2% intellectuals. By 1951, the Securitate's staff had increased fivefold, while in January 1956, the Securitate had 25,468 employees. At its height, the Securitate employed some 15,000 agents and almost half a million informants for a country with a population of 23 million by 1989. Following the Romanian Revolution in 1989, the new authorities assigned the various intelligence tasks of the Securitate to new institutions.

History

Founding

thumb|left|[[Gheorghe Pintilie, the first Director General of the Securitate]]

The General Directorate for the Security of the People (Romanian initials: DGSP, but more commonly just called the Securitate) was officially founded on 30 August 1948, by Decree 221/30 of the Presidium of the Great National Assembly.

The Securitate was created with the help of SMERSH, the NKVD counter-intelligence unit. The SMERSH operation in Romania, called Brigada Mobilă (the "Mobile Brigade"), was led until 1948 by NKVD colonel Alexandru Nicolschi.

Initially, many of the agents of the Securitate were former Royal Security Police (named General Directorate of Safety Police—Direcția Generală a Poliției de Siguranță in Romanian) members. However, before long, Pantiușa ordered anyone who had served the monarchy's police in any capacity arrested, and in the places of the Royal Security Policemen, he hired ardent members of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR), to ensure total loyalty within the organization.

Several Securitate operatives were killed in action, especially in the early 1950s. As listed by the internal news bulletin on the occasion of Securitate's twentieth anniversary, in 1968, these included major Constantin Vieru, senior lieutenant Ștefan Vămanu, lieutenant Iosif Sipoș, sub-lieutenant Vasile Costan, platoon leader Constantin Apăvăloaie and corporal Alexandru Belate. Furthermore, lieutenant Ionel Jora was killed by the son of a suspect he had apprehended.

Method

thumb|[[Ion Mihai Pacepa in 1975]]

The Securitate surveillance took place in different ways: general intelligence surveillance (supraveghere informativă generală, abbreviated "S.I.G."); priority intelligence surveillance (supraveghere informativă prioritară, abbreviated "S.I.P."); clearance file (mapă de verificare, abbreviated "M.V."); individual surveillance dossier (dosar de urmărire individuală, abbreviated "D.U.I."); target dossier (dosar de obiectiv), the target being, for example, an institute, a hospital, a school, or a company; case dossier (dosar de problemă), the targets being former political prisoners, former Iron Guard members, religious organizations, etc.; and element dossier (dosar de mediu), targeting writers, priests, etc.

In the 1980s, the Securitate launched a massive campaign to stamp out dissent in Romania, manipulating the country's population with vicious rumors (such as supposed contacts with Western intelligence agencies), machinations, frameups, public denunciations, encouraging conflict between segments of the population, public humiliation of dissidents, toughened censorship and the repression of even the smallest gestures of independence by intellectuals. Often the term "intellectual" was used by the Securitate to describe dissidents who had higher education qualifications, such as college and university students, writers, directors, and scientists, who opposed the philosophy of the Romanian Communist Party. Assassinations were also used to silence dissent, such as the attempt to kill high-ranking defector Ion Mihai Pacepa, who received two death sentences from Romania in 1978, and on whose head Ceaușescu decreed a bounty of two million US dollars. Yasser Arafat and Muammar al-Gaddafi each added one more million dollars to the reward. In the 1980s, Securitate officials allegedly hired Carlos the Jackal to assassinate Pacepa.

Forced entry into homes and offices and the planting of microphones was another tactic the Securitate used to extract information from the general population. Telephone conversations were routinely monitored, and all internal and international fax and telex communications were intercepted. In August 1977, when the Jiu Valley coal miners' unions went on strike, several leaders died prematurely, and it was later discovered that Securitate doctors had subjected them to five-minute chest X-rays in an attempt to have them develop cancer. After birth rates fell, Securitate agents were placed in gynecological wards while regular pregnancy tests were made mandatory for women of child-bearing age, with severe penalties for anyone who was found to have terminated a pregnancy. The East German Stasi was even more ubiquitous than the Securitate; counting informers, the Stasi had one spy for every 6.5 East Germans.

During the period 1980–1989, the Securitate recruited over 200,000 informants, the largest number in its history, and about a third of the estimated number of 650,000 collaborators dating back to 1948; in 1989 alone, more than 25,000 recruitments were carried out. According to data, of those 200,000 new recruits, 158,000 were men. About 30,200 had higher education and more than 4,300 were students. Most collaborators came from the education area, approximately 8,500, and in second place were members of the clergy, almost 4,200. More than 3,600 doctors and nurses were informants, and 800 came from the legal professions. In the arts sector, over 1,000 recruits included 110 actors, 50 directors, 120 artists, 410 instrumentalists, 210 painters, and 55 sculptors. Less than 5% of the number of new informants (about 8,500) came from rural areas.

Downfall

After Ceaușescu was ousted, the new authorities broke up the Securitate, creating new agencies for its major functions; the SRI (Romanian Intelligence Service) (with internal tasks such as counterespionage), the SIE (Foreign Intelligence Service), the SPP (Protection and Guard Service) (the former Directorate V), the STS (Special Telecommunications Service) (the former General Directorate for Technical Operations), etc.

Today, the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (abbreviated CNSAS, for Consiliul Național pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securității) "is the authority that administrates the archives of the former communist secret services in Romania and develops educational programs and exhibitions with the aim of preserving the memories of victims of the communist regime."

Subdivisions

General Directorate for Technical Operations

The General Directorate for Technical Operations (Direcția Generală de Tehnică Operativă — DGTO) was an integral part of the Securitate' s activities. Established with the assistance of the KGB in the mid-1950s, the DGTO monitored all voice and electronic communications in the country. From 1948 to 1955, the penitentiaries operated by this Directorate were grouped into 4 categories:

Category I: Aiud, Gherla, Jilava.
Category II: Arad, Caransebeș, Cluj, Constanța, Craiova, Făgăraș, Galați, Mărgineni, Mislea, Ocnele Mari, Oradea, Brașov, Pitești, Ploiești, Rahova, Suceava, Târgșor, Târgu Ocna, Timișoara, Văcărești.
Category III: Alba Iulia, Bacău, Baia Mare, Botoșani, Brăila, Buzău, Cluj (minors), Dej, Deva, Dumbrăveni, Focșani, Iași, Rahova II, Râmnicu Sarat, Sibiu, Satu Mare, Sighet, Târgu Mureș.
Category IV: Bârlad, Bistrița, Caracal, Carei, Călărași, Câmpulung Moldovenesc, Câmpulung Muscel, Codlea, Dăeni, Giurgiu, Făgăraș (local), Fălticeni, Dorohoi, Huși, Ișalnița, Lugoj, Miercurea Ciuc (women), Odorhei, Oravița, Petroșani, Piatra Neamț, Rădăuți, Râmnicu Vâlcea, Roman, Sfântu Gheorghe, Sighișoara, Sighet (local), Slatina, Târgoviște, Târgu Jiu, Tecuci, Tulcea, Turda, Turnu Măgurele, Turnu Severin, Vaslui, Zalău.

Gradually, a large number of penal colonies and labor camps were established as a form of political detention for administrative detainees and became an integral part of the penitentiary system. The most important ones were along the Danube–Black Sea Canal, the Brăila Swamp, and the lead mines in northern Romania. Specific locations included: Arad, Baia Mare, Baia Sprie, Bârcea Mare, Bicaz, Borzești, Brad, Brâncovenești, CRM Bucharest, Buzău, Capu Midia, Castelu, Cavnic, Câmpulung, Cernavodă, Chilia Constanța, Chirnogi, Crâscior, Culmea, Deduleşti, Doicești, Domnești, Dorobanțu, Dudu, Fântânele, Fundulea, Galeșu, Giurgeni, Ghencea, Iași, Ițcani, Km. 31, Lucăcești, Mărculești, Mogoșoaia, Nistru, Onești, Onești Baraj, Peninsula/Valea Neagră, Periprava, Periș, Poarta Albă, Roșia Montană, Roșia Pipera, Roznov, Salcia, Grădina, Băndoiu, Strâmba, Stoeneşti, Piatra-Frecăței, Saligny, Sibiu, Simeria, Slatina, Spanțov, Tătaru, Târnăveni, Toporu, Vlădeni, Zlatna.

Directorate for Security Troops

The Directorate for Security Troops acted as a 20,000-strong paramilitary force for the government, equipped with artillery and armoured personnel carriers. The security troops selected new recruits from the same annual pool of conscripts that the armed services used. The police performed routine law enforcement functions including traffic control and issuance of internal identification cards to citizens. Organized in the late 1940s to defend the new regime, in 1989 the security troops had 20,000 soldiers. They were an elite, specially trained paramilitary force organized like motorized rifle (infantry) units equipped with small arms, artillery, and armored personnel carriers, but their mission was considerably different.

The security troops were directly responsible through the Minister of the Interior to Ceaușescu. They guarded important installations including PCR county and central office buildings and radio and television stations. The Ceaușescu regime presumably could call the security troops into action as a private army to defend itself against a military coup d'état or other domestic challenges and to suppress antiregime riots, demonstrations, or strikes. but was not able to protect Ceaușescu from arrest and execution during the Romanian Revolution of 1989.

Directors

Gheorghe Pintilie (1948 – 1959)
(1968 – 1972)
(1972 – 1978)
Tudor Postelnicu (1978 – 1987)
Iulian Vlad (1987 – 1989)

Funding

IKEA

In the 1980s under the rule of the Romanian Communist Dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romania's secret police, the 'Securitate', received six-figure payments from IKEA. According to declassified files at the , IKEA agreed to overcharge for products made in Romania and some of the overpayment funds were deposited into an account controlled by the Securitate.

Notes

References

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Lavinia Stan, ed., Transitional Justice in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union: Reckoning with the Communist Past, London: Routledge, 2009.
Lavinia Stan and Rodica Milena Zaharia, "Romania's Intelligence Services. Bridge between the East and the West?", Problems of Post-Communism, vol. 54, no. 1 (January 2007), pp. 3–18.
Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, "The Devil's Confessors: Priests, Communists, Spies and Informers", East European Politics and Societies, vol. 19, no. 4 (November 2005), pp. 655–685.
Lavinia Stan, "Spies, Files and Lies: Explaining the Failure of Access to Securitate Files", Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 37, no. 3 (September 2004), pp. 341–359.
Lavinia Stan, "Moral Cleansing Romanian Style", Problems of Post-Communism, vol. 49, no. 4 (2002), pp. 52–62.
Lavinia Stan, "Access to Securitate Files: The Trials and Tribulations of a Romanian Law", East European Politics and Societies, vol. 16, no. 1 (December 2002), pp. 55–90.

External links

Romania - Ministry of Interior and Security Forces
Gabriel Catalan, Mircea Stănescu, Scurtă istorie a Securității ("Short history of the Securitate"), Sfera Politicii, Nr. 109 (2004), pp. 38–53.