Nothing in Soviet-style communism was as shrouded in mystery as its secret police. Its paid employees were known to few and their actual numbers remain uncertain. Its informers and collaborators operated clandestinely under pseudonyms and met their officers in secret locations. Its files were inaccessible, even to most party members. The people the secret police recruited or interrogated were threatened so effectively that some never told even their spouses, and many have held their tongues to this day, long after the regimes fell. With the end of communism, many of the newly established governments - among them Romania's - opened their secret police archives. From those files, especially her own voluminous one, as well as her personal memories and interviews with acquaintances that turned out be informers, the author has carried out historical ethnography of the Romanian Securitate. Secrets and Truths is not only of historical interest but has implications for understanding the rapidly developing "security state" of the neoliberal present.
- ISBN10 6155225990
- ISBN13 9786155225994
- Publish Date 10 January 2014
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country HU
- Imprint Central European University Press
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 310
- Language English