State Induced Theft: The Transformation of Political Detainees Into Common Criminals in communist...

east central europe 41 (2014) 56-85

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/18763308-04102002

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State Induced TheftThe Transformation of Political Detainees into Common Criminals in Communist Romania

Delia PopescuLe Moyne College

Abstract

In this article I argue that one of the main tools that allowed the Romanian communist state to control oppositional activities, far better than many of its Eastern European neighbors, was the transformation of political opponents into petty criminals and fel-ons. I contend that in the two decades that preceded 1989, communist Romania wit-nessed a pragmatic shift from hard rule (based on simply imprisoning political opponents under the category of “political detainees”) to subversive criminalization. The main operative tool for the subversive criminalization of so-called political offenses was Law 18/1968 (subtitled Law regarding the control of the provenance of goods that have not been acquired through legal means). I argue that Law 18 was the result of two interconnected political drives. The first drive was the desire of the Ceauşescu regime to gain favor with the West by perpetuating the rhetoric launched as a result of the general amnesty for political detainees in 1964, under the Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej administration. The second drive was the political imperative of the Ceauşescu regime to suppress political opposition. My argument is that this trans-formative shift was accomplished through the development of what I call a mechanism of state induced theft backed by the deployment of a subversive legal instrument of criminalization, which was Law 18/1969. This paper analyzes the role, essence, and implications of Law 18 while supporting a theory of a strategic shift in communist policy.

Keywords

legal history – anti-communism – opposition – communist law – Law 18/1968 – Nicolae Ceauşescu – Securitate – communist economic policy

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1 Document provided by the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile (IICCMER), Bucharest; I would like to thank IICCMER researcher Mihai Burcea for providing hundreds of pages of documents relating to Law 18/1968.

– What is your sentence?– 10 years.– What did you do?– I did nothing!– You’re lying! If you had done nothing you would have received 3 years!

In The Communist Genocide in Romania, a little known but cogent book on the communist legacy in Romania, Gheorghe Boldur-Lațescu claims that “the defi-nition of political detainees should not be limited though only to those who had been tried and sentenced in accordance with the penal code article that applies to political crimes. … In fact, during the Ceauşescu dictatorship, it was quite common for the Securitate to hide the real political reasons behind one’s detention by fabricating charges of common criminal law infringement or declaring the arrested mentally ill” (2005: 66). In the Final Report of the Presidential Commission for the Analysis of Communism in Romania, Vladimir Tismăneanu similarly argues that many Romanian prisons are known to have been under a “mixed regime” since “many political detainees were camouflaged into common criminals (the ‘sabotaging’ peasants of the ’50s or the dissidents of the ’80s)”(2006: 209; italics added; from now on referenced as the “Tismăneanu Report”). This affirmation is further corroborated by the Ilieşiu Report, a shorter but no less elucidating account of the communist legacy in Romania (2005).

None of these sources elaborate on the issue of this “mixed regime,” nor do they mention the law that became the main strategic tool for the subversive criminalization of so-called political offenses: Law 18/1968 (subtitled: Law regarding the control of the provenance of goods that have not been acquired through legal means).1 I argue that Law 18/1968 was the result of two intercon-nected political drives. The first was Nicolae Ceauşescu’s desire to gain favor with the West by perpetuating the state rhetoric of democratic openness launched by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej as a result of the 1964 general amnesty for political detainees. The second drive was the political imperative of the Ceauşescu regime to suppress political opposition. In sum, the desire to show-case Romania as a country with no political detainees and to maintain the var-nish of democratic legitimacy required the creation of a covert tool of oppression that provided an internal rationale for state mandated prosecution and did not attract Western disgruntlement. I further contend that, in this context, the two decades that preceded 1989 witnessed an ideological shift

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2 For an exploration of the difficulty of using evidentiary sources from the communist period in Romania, see Stan (2013), also Calhoun (2004). Both Stan and Calhoun argue that an accu-rate count of those who suffered at the hands of the communist legal system is hard to come by since the state devised multiple and hidden channels of criminalization which, taken individually, might not qualify as legally suspect, or their illegality was carefully masked through extensive falsification (Stan 2013: 8; Calhoun 2004: 1). Stan argues that those who did not become the subject of state prosecution “had a hard time accepting the innocence of those unjustly thrown into communist prisons, although they themselves had to navigate the multitude of limitations that the regime imposed on a daily basis” (8).

from “hard” rule (based on simply imprisoning dissidents under the category “political detainees”) to subversive criminalization, with no less devastating effects for civil society. The transitional moment was marked by the symbolic declaration that Romania was a country “without political detainees” in 1964. Beyond the ’64 declaration, the process of a “transformative” shift was accom-plished through the development of what I call a mechanism of state induced theft symbolized by Law 18/1968. This article is a case study of Law 18 as an instance of a subversively designed legal instrument, tailored to provide a puta-tively non-political excuse to prosecute politically recalcitrant individuals, from any social class. The study emphasizes the political and historical context that allows for the interpretation of Law 18 as a subversive law. The argument in this study is, in many respects, necessarily circumstantial: on the heels of a regime dedicated to falsifying and destroying evidence, direct documentary evidence of judicial abuses is either impossible to find or hard to employ with confi-dence.2 The difficulty of using circumstantial evidence is a limitation that this study duly acknowledges, yet this difficulty does not invalidate the possibility of a convincing argument based on placing the letter of the law in a contextual analysis of the political and historical environment, together with corroborat-ing evidence from testimonies and related case studies. As I show below, the circumstances warrant the interpretation of this law as the main legal instru-ment to set up the necessary background condition for incriminating any citi-zen who might speak or act against the system. The article is primarily interested in the construction of this foundational legal condition that allowed for a ready-made avenue of incrimination. While individual case studies might be possible, the fact that secret police files were falsified and defendants falsely accused (together with the passing of several decades) poses a particular diffi-culty for field research. This paper offers an analytical starting point.

Three factors point to Law 18/1968 as the quintessential example of a Romanian communist law meant to target and criminalize oppositional behav-ior: 1) the historical and political context at the time that this law was passed; 2) the procedural essence of the law; and 3) the enforcement mechanism of the



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3 The systematic abuse of psychiatric hospitals (psykhushkas) in the Soviet Union is one of the better-documented abuses of the Soviet system. See, for example, Adler et al. (1993), van Voren (2009), and Bloch and Reddaway (1985).

4 The situation is similar in the case of the political abuse of psychiatry. While there is more information regarding dissidents sent to psychiatric hospitals, the estimates range widely precisely because of the difficulty, if not the impossibility of finding hard evidence to set the record straight in many other cases.

law and its application. I will first discuss the historical background of early Romanian communism in order to show that the political circumstances at the time required the creation of a legal tool meant to criminalize political oppo-nents (for a synthetic view of Romanian communism, see Deletant 1997; and Tismăneanu 2003). The emergence of Law 18 is impossible to understand out-side the geopolitical context, which favored Romania in Western eyes and gave Ceauşescu an incentive to camouflage blunt political oppression. Law 18 emerged as a subversive instrument of repression meant to hide the reality of political persecution under the guise of criminal law.

In its subversive nature, Law 18 is reminiscent of other covert means of legal oppression used throughout the Soviet Union, such as the fabrication of psychi-atric files in order to commit political dissidents to mental institutions.3 In fact, outside the Soviet Union, Romania had the most extensive record of psychiatric abuse among the satellite states (see Muller et al. 1998). The difference is that Law 18 had a far more comprehensive character (it was predicated on a socialist man-date of equality), was less conspicuous than the ubiquitous psychiatric abuse (which became known in the West by the 1970s), and as I show below, it included provisions (such as the presumption of guilt and the secrecy clause) that made the outcome a foregone conclusion. The difficulty in analyzing the importance of Law 18 as a mechanism of political oppression is precisely due to its subversive nature. While it was commonly known that Law 18 was used to criminalize dis-sidents, it is difficult, even today, to find written official documents that attest to the abusive and politically driven use of Law 18. In effect, the very point of Law 18 was to conceal any such evidence.4 This paper tries to reconstitute the case for what is a widely known fact by providing a thorough analysis of the scope and content of Law 18, and by using the relevant historical background, as well as pieces of evidence collected from legal and private sources.

The Effect of De-Stalinization

The death of Stalin in 1953 was followed by the denunciation of Stalinist crimes in both the USSR and the Eastern European satellite countries (for an

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5 For details on the impact of the Khrushchev-Eisenhower negotiations regarding the Soviet and Eastern European gulag, see the Tismăneanu Report (2006: 205).

overview of early communism in Romania and the Dej administration, see Deletant 1999). The destabilizing effect of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the retreat of the Soviet troops from Romanian territory (1958), and the Sino-Soviet Conflict that started around 1960 set the stage for a change in Soviet tutelage over Romanian communism. The distancing move, prepared by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej over a few years, culminated with the Declaration of 21 April 1964. The Declaration affirmed, in the name of the Romanian Communist Party, the desire to craft an independent economic and political course for Romania, and it was hailed as a bold act of independent self-affirmation (for details on the change of course in Romanian foreign policy, see Farlow 1964: 14–24; Frunză 1984 and 1990; Deletant 1997; and Tismăneanu 2003). One of the significant results of the April Declaration was the release of tens of thousands of political detainees (Rusan 2007). This amnesty was far more significant than an earlier one, which took place in 1955. The 1955 gesture was less of an amnesty than a series of prison clos-ings coupled with the liberation of a few political prisoners, all meant to appease a Western world still animated by the Geneva Convention spirit.5 The year 1964 saw a general amnesty and the liberation of all political prisoners from both prison and work camps. This general amnesty was still motivated by external factors, but this time the orientation was mostly toward the opposite power pole: the Soviet Union. The amnesty marked the independent turn of Romanian for-eign policy in relation to the Soviet Union. It is noteworthy that this general amnesty also marked the end of a particularly brutal period of repression in Romanian history. The dubious merit of the Dej administration is to have con-solidated the repressive institutional apparatus that characterized Romanian communism for the forty-five years before the 1989 revolution (for accounts of the Romanian gulag during the Dej administration see, for instance, Goma 1990; Ioanid 1999–2000; Tănase 1998).

Less than a year after he declared the general amnesty, Gheorghiu-Dej passed away from pancreatic cancer in early 1965 and was succeeded by Nicolae Ceauşescu (for the Dej-Ceauşescu transition, see Câmpeanu 2002). Two moments shaped the early political evolution of the Ceauşescu regime: 1)the 1964 amnesty for political detainees which paves the way for Ceauşescu’s later rhetorical stance as “communist maverick”; and 2) Ceauşescu’s own 1968 declaration in opposition to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. To start with 1964, the general amnesty that year had two significant effects for the new Ceauşescu administration. First, the Ceauşescu administration was entering the political scene on the heels of a bold call for independence from the Soviet



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6 Declaraţie cu privire la poziţia Partidului Muncitoresc Român în problemele mişcării comuniste şi muncitoreşti internaţionale, adoptată de plenara lărgită a CC al PMR din aprilie 1964 (Bucureşti: Editura Politică, 1964). For further commentary on the significance of this decla-ration, see Skilling 1964.

Union. The 1964 declaration was, first and foremost, a declaration of autonomy from Soviet communism, and the result of this self-affirmation was general-ized public fear of Soviet intervention. The events of 1956 Hungary loomed large over Eastern European consciousness and the rally-around-the-flag effect favored a strong regime and a powerful leader. Ceauşescu embraced the role of protector for a local, Romanian version of communism and acted to consoli-date his power in the name of national affirmation. Historically then, the 1964 declaration came in as a political diversion that managed to produce popular support for a young Ceauşescu regime that, otherwise, never could have been obtained. Ceauşescu capitalized on Dej’s nationalist turn to forge a rhetoric of revolutionary nation-building that required unwavering patriotism in the ser-vice of the communist party.

The second major effect of the 1964 Declaration came from its success with Western powers. Lauded as a bold de-Stalinizing move, the Declaration offered Western powers the rhetorical basis to allow for a détente with Romania’s govern-ment. Corneliu Mănescu, former Minister of External Affairs, recounts that the amnesty was done in stages, between 1962 and 1964, and that “this was, in fact, a political measure, following the ‘rehabilitation’ of victims of Stalinism in the other countries. It’s just that Dej did not liberate a few, like in the Soviet Union, but all of them” (Mănescu, cited in Chiciuc 2008). Dej was intensely aware that these mea-sures “would garner him increased prestige abroad” (Mănescu, in Chiciuc). Peasant Party leader Corneliu Coposu (dissident and political prisoner for 17 years) also notes that “the Western world had started to act more energetically toward Russian abuses. Since Romania was interested in securing economic collaboration with the West, the first obvious requirement was the liberation of political prisoners” (Coposu, cited in Chiciuc, 2008). This was the first in a series of supposedly non-conformist acts that would forge Romania’s reputation as a rogue regime within the Soviet sphere of influence.6 The rhetoric of autonomy initiated by Dej was enthusiastically pursued by Ceauşescu, who would later exploit this trope of com-munist demagogy. The notion that, as of 1964, Romania was a country with no political prisoners became a propagandistic selling point to both internal and external audiences. While the 1964 declaration established a factual point—for a moment in 1964 there were no political detainees in Romanian prisons—this assertion had no material reality less than a year after the general amnesty was declared. Dej himself set the stage for further persecution by making it mandatory

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7 In April 1968 Ceauşescu had already spoken against the abuses of his predecessor, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, in an attempt to legitimize his rule and the communist party; see “Cuvântarea tovarăşului Nicolae Ceauşescu la adunarea activului de partid din capitală,” Scânteia (28 April 1968) (document provided by IICCMER). See also Tismăneanu 2003.

8 For a detailed analysis of the meaning of events of 1968 across countries, see Tismăneanu (2011). Tismăneanu argues that the West was experiencing at the time both a disenchantment

for the liberated detainees to sign a declaration that they would be on call with the secret police (Mănescu, cited in Chiciuc; for documentary evidence, see Budeancă and Olteanu 2013).

What was not readily apparent in 1964 was Ceauşescu’s power ambition that would be translated into one of the most repressive regimes in the history of communism. Although Ceauşescu’s own power consolidation allowed for an apparent and short political and social respite, by 1970 the communist leadership was back on the “normal” repressive curve: a continuation of the same repressive spirit developed during the Dej administration. As Tismăneanu argues:

Between the repressive system of 1948–1964, which was a period of consoli-dation and institutionalization, and the seemingly more tolerant system after 1964, there is an indisputable connection: in the Dej years fear had been interiorized to such a degree that overt repressive action was only required in extreme circumstances (the brutal repression of university stu-dents in the 1970s and 1980s speaks volumes about the ability of the regime to use terror at will). Ceauşescu’s brand of socialism, a direct descendant of that built under Gheorghiu-Dej, was extremely authoritarian, paternalistic, and manipulative. It was a tyranny inspired by the same ideological fixa-tions as those of the regime’s founders (Ceauşescu included): a leading role for the single party, the annihilation and demonization of private property and the market, making a mockery out of human rights, and the creation of the “new man–devoted builder of socialist society.”

Tismăneanu Report 2006: 12

While the transition between the overt repression practiced during the Dej years and the covert repression characteristic of Ceauşescu’s rule is in many ways a continuous process,7 1968 stands out as the key formative year in Ceauşescu’s political profile. In 1968 Ceauşescu had a chance to capitalize on a series of events that allowed him to both cement Dej’s repressive policies and create an aura of political legitimacy. Recent historical analysis conceives of the events of 1968 as a “coherent historical phenomenon” that affected both East and West, albeit differently.8 “In the West,” Tismăneanu argues, “the logic



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with communist movements in the Soviet bloc and an “upsurge of ‘romantic anti-capitalism’” (4–5). That duality created the political opportunity which would allow Ceauşescu to benefit from painting himself as the region’s rogue communist (both anti-Soviet and anti-capitalist).

9 “Lucrarile sesiunii extraordinare a Marii Adunări Naţionale. Cuvântarea tovarăşului Nicolae Ceauşescu,” Scânteia (23 August 1968) (document provided by IICCMER).

10 By 1989 Ceauşescu advocated the opposite stance when he supported military action against the Polish Solidarity movement. See Deletant (2007).

11 It is not within the purview of this paper to cover the various meanings of 1968 across countries; that discussion can be found in Tismăneanu (2011). Here he argues that above all else, Ceauşescu’s 1968 speech “emphasized first and foremost the unity of the party leadership and the symbolic relationship between party and people” at the expense of any reformist overtone (258).

12 Verdery (1991) analyzes the turn of Romanian intellectuals’ support for Ceauşescu’s nationalistic discourse; see also Shafir (1985).

13 The anti-Soviet stance occasioned a series of visits from Western leaders, which further legitimized Ceauşescu’s rule. For a discussion of Charles De Gaulle’s 1968 visit to Romania,

of 1968 was about emancipating spaces previously exempt from public scru-tiny,” while in the Soviet bloc “the crushing of the Prague Spring, the March events in Poland, and the turmoil in Yugoslavia” quashed the ideological hope for socialism with a human face (2011: 2; see also McDermott and Stibbe 2006). Ceauşescu’s policy wedged itself between Soviet hardline policy and Western aspirations for oppositional politics, and benefitted from the creation of a new role which offered Ceauşescu prolonged protection from external criticism and a cover for internal oppression.

On 21 August 1968, Ceauşescu delivered a public and stiff condemnation of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact intervention that ended the Prague Spring.9 Hailed as a political gesture of heroic proportions, Ceauşescu joined only Yugoslavia’s Tito in the exclusive camp of maverick communists.10 While at face value, Ceauşescu found himself in opposition with Soviet politics, a closer analysis of both his rhetoric and his immediate political actions reveal the 1968 declara-tion for what it really was: a self-styled justification for the “indefectible unity of party, leader, and nation” (Tismăneanu and Iacob 2011: 258).11 Far from embracing a reformist move, Ceauşescu used his condemnation of the Soviet invasion to buttress a personal dictatorship predicated on a staunch neo-Stalinism (Tismăneanu 1986; Rupnik 1988). As Tismăneanu and Iacob note, the year 1968 was not a radical turn in Romanian communist ideology, but rather “a climactic moment in a protracted process of national reassertion”12 that started in the ’50s and allowed Ceauşescu to develop a personal version of Stalinism that was now legitimated, both internally and externally, through the logic of an anti-Soviet autonomous course (2011: 262).13 Ceauşescu’s ’68

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see Avramescu (2011). He argues that the visit was “an elaborate exercise in deception” that was not meant to provide a true occasion for a “critical appraisal of the realities of communist Eastern Europe” and betrayed Ceauşescu’s anti-reform stance (408).

14 The trope of the “small but courageous nation” finds echoes even in recent literature; see Betea et al. (2009).

declaration resulted in a marked increase in both internal and external sup-port, and “misled many into ignoring the true dynamics of the Romanian com-munist regime: a budding personality cult, a re-strengthening of the party, the secret police, and of propaganda controls” (Tismăneanu and Iacob 2011:264; for an analysis of how and why Romanian intellectuals joined the party in the mid ’60s, see Vasile 2011; and for a discussion of the role of intellectuals in Romanian communism and Securitate documents regarding intellectuals, see Cătănuş et al. 2006). The combination of Western support, a surge in communist party membership after ’68, and the ideological imperative to promote a homoge-neous, classless society (represented by a unified communist party) resulted in a political opportunity to launch a rhetoric of national renewal and the re-affirmation of party leadership (Mallet 2000: 18–55; Kligman 1998; Cornea 2008).

The myth of the small nation caught at the crossroads of history and coura-geously relying on its revolutionary spirit to gain self-reliance became the pin-nacle of a Romanian exceptionalism tirelessly promoted by state propaganda (Boia 1997).14 Ceauşescu rebranded the communist party’s leading role in the fight against class enemies, both internal and external. As a result, while on the one hand Ceauşescu claimed to embrace democratic principles, legality, and transparency, actual state policies enhanced the ideological centraliza-tion of the party under his charismatic rule. In this context, Ceauşescu’s atti-tude toward Romania’s citizenry developed on the background of an ideological tightening, legitimized by the 1968 gesture. At the same time that Ceauşescu was declaring his outrage over the Soviet invasion, his State Security Council Chief was issuing an order to the Securitate staff reminding them of their responsibilities in case of “possible actions of enemy elements connected to this event” and recommending “intensifying work with the information network [rețeaua informativă] … and taking energetic measures to uncover any inimical action” (Cartea Albă a Securităţii 1995: 138). This marked the deepening of a direction that had already been present at the end of Dej’s rule, but became the trademark of Ceauşescu’s police state: an increased reliance on information networks to prevent oppositional acts from happening before overt punitive measures ever needed to be used. The transi-tion from overt to covert control required the increased recruitment of field



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15 “The information network was extended as the Securitate moved from the violent-repres-sive to the obsessive-preventive stage” (Tismăneanu Report, 395). For a detailed discus-sion of Securitate prevention policies in the context of the year 1968, see Neagoe-Pleşa (2008).

16 The Securitate switched focus from quantity to the quality of recruits. A 19 September 1968 Securitate document required a “profound background check of informers, taking into account their loyalty toward the Securitate and their true potential in performing surveillance tasks in the aforementioned areas,” cited in Neagoe-Pleşa (2008: 15). The role of the party in the restructuring of the Securitate to fit the evolving paradigm of increased surveillance is discussed by Ionel (2008).

17 At the same time that Ceauşescu was restructuring the surveillance apparatus, he also labored to rehabilitate the Securitate after the abuses under Dej. The twenty-year anniver-sary of the creation of Securitate saw a series of public events and declarations meant to assign guilt to a few deviant elements in the old Securitate rather than indicting the insti-tution as a whole. In this context, the Securitate was ideologically marshaled as a neces-sary institution that was meant to continue following its proper ideological aim, that is, identifying enemies of the regime. See Ionel (2008: 55–63).

18 A Securitate file notes that “there is a correspondence between the informers’ profes-sional categories and the professional categories of those under surveillance,” cited in Neagoe-Pleşa (2008: 14). For a detailed discussion of the role of intellectuals in the Ceauşescu regime, see Budeancă and Olteanu (2013), also Catanus (2006). For a discus-sion of the Securitate efforts to increase the educational level of its agents, see Pleşa (2010), and Ionița (2010).

agents tasked with collecting information and spying on both citizens and non-citizens.15 In tune with the consolidation of preventive security mea-sures, the Securitate started to employ new field methods like giving out “cau-tions, warnings, submitting to public debate, using positive incentives, entourage dismantling, etc.” (Neagoe-Pleşa 2008: 10). In order to implement structural surveillance and preventive security work, the Securitate proceeded to revamp its cadre. The two-step process involved both the purging of some of the old personnel and the recruitment of new agents fit for the new secu-rity paradigm.16 Ceauşescu’s 1968 declaration and the rise in internal support played a pivotal role in the recruitment process. No less than 91.7 percent of those recruited in 1968 cited “patriotic feeling” as a reason for joining (Neagoe-Pleşa 2008: 13).17 Many of these new recruits were Romanian intellectuals dis-enchanted with Dej’s brutal policies, who found a new patriotic impetus in Ceauşescu’s nationalism. State efforts to recruit intellectuals were coupled with the intensified surveillance of Romanian intellectuals.18 Surveillance was thus directed to identify and prevent those with the potential to design, recruit, and carry out oppositional schemes. Information gathering was con-ceived as a complex endeavor involving all strata of society and focused on

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those with the most potential to act. The key elements of this new paradigm were the continual collection of information, the creation of reliable and far-reaching information networks, and the centralization of this information in extensive files. The result of this policy was one of the most elaborate net-works of informers in the communist bloc, a network that after 1968 made generalized use of covert operatives (Pleşa 2009; Banu 2009; for information regarding the number of agents, informers, and collaborators, see Stan 2013).Overall, about 3.4 percent of adult Romanians collaborated with the Securitate (Stan 2013: 9). While the years 1966–1971 are widely considered years of com-munist “relaxation,” the general restructuring of state security during these years paints a different picture: the apparent respite was on the background of Ceauşescu’s efforts to finesse the mechanism that would stand at the basis of one the most feared secret police organizations (see Deletant 1995; Oprea 2002).

This extensive network of agents, informers, and collaborators created a cli-mate in which the Securitate was perceived as omnipresent and omniscient (Neagoe-Pleşa 2008). As Lavinia Stan mentions, the apparently small percent-ages of those directly involved “fail to convey the full force of the dreaded polit-ical police and its secret agents, their enlarged presence in citizens’ daily lives, and the morbid fear they inspired” (Stan 2013:9). Stan further notes that these numbers cannot “reflect the peculiar nature of party dictatorship, which main-tained a specialized division of labor that allowed secret agents who worked as one in a mass to feel few scruples and little responsibility for their decisions” (2013:9). The ideological component of a Securitate subordinate to the party apparatus assigned agents the role of deciding who is and who is not an enemy of the state. The basis of this decision was as vague as it was ideologically broad: the mere impression of harboring ill feelings toward the regime war-ranted the entire Securitate apparatus coming down on a private life. In this context, the legal apparatus was twisted to incorporate ideological compo-nents (the working class became part and parcel of judicial proceedings), and the letter of the law was interpreted in the spirit of an ideological orthodoxy dictated directly by Ceauşescu. Ceauşescu’s main contribution to the focus of Securitate work was to include all members of Romanian society in the sphere of surveillance. In other words, as Tismăneanu remarks, the purview of Securitate surveillance was steadily enlarged from supporters of the former regime to individuals with no known history against the regime (sometimes made suspect by their very innocence), including schoolchildren and the elderly (Tismăneanu Report 2006: 395).

In order to maintain the rhetorical clout gained in 1968, the Ceauşescu regime cultivated an image of Romania as a country with no political



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19 Instances of protest, such as the miners’ and workers’ strikes in 1977, Valea Jiului, and 1987, Braşov, respectively, were prosecuted using specific criminal charges like offense against morality and decency (ultraj contra bunelor moravuri) and disturbing the peace (tulbura-rea liniştii publice).

20 For a discussion of the political necessity of communist regimes to deny the existence crime, of any sort, because it represented the failure of the communist project, see Ramet (1974), and Connor (1970).

detainees.19 It is the successful construction of this benign image that, for decades, ingratiated Ceauşescu with his Western neighbors and the US. My contention is that in order to achieve this political success, the Ceauşescu regime had to make recourse to some legal gymnastics: instead of prosecuting political dissidents under the “political offense” category of the Penal Code, it had to implement other criminal procedures that did not cast dissidents as “politicals.” The mere presence of political detainees in Romanian prisons would have signified a political failure of the Ceauşescu regime (and of com-munist practice more generally), and that outcome had to be prevented with-out sacrificing political control.20

Ready to capitalize on the Dej heritage, Ceauşescu redirected the commu-nist mechanisms of oppression. A 1980 Amnesty International report docu-ments frequent convictions based on “trumped up charges of offences such as ‘parasitism’ (i.e. unemployment), ‘homosexual relations’ and ‘embezzlement’, and (individuals) either sent to prison, psychiatric institutions or to forced labour camps” (Deletant 1995: 3). The transition from persecution and persecu-tion on the basis of political offenses to persecution on other legal basis is sym-bolically marked by Law 18, passed in 1968, dealing with the presumed illicit accumulation of wealth. Law 18/1968, on the surface a common enough law dealing with illicit wealth, is emblematic of the manipulative ideological shift during the Ceauşescu regime.

A Mechanism of State Induced Theft

The underlying logic that supported the application of what became the infa-mous law 18/1968 has to be understood in the particular economic context of Eastern European communism. As János Kornai argues, socialism in Eastern Europe had an internal logic of poverty (Kornai 1990; 1992). Sacrifice, voluntary work, rationing, and cutbacks were all trademarks of an Eastern European socialism that considered itself in the throes of industrial progress. As a result, the early stages of Ceauşescu’s regime witnessed a drive to strengthen

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Romania’s industrial base, and with it, Romania’s economic autonomy (Tismăneanu Report 2006: 347–348; Murgescu 2010). On the heels of the global economic crisis of the early 1970s, Romania, like other Eastern European regimes, sustained the development of heavy industry through extensive external loans (Tismăneanu Report 2006: 443; see also Murgescu 2010). The desire to transform rapidly the mainly Romanian agrarian economy into a heavily industrialized one was done at a tremendous cost for the Romanian population. Industrialization became a goal in itself rather than a tool that would contribute to a better quality of life. By default, rapid progress was understood to come at a significant cost to be shared by the entire population. At the same time, Ceauşescu decided to cement what he considered his main political asset by putting in practice his call for self-reliance, and proceeded to implement the repayment of all external debt. This policy redoubled cutbacks and tightened state control over resources, in effect instituting a “dictatorship over needs” (Fehér, Heller, and Márkus 1983). These stiff cutback policies were undertaken at the same time as the “great works of communist progress”—the Danube-Black Sea channel and the House of the People (to this day the second largest building in the world, after the Pentagon). The 1980s saw a series of state policies intended to introduce cutbacks in every sphere of life. In 1981 the Party decided to impose a regime of “scientific, rational nutrition” (Georgescu 1992: 190). Experts were employed to calculate the minimal necessary caloric intake of a person and, as a result, the Party proceeded to ration basic food-stuffs: milk, bread, sugar, and meat (Georgescu 1992). Rationing was accompa-nied by a reduction in food supplies and stores could not satisfy the existing demand. The infamous food lines became ubiquitous in Romania and, more often than not, stores would be out of food before everyone with a food card was able to get their ration (Câmpeanu 1994). Food rationing was followed, in 1982, by scheduled and unscheduled blackouts, meant to save on electric energy expenditures. Gasoline was also rationed and the state imposed driving schedules for the general population (vehicles with even numbered license plates would be allowed to circulate every other Sunday, with odd numbered license plates on the opposing Sundays) (see Shafir 1985).

As the Tismăneanu Report concludes, even from the point of view of eco-nomic crisis, Romania constituted an exceptional situation of dramatic proportions:

Thus, the citizens of socialist Romania which, in theory, were supposed to live in one of the most prosperous and positive times of the country’s history, in practice were forced to make significant efforts to simply sur-vive. Basic foodstuffs (bread, sugar, oil, eggs, milk, meat) had become rare



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21 For an intimate and well written inside explanation of the social dynamic that accompa-nied shortages in communism, see Drakulić (1993).

22 The working class was heavily affected and generally plunged into poverty. See Tismăneanu Report (2006: 346–348).

23 The shortages and the resulting dynamic of socio-political disaffection (and generalized delinquency) resulted in suggestive, representative anecdotes: “The seven wonders of communism: 1) Everyone had a job. 2) Although everyone had a job, nobody worked. 3) Although nobody worked, the five-year plan was accomplished. 4) Although the five-year plan was accomplished, nothing was available. 5) Although nothing was available, every-one had everything. 6) Although everyone had everything, everyone was stealing. 7) Although everyone was stealing, nothing was missing—Why didn’t we like it again?”.

goods, even with the rationalization efforts instituted by the regime. The import of food and other general use goods, like medication, had been drastically reduced. … These shortages had significant effects, especially on the population’s health (malnutrition, the [re]appearance and prolif-eration of poverty-related diseases).

Tismăneanu Report 2006: 445

The massive shortages provoked a social crisis. Virtually nobody was able to procure the necessary means to lead a decent life by using state mechanisms. The whim of the state dictated the next sacrifice, and the population was con-stantly afraid of further shortages or of any other necessary goods becoming “extinct.”21 The generalized penury perpetuated self-preservation behaviors that extended at every level of society.22 Societal interaction evolved into an elaborate, parallel, and extensive network of connections, through family rela-tions and friends, favor exchanges and bribes (Ledeneva 1998). In this context, nepotism and use of other personal connections to procure goods were implicit to a system “characterized by chronic shortages and of a political system that privileged (implicitly or explicitly) a certain social category to the detriment of others” (Tismăneanu Report 2006: 445). Shortages made illicit behavior endemic to the system.23

It is this aspect of Romanian communism that became the keystone of dissi-dent repression. A “second economy” of personal connections operated to com-pensate for the very real scarcity of communism (Kornai 1992). Shortages created a mechanism of illicit behavior that offered the communist state a ready-made basis for prosecution. Virtually every citizen in communist Romania made use of “secondary” means to procure food, medication, or the occasional “luxury” item (items as mundane as toilet paper, soap, or hair dye). Virtually nobody could justify the provenance of these goods. Romania became a nation of petty crimi-nals; all criminalized by a system that barely allowed them to survive.

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24 Law 18/1968, colloquially dubbed the “Law of the Illicit” was abbreviated in Romanian documents as IL18. There was a running joke about IL18 that had to do with the fact that IL was also the abbreviation for the Russian-made Ilyushin planes. Thus, it was said, IL18 was coming out of nowhere and falling on your head just as swiftly and unpredictably as the poorly made Ilyushin planes. The joke reflects the widespread popular attitude regarding the general (mis)use of Law 18.

Law 18/1968

Repression in the Romanian state was buttressed by an immense mechanism, the secret police (Securiatea Statului). The secret police was the main archi-tect of prosecution: it chose the targets, it fabricated the reasons, it provided the “proof,” and it delivered the “culpable” into the hands of the prosecutorial bodies. The point of the mechanism is to do away with the recalcitrant. The foil for this prosecution is readily provided by the mechanism of state induced theft: scarcity leads to illicit behavior, that is, to theft. And here enters the malignant contribution of Law 18/1968, the tool of this mechanism of repression.24

As Judge Constantin Udrea argues, “according to socialist legal theory, the law represents the most concise expression of political will, which can be enforced by the state. At the basis of Law 18/1968 was the Constitution of 1965; Article 1 stipulates that ‘the leading political force in the state is the Romanian Communist Party’” (Udrea). Thus, Romanian law was supposed to legislate the unique will of the communist party and its political vision. The explicit ideo-logical drive of the state was the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and the disci-plining of reactionary elements by the vanguard party. As a matter of principle alone, Law 18 is justified in the communist legal universe by the Marxist imper-ative “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his need.” The underlying logic of Marxist materialism is that human needs are virtually equal, hence, socialist society is a society of equal distribution. The practical implication of this distributive model was that nobody was allowed, as a mat-ter of principle, to have more than anybody else. Any measure of inequality was thus a pretext for suspecting subversive behavior. As a matter of practice, Romanian communist law was heavily guided by Marxist-Leninist principles of an extended political dictatorship of the proletariat, coupled with the radi-calization of class struggle (for details on the workings of the Romanian sys-tem, see Jowitt 1971; 1992). In order to curb the kind of reactionary behavior characteristic of “previous historical stages,” the communist state saw fit to cre-ate alternative methods of discouraging the acquisition of assets. The “Exposition” portion of the law explains this point:



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25 Ceauşescu is quoted as saying: “There are individuals who provoke justified indignation among citizens because they spend much more than they can earn through honest work…

There are cases in which there are, because of the bourgeois remnants in public consciousness of the influence still exerted by concepts hostile to socialism, certain negative phenomena unfolding in the process of our social development, like the tendency to get rich… This kind of selfish interest, foreign to our social ethics and to equity and social justice prin-ciples, cannot be tolerated.

Law 18 provided for additional legal bodies (investigative commissions), sepa-rate from courts of law, that were charged with identifying and prosecuting cases of undue increases in acquisitions(Chapter III of Law 18/1968 details the compo-sition of the investigative commission). Law 18 did not simply target illicit behav-ior. In effect, Law 18 specifically targeted any instance of “unjustifiable” asset acquisition, and did not allow for the possibility that a person could have acquired more than their “fair” share without having made recourse to illicit means. Thus, under Law 18 Article 8, an investigation could have three possible outcomes: 1) the claim is found unjustified and rejected; 2) the claim is found to be justified and the guilty party is required to pay 80 percent of the value of unjustified assets (Art. 2), while the case can also be sent to a court of law; and 3)the claim is found to be justified and the accused can be found as having employed illicit means to acquire assets, in which situation the case is forwarded to a public prosecutor. As Jorge Guillermo argues “though the procedure was of a civil nature and some characteristics resembled an ‘in rem forfeiture system’ (for example, the fact that it may be continued against inheritors, but only against the assets acquired by inheritance), unjustified wealth was sanctioned with an 80 percent tax, which due to its severity, may be regarded, and surely perceived by the community, as a regime of punishment” (Guillermo 2007). Law 18 was tailored to apply to cases that could not be proven to be felonies under the existing legal law. In other words, even legally acquired goods could be taxed at an 80 percent rate simply because their provenance could not be exactly veri-fied. A 1973 România Liberă article concerning the application of Law 18 explains that there are cases in which individuals “intent on getting rich” practice “specu-lative activities” that cannot be substantiated with criminal or civil evidence. Those cases that “cannot be proven through regular evidentiary means” as cases subject to penal or civil law, or “cases affected by the statute of limitations or amnesty laws,” fall under the purview of Law 18/1968 (România Liberă 1973).

In the spirit of socialist equity,25 the purpose of Law 18 was to simplify the pursuit of cases that seemingly involved the unjustified acquisition of assets,

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There is no doubt that the supplementary income is obtained by breaking the norms char-acteristic of our societal order, and against the principles of socialist equity and the over-all interest of the people,” cited in România Liberă (1987) (emphasis added).

26 For a detailed exposition of the details of Law 18/1968 from the perspective of the com-munist state, see Vasu 1984.

27 Investigative bodies followed a vaguely defined “legal potential” standard: they first con-sidered the hypothetical question of whether or not the person under investigation could have gained the said assets legally. See România Liberă (1973: 8).

and to simplify the modality of stripping these assets away from individuals. Upon close inspection, Law 18 is informed by several peculiar principles that strike an awkward chord with legal tradition.26

Article 1 provides that the law applies “to the assets of any person,” and not only to public officials. Investigation of a person’s assets can be initiated “if there is any data or clues” (indicii) that there is a “clear disproportion” between the value of a person’s goods and her income (Law 18/1968, Art. 1). Communist principles in themselves allowed (constitutionally) for an assumption of rela-tive equality of assets across the entire society (Udrea). Beyond this generality, however, Law 18 had no internal provisions to support its application and its articles did not stipulate standards to define “clear disproportion.”27 Determining a disproportion was thus a matter of judicial latitude. If a “clear disproportion” was brought to the attention of the authorities, control was mandatory. Any person could bring a case to the attention of the official insti-tutions (Law 18/1968, Art. 3). While the law specifies that those who bring false charges will be prosecuted, the vagueness of what counted as an acceptable basis for lodging a complaint (“clues”) made this stipulation meaningless. There was no clear evidentiary threshold for filing a complaint or even for ini-tiating control. Putting the law in the hands of every person (Art. 3) and the ambiguity of “clues” (Art. 1) necessary to prosecute transformed the law into a mechanism of mutual social control. These provisions had two practical impli-cations for the repressive Securitate mechanism: the loose onus of proof allowed the Securitate to pick easily on their victims, and they could also sim-ply intimidate members of the general population into signing petitions that instigated such controls (since any person could level a complaint). Law 18 allowed the formation of a mechanism that deployed the population against itself, under the immense pressure of the Securitate.

The most glaringly unjust aspect of Law 18 was the presumption of culpabil-ity. The illicit character of an individual’s assets was presumed until there was proof to the contrary, although, instigating an investigation only required “clues.” Article 2 states that “By justifying the provenance of the goods, what is meant is the obligation of the individual in question to prove the licit character



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28 State Prosecutor Nicolae Cochinescu explains that the person under investigation “has the obligation to prove the legal nature of the means used to procure or increase assets,” cited in România Liberă (1987: 2).

29 The goods that needed to be justified could technically include all the assets of an indi-vidual or a family since the citation was referring to a general “disproportion”.

of the means used for acquiring or developing his wealth” (Law 18/1968, Art. 2; emphasis added).28 The person under investigation had ten days to file a dec-laration detailing the provenance of all goods cited in the complaint (Law 18/1968, Art. 5).29 Article 5 further states that “the provenance of the assets of an individual who refuses to file the above mentioned declaration, or of the assets that are omitted from this declaration are considered unjustified, until there is any proof to the contrary” (Law 18/1968, Art. 5). The presumption of innocence and the right to not self-incriminate are blatantly overridden by the provisions of Law 18. As Guillermo Jorge argues, under Law 18 there is no neces-sity for the state to “show at least a ‘prima facie case,’ that is, consistent evi-dence combined with legitimate inferences that may lead to the belief that the contravention occurred” (2007: 22). Jorge emphasizes that “though some provi-sions pointed out to some measures of compulsory ‘evidence gathering’ (Law 18/1968, Art. 6), in practice, those cases were equated to automatic sanctioning. Therefore, neither the Commission, as a fact finder, was obliged to ‘find the truth,’ nor the Court, as a fact trier, was able to assess the evidence with the basic impartiality required by human rights treaties” (2007: 22).

Another problematic provision of Law 18 was its secret character. Article 6 stipulates that the “acts and workings of the investigative commission are not made public” (Law 18, Art. 6, Para. 4). Only the person under investigation can ask to be informed of the acts and workings of the investigation (Law 18, Art. 6, Para. 5). This secrecy provision was meant to protect the person filing the com-plaint and provided an incentive for individuals to make use of Law 18. While the person indicted could be informed of case details, that fact in itself held little public value in the absence of official corroboration. The accused was thus alone against the accusatory system.

Law 18 suffered a series of amendments in 1971, 1973, 1979, and 1983. Gradually, the law became even more flexible in its possible uses (by the regime) as external pressures increased in response to repeated reports of human rights violations in Eastern European countries. The Helsinki confer-ence of 1975 represented the culminations of Western efforts to curb human rights violations (for the effects of the Helsinki process, see Tőkés 1979; also Tismăneanu 1992). Amendments to Law 18 were conspicuously primed to preempt and curtail some of the effects of the Helsinki process. Helsinki was

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30 In only one trimester of 1971, the number of referred cases equaled the entire number for the previous year. Central Committee of the Communist Party Notification Regarding the Application of Law 18/1968 (3 January 1972), 1.

representative of a gradual increase in Western diplomatic efforts to address human rights, especially in the Soviet Union and its satellite states. As Tismăneanu notes:

The Final Helsinki Accord did not provide for any kind of legal sanctions. However, Western efforts coincided with the profound economic crisis which confronted, gradually, all the communist states, starting with the mid-1970s. External debt was a leverage that the West could use against the debtors in order to get them to respect the promises made in Helsinki. In short, the unfavorable economic situation had also a political result because communist governments could not afford any longer to dismiss human rights issues as long as they needed Western help. This does not mean that there were no more political detainees after 1975, but only that they could no longer disappear after the West had learned of their exis-tence, as was the case during the Great Stalinist Terror.

Tismăneanu Report 2006: 360.

But while the few dissidents known in the West (like Václav Havel and Adam Michnik) could no longer vanish, the scores of “recalcitrants” could be put away under common law charges.

The subsequent amendments of Law 18 transformed it further into a dema-gogic instrument of culpabilization. In 1971, the language of the law was “clari-fied” to encourage not only the state police (Miliţia) but also “socialist organizations” to bring cases of “disparities” to the attention of the judiciary. As a result, the number of cases referred to the authorities increased dramatically in 1971.30 A 1972 Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party Report set the tone for the future application of Law 18 (CC/PCR Report 1972). The report states that between 1968 and 1971, a total of 8,734 cases were filed with investigative committees, out of which 40.3 percent were taxed with the 80 percent mandated by law, and a mere 3.5 percent were sent to the judiciary for criminal investigation (CC/RCP Report 1972: 2). The same report then proceeds to chide both the police and socialist civic organizations for not referring enough cases, noting that the police had information of illicit activity concern-ing individuals that were not the subject of investigative referrals. In effect, the report was pointing out that the “informative network” provided information that investigative committees and civic organizations needed to act promptly



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31 This addition goes along with the preamble of the Law in the 1973 version. The introduc-tory paragraphs state that, since its existence, the law has served its purpose but needs to be made more efficient in combating “backwards elements” in society. The reference points to the old bourgeois classes used to accumulating capital beyond the worth of their actual work. Emphasis added.

32 Although the law now includes the proletariat, it still stipulates that in order to pursue investigations against party members in high office, the investigative committee needs the approval of the State Council or of the Council of Ministers, a provision that seems to fly in the face of the supposed equal treatment of all citizens.

on, despite the fact that many such police reports contained highly doubtful evidence. The report also mentions that the judiciary had a tendency to take too long to render sentences in many cases, and had also rendered “mistaken” decisions that counted as legal the kind of assets that were clearly “unjustified.” On the other hand, the report records that at least 50 percent of the cases referred for investigation did not have any basis (69.5 percent in 1969, 56.3 per-cent in 1970, and 50 percent in 1971) (CC/PCR Report 1972: 3).

Gradually, the law became more heavily ideological, and hence, more open to demagogic interpretation by the authorities. Representative of this trend was an adjustment in the language of Article 1. Under the 1973 amendment, the opening line of Article 1 states now that “acquiring assets through means that are not licit constitutes a violation of socialist ethics and equity and it is forbid-den” (Law 18/1968, 1973 amendment).31 This ideological trend that places emphasis on the Marxist ethics of class struggle was further brought to the fore with the introduction of a glaringly populist amendment in 1979. In its earlier version, the investigative commission was composed of a county judge, a county prosecutor, a county financial administration delegate, a county police department representative, and a representative from the county popular assembly. In 1979 the composition of the investigative commission was changed to include also four workers, “which are directly active in production work, in socialist institutions in the court’s jurisdiction, and selected by the worker’s assemblies of those institutions, as members” (Law 18/1968, 1979). The composition of the commission was thus tipped toward the proletariat, the class eminently claimed to be personified by the communist state. The addition of the working class representatives (the four workers and the popu-lar assembly delegate, most likely working class as well) rendered the commis-sion a para-legal body at best, since only a minority of its members were part of the legal system. The new composition of the investigative commission increased the likelihood of abuse and targeted investigations. The proletariat was empowered to do away with class antagonism by specifically targeting those who opposed the system.32 The political mandate of Law 18 is illustrated

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33 It was common practice during the Ceauşescu regime for institutions as well as individual citizens to have to submit self-critical assessments in diverse social or job-related forums. The practice was supposed to perpetuate the illusion of a drive for justice, correctitude, and self-improvement toward social progress. In reality, the self-critical assessments were embarrassing displays of either public humiliation (for those who were forced to give them as a punishment), or even more shameful displays of the hypocrisy of those sup-porting the system.

34 The newspaper campaign was carried mainly by the periodical În Slujba Patriei, a publica-tion of the Internal Affairs Ministry and State Security Council, that contained articles authored by army and police personnel.

35 The language employed to describe the “enemies of the people” is colorful and meant to ideologically express the pariah status of those who would dare acquire more than what was considered their fair share. A 1984 article describes the actions of a salesperson accused of stealing from the public wealth as the kind of “perfidy” that elicits “outrage and revulsion,” and must be “forever eradicated from our society.” In fact the article written by Colonel Octavian Goga (1984) is titled “Outrage and Revulsion”.

by a 1978 report on the application of Law 18 which specifies that some cases have been tried at the workplace of the accused (CC/RCP Chancellery Report). The removal of law application from the courtroom and into the workplace became the new version of a late totalitarian show trial. The same 1978 report (which is purposefully laudatory of the effective application of Law 18) notes, with characteristic communist hypocritical zeal, that beyond the resounding successes there have also been some abuses in the application of this law.33 One of the abuses mentioned had to do with the leadership of a factory for the delivery of petroleum products in the city of Braşov, which filed complaints against the assets of all its employees (CC/RCP Chancellery Report 1978). The populism of the law left it open to such instances of abuse.

Another important change in Law 18/1968 came in 1983 and had to do with its retroactivity. While the law in its original 1968 version had a retroactive ele-ment (the acquisition of personal or family assets could be investigated as far as 1962), in 1983 that provision was changed to a full 15 years before the law was enacted (see the 1983 amendment of Art. 2, Para. 3 of Law 16/1968).

The coupling of Law 18 with increased shortages in the ’80s is illustrated by the spate of newspaper stories zealously documenting successes in the enforce-ment of Law 18. State propaganda capitalized on Law 18 by showcasing “fero-cious and perverse social elements” (Goga 1985; see also 1984) that were out to get rich at the expense of society.34 Communist newspapers wrote page long articles profiling cases of supposed illicit wealth, underlying the profoundly ideological aspect of the law while building the criminal image of the “extremely dangerous” individuals guilty of these felonious acts.35 A 1988



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36 At the time, the sale of gas tanks (as well as other petroleum products) was heavily rationed and it was illegal to sell or buy gas tanks (even for stoves, heating, or any domes-tic use) without the proper authorization. Even though A.G. sold these gas tanks and did not pocket the money, he was still guilty of selling them to unauthorized individuals.

article in În Slujba Patriei starts by praising the “exceptional theoretical and practical value” of Ceauşescu’s instructions for the application of Law 18, while chiding those Romanian counties that did not refer any cases of illicit wealth (Gambra 1988). As late as May 1989, an article in the same newspaper writes that “In the strongly effervescent and actively revolutionary climate of high communist standards,” the words of comrade Ceauşescu have prompted the entire police body of Vaslui County to firmly and tirelessly apply the provisions of Law 18/1968 (Curteanu 1989: 4).

The ideological element was key in the identification and prosecution of those investigated under Law 18. Accusations of a criminal nature were pre-sented together with what amounted to charges of behavior unbecoming a citizen of a socialist society. A study of cases filed under Law 18 reveals the legal “bundling” characteristic of Law 18 investigations. The charges vacillate between conduct against “socialist ethic” and charges that are actionable under Law 18 (despite lack of direct evidence). The 1980 file of A.G. details the reasons why he was thrown out of the Communist Party: in 1965 A.G. bought a car (Moskvich) and sold it five years later for 500 lei more than he had paid for it—a charge against socialist equity (A.G. File no. 298/1980). He also did not declare the full price of the sale and failed to pay taxes on the full price. As a manager of the state energy company depot, he sold gas tanks to five individu-als who had not received the proper authorization to buy gas tanks from the Party Executive Committee in his town.36 A.G. is also accused of owning a Plymouth, and a furnished apartment, which he could not prove to have bought with legal means (no evidence of illegal provenance was brought to bear in the case of these last items). While the actual evidence for A.G.’s case spoke only to a couple of the charges, he was still indicted under Law 18 because he could not prove the legal provenance of his means. The summary page of his file adds the fact that A.G., beyond selling gas tanks, has “also maintained and still maintains intimate relations with a woman other than his wife” (A.G. File no. 298/1980: 3).

Two other cases filed in 1980 accused two managers of state forestry funds, S.T. and C.E., of approving the selling of wood to either individuals living in specific urban or rural environments (neither was allowed without party approval), or to churches (S.T. and C.E. are both in File no. 298/1980). Since owning two residential properties was illegal, the state assumed that

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37 C.E.’s file noted that because of his role in the acquisition of wood by the local church, his name appeared as one of the leading funders of that church. That fact appeared as an aggravating circumstance in his file.

38 Social parasitism was essentially a political offense: the unemployed were considered unwilling to participate in constructive work and, therefore, they acted against commu-nist ethics. As is evidenced in the article, the Roma population was frequently targeted by Law 18 because many Roma living from their craft (like goldsmithing) were classified as unemployed.

individuals residing in cities would buy wood for building country homes ille-gally. The buying of wood without state authorization was thus illegal. Both S.T. and C.E. lost their homes, which were requisitioned by the state.37 The case of Covic Eugen (C.E.) resurfaced after 1989 in Evenimentul Zilei, a Romanian news-paper with wide circulation (Rotaru 2008). The article mentions that in 1978 two individuals appeared on Covic’s doorstep. The two members of a Law 18 investigative commission had received orders from the party leadership to tar-get a number of local managing directors of various state institutions, includ-ing Covic. The only reason for the search was the suspicion of “too many assets.” Without a search warrant, the two comrades proceeded to ask questions about every item in the Covic family home, including silverware. Covic was ques-tioned about his trips abroad, which he had undertaken on behalf and with the approval of the party. Covic’s case supports Tismăneanu’s assertion that the Romanian communist party had a policy of offering benefits (trips abroad) to a select few and then, in order to convince the general population that the regime was ultimately fair, the party would organize periodic purges—a type of lim-ited show trial, meant to allay public skepticism. The legal campaigns, called by Ceauşescu himself at the General Party Congress, were an opportunity to target both unsuspecting party members and those politically inconvenient. The pre-sumption of guilt, the ambiguity of what constituted a violation of Law 18/1968, combined with an economic system based on scarcity, provided an easy legal recourse to deal with a variety of individuals. Law 18 was used to target intel-lectuals, professionals, workers, as well as persons with no occupation at all (Constantin 1987: 8).38 Nobody was safe from arbitrary prosecution and the mechanism of Law 18 allowed for a legal excuse to periodically make examples of many who were not willing to abide by communist ethics.

Concluding Remarks

Generally, the application of Law 18 can be divided in two stages. Early after it was passed, the Law was used to prosecute the remainders of the interwar



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39 Report of the Chancellery of the Central Committee of the Communist Party regarding the application of the provisions of Law 18/1968, published in 1978. While the number of complaints is staggering, and reflects the efficacy of the regime’s “incentives” to turn the population against itself, the number of individuals that were convicted under Law 18 between 1969 and 1977 is small in comparison to the number of complaints: only 6,291. Of course, no number is small in reference to the application of an abusive law.

40 For a fascinating discussion of a repressive system’s capacity to expand itself to “accom-modate” the numerous victims of purges, see Connor (1972).

41 This information comes from various interviews conducted by the author in Romania.

aristocracy, who had acquired their wealth prior to the coming of communism in 1945 or soon after 1945. As Judge Udrea argues, “between 1947 and 1960, some elements of the previous economic system coexisted with the emerging com-munist economic system. During this time a wealthier social class was created, which became the chosen target under Law 18” (Udrea). Since these were the members of the old bourgeoisie, it was assumed that their assets were illicitly acquired. The 1978 Report that covers the application of Law 18 between 1969 and 1977 registers no less than 28,950 complaints filed under its provisions.39 A second stage of the application of Law 18 covers the 1980s when intensified dissident activity prompted an increase in repressive state action. The dissi-dents targeted under this law were part of a younger generation, usually young intellectuals (predominantly teachers, doctors, writers) and students (who were targeted through their families).40

The mechanism that supported the operation of Law 18 was carefully crafted and delegated to the secret police. The instrument of Law 18, the denunciation of a person who seems to have acquired more than their just share of socialist wealth, was triggered by the copious seeding of rumors. In other words, the secret police targeted the “inconvenient” individual, and after carefully researching the social environment of the victim, proceeded to launch false information about the target’s activities. Anecdotal information about these situations abounded. For example, those who traveled “too much” from one city to another could be framed by the Securitate on account of leading double lives that provided them with incomes from having more than one job. Any “non-conformist” lifestyle was a pretext for a presumption of culpability. Something as mundane as having an apartment dog was a reason to suspect that the family in question had an illicit source of “expendable” food that they could use to feed the dog. Having an apartment dog was a bourgeois, extrava-gant gesture that attracted attention and, usually, other inconveniences.41

While it is not the purpose of this paper to analyze legal evolution since 1989, it is notable that de jure, Law 18/1968 was annulled only in 1996, when

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Law 115/1996 was introduced. De facto, Law 18 was invalidated by a unique legal stipulation in the postcommunist Romanian Constitution of 1991, which pro-vided that “Legally acquired assets shall not be confiscated. Legality of acquire-ment shall be presumed” (Romanian Constitution, Art. 44, 1991). Law 115/1996, still active today, annuls some of the most egregious provisions of Law 18/1968. Most importantly, Law 155 is meant to cover only the assets of public officials and not the entire population.

Today Law 18/1968 still poses a problem for any effort to restore justice. Law 18 conflated dissidents with common criminals and, as a result, those unjustly prosecuted cannot be set apart, legally speaking, from common criminals. The files of victims sit together with those of actual common criminals on state shelves. The task of the Romanian state, over twenty years after 1989, is still to untangle the lies from the truth and falsification from reality in order to resti-tute any measure of justice.

Bibliography

Primary and Archival Sources (documents provided by the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile, IICCMER, Bucharest).

“A.G.” File no. 298/1980, Cancelaria Comitetului Central al Partidului Comunist Român (CC/PCR) [Chancellery of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party].

“Bunurile dobȋndite ilicit vor fi trecute integral in proprietatea statului” [Illegally obtained goods will become state property], 1973. România Liberă (28 July), 4.

Cartea Alba a Securitaţii [The White Book of the Secret Police]. 1995. Serviciul Romȃn de Informaţii, Vol. IV.

“C.E.” File no. 298/1980, CC/PCR [Chancellery of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party].

Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party (CC/RCP), Notification Regarding the Application of Law 18/1968, 3 January.

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