COURAGE

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The Scientific Collections of the Calvinist College consist of the Great Library with its Manuscripts and special collections, the Archives, the Museum, and the Database. The Calvinist College of Sárospatak was founded in 1531. From that period, printed works, manuscripts, and archive documents have been collected. These materials were guarded by officials chosen from among the senior students, and they were kept in boxes and bookcases. A new room was built for the library in 1641. After the Counter Reformation, with the help of several scholars, the library expanded dramatically. At the beginning of the twentieth century, it became the “Big Library,” with about 100, 000 volumes. Today, the collection contains more than 500,000 volumes. The College’s museum was based on various collections since the 1700s. In the second half of the seventeenth century, there was a “physics” collection, in the eighteenth century there was a “numismatics” and “natural history” collection, and in the nineteenth century there was a “fine arts” and “archeology” collection.

The archives consist of a collection of the documents of the Calvinist Church District Archives west of the Tisza River, its diocese and its parishes, and the Reformed College of Sárospatak. Religious persecution at the end of the seventeenth century influenced the history of the archives. Most materials from that time and before were damaged or lost. Together with the College, the archives were revived after 1703. The archives of the College and parish were unified in 1890. In 1951, the archives became collective archives. A “movement to save” began at the time. Many documents of diocese and church districts were archived. Now, there are 380 fonds which are 471 linear meters. The Database consists of works about rural Hungary and further materials by American Hungarians. This collection now contains 250,000 documentation units.

The Romanian communist secret police, generally known as the Securitate, was officially established under the name of the General Directorate of the People’s Security (Direcţia Generală a Securităţii Poporului – DGSP) through Decree No. 221 of 28 August 1948. The first head of the Securitate was Gheorghe Pintilie (Pantelei Bodnarenco), a former Soviet agent of Ukrainian origin, who had been sent to Romania in 1928 to support the tiny local communist party which had been forced underground in 1924.

Upon its foundation, the Securitate (or the DGSP) was part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and was composed of ten  directorates, as follows: (1) Directorate I – Domestic Intelligence (Direcţia I Informaţii Interne); (2) Directorate II – Counter-sabotage (Direcţia a II-a Contrasabotaj); (3) Directorate III – Penitentiary Counterintelligence (Direcţia a III-a Contrainformaţii Penitenciare); (4) Directorate IV – Operative (Direcţia a IV-a Operativă); (5) Directorate V – Penal Investigations (Direcţia a V-a Cercetări Penale); (6) Directorate VI – Protection of Ministries (Direcţia a VI-a Protecţia Ministerelor); (7) Directorate VII – Technical (Direcţia a VII-a Tehnică); (8) Directorate VIII – Cadres and Vocational Schools (Direcţia a VIII-a Cadre şi Şcoli Profesionale); (9) Directorate IX – Education, Culture, and Propaganda (Direcţia a IX-a Educaţie, Cultură şi Propagandă); (10) Directorate X – Administration and Accounting (Direcţia a X-a Administraţie şi Contabilitate). The Securitate also had auxiliary services that performed activities such as: censoring of correspondence, surveillance and telephone wiretapping, secretarial tasks, records, encoding, and archiving. Within the territory of communist Romania, there were twelve regional directorates and the Securitate branch of the capital city Bucharest (Securitatea Capitalei). In 1951, the Securitate was reorganised centrally and territorially. It remained part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but the official name was changed into the General Directorate of State Security (Direcţia Generală a Securităţii Statului – DGSS) through Decree No. 50 of 30 March 1951. As compared to the previous DGSP, the DGSS had two more directorates: the Directorate for Foreign Intelligence (Direcţia de Informaţii Externe – DIE) and the Directorate for Transportation (Direcţia Transporturi). The territorial structure comprised at that time twenty-eight regional directorates and the General Directorate of the Bucharest Securitate (Direcţia Generală a Securităţii Bucureşti).

During the period 1968–1972, the Securitate functioned independently from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, under the name of the Council for State Security (Consiliul Securităţii Statului), but from 1972, the Securitate became again part of this ministry. From 1972 until the collapse of communism in 1989, the Securitate bore the official name of Department for State Security (Departamentul Securităţii Statului–DSS). In this period, the institution had the following structure: (1) General Directorate for Foreign Intelligence (Direcţia Generală de Informaţii Externe – DGIE), which after 1978 was renamed as the Centre for Foreign Intelligence (Centrul de Informaţii Externe–CIE); (2) Directorate I – Domestic Intelligence (Direcţia I Informaţii Interne); (3) Directorate II – Counterintelligence within the Economic Sectors (Direcţia a II-a Contrainformaţii în Sectoarele Economice); (4) Directorate III – Counterespionage (Direcţia a III-a Contraspionaj); (5) Directorate IV – Military Counterintelligence (Direcţia a IV-a Contrainformaţii Militare); (6) Directorate V –Protection and Guarding (Direcţia a V-a Securitate şi Gardă); (7) Directorate VI –  Penal Investigations (Direcţia a VI-a Cercetări Penale); (8) Command Centre for Operative Technology and Communications (Comandamentul pentru Tehnică Operativă şi Transmisiuni–CTOT), which comprised: (a) (Special Unit “F” for surveillance and investigations (Unitatea Specială “F” de filaj şi investigaţii): (b) Special Unit “P” for research, design and production of operative technology (Unitatea Specială “P” de cercetare, proiectare şi producţie a tehnicii operative); (c) Special Unit “R” for communications and radio counter-intelligence (Unitatea Specială “R” de transmisiuni şi contrainformaţii radio); (d) Special Unit “S” for identification of hidden writing and graphological examinations (Unitatea Specială “S” pentru depistarea scrierilor ascunse şi expertize grafice); (e) Special Unit “T” for installation and management of operative technology (Unitatea Specială “T” de instalare şi exploatare a tehnicii operative); (f) Special Unit for Fighting Against Terrorism (Unitatea Specială de Luptă Antiteroristă – USLA); (9) Centre for Informatics and Documentation (Centrul de Informatică şi Documentare – CID); (10) Service “C” for the transport of secret correspondence (Serviciul “C” pentru transportul corespondenţei secrete); (11) Service “D” for disinformation of espionage centres (Serviciul “D” pentru dezinformarea centrelor de spionaj); (12) Directorate for secretariat and legal issues (Direcţia secretariat-juridică); (13) Service for cadres and education (Serviciul cadre şi învăţămînt). At the level of each of the forty-one counties in communist Romania and of the capital city Bucharest, there was an inspectorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which comprised a Securitate section in charge of the respective administrative unit. The last head of the Securitate was Iulian Vlad, who was nominated in October 1987 and remained in office until 22 December 1989.

The Securitate was dismantled immediately after the 1989 revolutionary regime change in Romania. Thus, the newly established ruling body of the country, the National Salvation Front (Frontul Salvǎrii Naționale – FSN), issued on 30 December 1989 Decree No. 33, whose single article referred to the dismantling of the Department for State Security, that is, the Securitate. After 1989, the Securitate and its crimes became one of the most popular topics of research in Romania, with the former collaborators of this institution being the subject of media articles and public debates. As a result, the Securitate was publicly blamed as being responsible for the brutal repression of opposition which existed in the early days of communism in Romania, and for the successful prevention of any anti-communist movement during the entire communist period. This overall assessment was based rather on personal memories than on archival research, for the documents of the Securitate remained largely inaccessible for fifteen years. While access was restricted, rumours about the destruction of the most compromising files circulated intensely. These rumours were fuelled partly by the discovery of a large number of half-burned documents from the archives of the former Securitate in a forest close to the village of Berevoiești, Argeș county. This event created the public impression that the Securitate was continuing to control the transition from communism to democracy just as much as it was believed to have controlled the communist regime in Romania. Ever since their transfer from the Romanian Intelligence Service (Serviciul Român de Informații–SRI) and from other institutions which hosted them temporarily to the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (Consiliul Național pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securității–CNSAS), the documents of the former Securitate have been frantically accessed by individuals who wanted to see their own file. The case of the Nobel prize winner Herta Müller is perhaps the most internationally famous. Besides, these files have supported the legal process of unmasking Securitate collaborators, with many of the cases uncovered stirring heated debates upon the very definition of the collaborator, as well as on the legal and moral aspects of the act of collaboration. However, public opinion in post-communist Romania continues to consider that many former collaborators are still undisclosed for they are among those who control key political or economic positions in the country. At the same time, it condemns as morally incorrect behaviour any entanglement with the Securitate which implied an act of informing upon another person, and such a vision has been transferred to the young generations born after 1989.

Służba Bezpieczeństwa Ministerstwa Spraw Wewnętrznych (Security Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs) was established in 1956 and was the most important security organisation in the Polish People’s Republic.

Prior to Security Service, the Ministry of Public Security (MBP) was responsible for all intelligence and counter-intelligence actions. However, it was known for harsh methods in pursuing opposition against the newly established communist power and dismantled in 1954.

Służba Bezpieczeństwa’s role was clearly defined: to protect the Polish People’s Republic from internal and external enemies which was achieved through controlling almost every aspect of citizens’ life. Therefore, throughout the decades, the SB gathered enormous number of files on Polish society.

The Security Services Archive (Archiv bezpečnostních složek, ABS) is one of the newest archives in the Czech Republic. It was founded together with the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes following the adoption of Act No. 181/2007 Coll. on 1 August 2007, although they both started operation on 1 February 2008. The foundation of both institutions was accompanied by lengthy disputes, as several academics and politicians disapproved of them. Compared to other post-communist states, the two institutions were established relatively late on and they are still part of media disputes to this day.

The bases of the archive collections which are administrated by the ABS are archive materials stored to date in the Archive of the Ministry of the Interior. Almost 20 kilometres of archive materials were created between 1939 and 1989 by the Nazi and Communist security forces, organised in almost 750 fonds and collections. The public mainly associates the ABS with the opportunity to study materials from the State Security (Státní bezpečnost; StB) that were kept by the Communist regime’s secret police force on both its collaborators and opponents. There are, however, more sources related to the recent past in the fonds – for example, materials related to the resistance in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the search for war criminals, testimonies of Gestapo employees, the investigative files of Communist security forces, surveillance files from the National Security Corps (Sbor národní bezpečnosti; SNB) and the personal files of employees from the Ministry of the Interior. Materials have also been archived from civilian and military intelligence and counter-intelligence, personal files of employees from the Ministry of the Interior, materials of the Border Guard (Pohraniční stráž) and Public Security (Veřejná bezpečnost). The archive materials are deposited in two buildings in Prague (on Branické Square and Na Struze Street) and one building in Brno-Kanice. The operational time limit of the ABS as an independent institution has been restricted – according to the Act, it should become a part of the National Archive on 1 January 2030.

The most important goals of the ABS are to safeguard the archive materials under its administration, process the fonds and collections, create archival aids and make them accessible to the public. The ABS also fulfils tasks for other Czech institutions and offices – e.g. by providing materials for the Department of Personal Security and Lustration of the Ministry of Interior which issues a lustration certificate (based on Act No. 451/1991 Coll.), collaboration with the National Security Authority (Národní bezpečnostní úřad), the secret services of the Czech Republic and Czech Republic police force. The archive also works extensively within the agenda of Act No. 262/2011 Sb concerning those who participated in  resistance and opposed Communism, which came into force on 17 November 2011. It gathers materials for preparing statements for particular applications, and presents official statements for the Ministry of Defence.

The first declassification of the StB files was permitted in 1996 (by the Act No. 140/1996 Coll.), albeit in a very restricted form. A few years later, an exception in § 37 of Act No. 499/2004 Coll., on archival science and file services and on amendments to some acts, made possible the almost unlimited access to archive materials relating to the activities of the Communist regime’s security forces. These remarkably liberal conditions are exceptional in comparison with other post-communist countries, and still receive occasional criticism. However, thanks to this liberal legislation the ABS is one of the most widely used archives by researchers. It is visited by more than 2,000 researchers every year, who carry out almost 4,500 study visits, during which more than 40,000 items are presented. The research rooms are located on Na Struze Street in Prague and in Brno–Kanice. The research room on Siwiecova Street has been closed since 2017 due to reconstruction. The work of digitilization departments and IT specialists guarantees better protection for the original materials and a more comfortable research environment. Thanks to these professionals, registered users have been able to study sections of the archives at the website eBadatelna.cz since 2017.

The easiest way to look up the archive materials is to use the entries in extant or newly created name records. Older records from the Study Department of the Ministry of the Interior (Studijní ústav ministerstva vnitra) contain archive materials created shortly after the Second World War. Newer records were created by the StB and some of them are accessible online (https://www.abscr.cz/jmenne-evidence/). Thematic searches for archive materials can often be complicated.

The administration and accessibility of archive materials is not the only objective of the archive, and the employees of a modern restoration department look after the archive materials. The archive also has a specialized library and publishes the Collection of the Archive of Security Forces (Sborník Archivu bezpečnostních složek) which follows the Collection of the Archive of the Ministry of Interior (Sborník Archivu ministerstva vnitra).

The ABS often takes part in organising exhibitions related to the period 1938–1989 which are organised by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, as well as other memory institutions. The employees of the ABS also try to expand their educational activities, including excursions for people interested in sources from our recent past, special educational programmes for schools, open days, and participating in geocaching – a popular game worldwide (route Za historií s ABS).