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Gheorghe Ursu (1926–1985) was an engineer with literary ambitions who kept a secret diary with critical comments for which he was arrested and beaten to death while imprisoned. In Romania, he is a symbol of the brutalities committed under the Ceaușescu regime, while his missing diary is an epitome of the mystery that surrounds the disappearance of certain items from the Securitate archives during the Revolution of 1989 and the first post-communist decade, until the transfer of the archives to CNSAS.

An anti-fascist militant during the war, Gheorghe Ursu turned to the communist youth movement in the aftermath of the Second World War out of genuine leftist convictions. However, he became quickly disillusioned with the Party, from which he was expelled in 1950. A civil engineer by training, Ursu was also a person interested in culture, in particular in the avant-garde. He even published a volume of poetry, with the foreword by a reputed poetess, Nina Cassian. His most important writing was his diary, which was obviously not intended for publication, but kept in secret. This diary included critical comments on Nicolae Ceaușescu’s aberrant decisions, especially regarding those Ursu could observe in his professional field. In his capacity as civil engineer involved in the consolidation of Bucharest buildings in the aftermath of the 1977 earthquake, he understood that the imposition of political decisions upon professionals, in particular savings at the expense of building standards, could lead to disastrous results amounting to the loss of human lives. He even sent a letter to Radio Free Europe in protest at Ceaușescu’s construction policies. Eventually, his critical private diary was confiscated by the Securitate following his denunciation by some workplace colleagues. This event triggered Ursu’s arrest and subsequent death in prison in 1985, as a result of the beatings he had to endure from a cellmate.

Gheorghe Ursu was not involved directly in the making of this collection, which is the creation of the Securitate. However, he is worth mentioning here because of the disappearance of his diary, which was confiscated from him by the secret police and probably included in this collection aside the other materials taken from him which still exist in the inventory of the items transferred to CNSAS. Before his death, Gheorghe Ursu was not known as an open critic of the communist regime, but the criticism he formulated in his secret diary triggered his imprisonment and subsequent death, which transformed him into a victim of human rights violations under Ceaușescu. His dramatic case was rather singular, but it had a huge echo among Romanians, mostly due to RFE and other Western broadcasting agencies, and prevented many others in the late 1980s from criticising the Romanian communist regime.  After 1989, Ursu’s diary became a subject of public interest. A few fragments came to be published in 1990 in the weekly magazine Revista 22, which a group of prominent intellectuals founded as a platform of social dialogue. Later, however, this 811-page-long diary, which had ultimately led to Ursu’s death, disappeared without trace before the transfer of the Securitate archive to the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (CNSAS). The CNSAS collection of manuscripts confiscated by the Securitate includes two pre-communist books under the name of Gheorghe Ursu, but not his diary, which continues to be a subject of great public interest. One should note that the individual responsible for beating him to death and the Militia officers in charge of his case, which at that time was treated as an ordinary criminal case in order to disguise its political significance, were put on trial and condemned in post-communism. Moreover, in August 2016, the former head of the Securitate, another former communist dignitary and two former high-ranking Securitate employees were put on trial for crimes against humanity in connection with the Ursu case.

Vladislavs Urtāns (1921-1989) studied history at the University of Latvia, but he was deported to Siberia on 14 June 1941 together with more than 15,000 of his compatriots. Why he was a victim of deportation is not quite clear, because he was not involved in any political activities. In his memoirs Par ko? (About What?) he guesses that he was denounced. He managed to survive in a detention camp in Solikamsk, and was released in 1944. In 1946, he participated in an action to bring orphaned children back to Latvia, under which 1,000 to 1,500 orphans were brought back, mostly children of people who were evacuated voluntarily to Soviet territory at the beginning of the Soviet-German war; but many children of 1941 deportees were also saved thanks to this action. Urtāns' return to Latvia was not exactly illegal, because he had served out his term and no additional penalties were imposed on him. He managed to graduate from university, and to start work at the museum. However, in the eyes of the authorities, his return from Siberia was not quite legal, and in 1950 he was forced to choose between going back to Siberia or leaving Riga and moving to somewhere 150 kilometres from the capital. Urtāns was offered a job in the Madona museum by Elza Rudenāja, and he lived there until 1958, when he was allowed to go back to Riga and get a position at the Museum of the History of Latvia. He became one of the leading archaeologists in Latvia. In 1986, he started to write his memoirs about his deportation and the time he served in the detention camp. Parts of these memoirs were published at the end of the 1980s, and the book, edited by his son Juris, came out in 2015.

Usatiuc-Bulgăr, Alexandru (b. 1915, Ivancea, Orhei district; d. 2003, Chișinău) was the main leader of the National Patriotic Front of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, which several young intellectuals established in Chișinău. This group, which amounted to over 100 members, aimed at fighting for the establishment of an independent Moldavian People’s Republic and its secession from the Soviet Union. This was to be followed by a subsequent union with Romania. Usatiuc was the main founder and organiser of the group. At the time of his arrest, he was heading a department for the sale of goods at the state enterprise “Moldobuvtorg.” Usatiuc had the idea of sending a comprehensive written statement to the then Secretary General of the Romanian Communist Party and Chairman of the Council of State of Romania Nicolae Ceauşescu in the hope of eliciting the support of the Romanian communist leader. On 29 March 1969, he made a first attempt to reach the Romanian leader by simply using the Romanian postal services while visiting the country. As he received no answer, Usatiuc started to doubt that his message had reached Ceaușescu. During another visit to Romania, on 12 June 1971, he requested a meeting with Nicolae Ceauşescu. His request was denied, so Usatiuc left the six-page statement at the chancellery of the Council of State of Romania. Consequently, on 30 June 1971, the head of the Romanian Security Service, Ion Stănescu, informed the KGB head, Yuri Andropov, about Usatiuc’s visit to Bucharest. Stănescu also sent to Moscow a copy of the statement that Alexandru Usatiuc had left for Ceauşescu. Usatiuc was not arrested right away, probably because the KGB preferred to shadow him and collect additional “evidence” of his anti-Soviet activities. It was only on 10 December 1971 that the Chişinău KGB decided to open a criminal case against Alexandru Usatiuc, after it received a report from Moscow about Usatiuc’s “crime.” The main proof of Usatiuc’s subversive activities was the statement that Usatiuc had addressed to Ceauşescu on 12 June 1971. On 13 December, Usatiuc’s apartment on Lomonosov Street in Chişinău was searched and he was subsequently arrested. After the group’s trial, in July 1972, Usatiuc was sentenced to seven years in a high-security labour correction colony in Perm’ and to a five-year exile in Tyumen. After 1990, he became an active participant in the movement for the rehabilitation of former Soviet political prisoners. He was also the head of the Association of Former Political Prisoners (Asociația Foștilor Deținuți Politici). However, he was less active in politics after 1990. In the later years of his life, his reluctance as a public figure led to a lack of interest in his role as an anti-Soviet dissident. He was twice decorated (posthumously) with the highest order of the Republic of Moldova, in 2010 and 2013.

Ludvík Vaculík was a writer and columnist. During the Second World War he worked at the Baťa factory in Zlín, studied at a shoemaking school and a business school for foreign trade. After the war he graduated from the Political and Social College. Upon returning from military service, he became editor of Rudé právo (Red Law), and later also worked in Czechoslovak radio. During the 1960s, he attracted attention in the editorial office of the Literární noviny (Literary Newspapers), later renamed Literární listy (Literary Letters) and then Listy (Letters), the most important periodical of the reformed intelligence. He remained at Listy until its ban in 1969.

Ludvik Vaculík was a member of the Communist Party; he joined in 1945. At the first meeting he knew he had made a bad decision. He did not like kind of people he met there, but he did not want to quit because he hoped he would have an influence from within. He did not like the Communist regime abusing the idealism of its supporters. At IV. writers’ congress in 1967 he spoke about the post-war development of Czechoslovakia and he was particularly critical. He declared that "no human question has been resolved in our country in twenty years." After this performance, he was expelled from the party.

In 1968, he wrote he proclamation, "Two Thousand Words". He also became a signatory of Charter 77. After the Prague Spring was suppressed, he was banned from publishing for 20 years. Conservative communists called him a platform for counter-revolution.

Vaculík did not emigrate from Czechoslovakia, but took over the samizdat edition of forbidden literature, Edice Petlice (founded in 1972).  For the next two decades, Vaculík was one of the leading dissidents and writers who were officially banned, but their works and ideas spread through samizdat or in foreign editions. After 1989 he continued his creative work. His best-known works include, for example, Český snář (Czech Dream Book) (1981), which is a narrative about life in dissent, or a novel for young people, Morčata (The Guinea-Pigs) (1973), which explores human marginalization. This work has been translated into eleven foreign languages. Český snář deals with everyday experiences of the late '70s, but also increasing pressure from the State Security following the formation of Charter 77, of which Vaculík was a founding member. At the same time, Vaculík wrote highly-valued feuilleurs, one every month. Their readers were predominantly people from dissident circles. Separate editions were published only after 1989 in two collections, Spring is Here and August Year. Vaculík was one of the most persecuted writers in Czechoslovakia. He lost his job and was forbidden from publishing. However, he did not emigrate even after the occupation in 1968.

In 1996 he was awarded the Order of T. G. Masaryk III. class. In 2008, he was awarded the State Prize for Literature, “for his literary and publicist work so far, taking into account the prose piece ‘Hodiny klavíru’ (‘Piano Lessons’)”

Éva Vadas was a Salesian nun and Bokor member. She entered the Social Mission Society/ Szociális Missziótársulat in 1935. She visited and helped people in hospitals and jails, and she also helped other families and did administrative work. She learned about the aims and principles of Bokor in 1948, and after the dissolution of the convents in 1950, she found the ideas of social responsibility and charity which Bokor represented very close to her own vision. She had to work in a factory. During these years, she organized the communities and helped spread the samizdats of György Bulányi. She was imprisoned from 1952 to 1956. After her release, she remained a member of Bokor up to her death. The collection of the Bokor base community is based on Éva Vadas’ documents. She contributed to the work of the community as a typist. She typed the Bokor samizdats, for example, the issues of Christmas Present /Karácsonyi ajándék (KARAJ).