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Dennis Deletant, Ceausescu and the Securitate: Coercion and Dissent in Romania, 1965-1989. London: Hurst, 1995, xxxii + 403 pp., 39.50 hib, 16.50 p/b.
ONE OF OUR BEST INFORMED and most penetrating analysts of contemporary Romania has produced a volume of immense and varied value. He sets out to relate the complete history of the various agencies in communist Romania charged with enforcing the policies and plans of the unique and brutal brand of communism which lasted there until 1989. Deletant succeeds in this task in several ways and thereby creates for the student of the region and the country an invaluable piece of work.
The story of the Securitate is the story of several different bodies involved in domestic and international monitoring of opponents and potential opponents, and the pressure and terror utilised against them. Deletant chronicles the organisational and nominal changes, complete with charts and names of holders of influential positions. But more important, he links the security agencies in both form and purpose to the goals of the political leadership of the time, whether Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej or Nicolae Ceausescu. Deletant makes it clear that...