Abstract
This short article discusses a series of Securitate documents which contain various inconsistencies, and which were written on or about the Romanian theologian Antonie Plamadeala. Examining these files, I attempt to reconstruct the case Securitate built against Plamadeala in the late 1940s, and point to errors and forgeries, which they may contain. Stated differently, I look at evidence, which may have been fabricated by Securitate in order to prove Plamadeala’s alleged ties to the Legionary Movement. I do this by first laying out the series of accusations the Romanian secret police brought against Plamadeala in 1949 and the way in which it constructed its evidence to support its case against him. I then offer a succinct analysis of ways in which one may derive truth from the plethora of information such files may bring to the attention of the modern investigator, truth which, as this article shows, is often juxtaposed with untruth in Securitate archival records.
Reference17 articles.
1. Aioanei, T. (2013). Mitropolitul Antonie Plamadeala si amintirea unei prietenii: scrisori inedite [Metropolitan Antonie Plamadeala and the Memory of a Friendship: Unpublished Letters]. Sibiu: Editura Adreiana.
2. Atkin, N., M. Biddis, and F. Tallett (2011). The Wiley-Blackwell Dictionary of Modern European History since 1789. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
3. Boila, R., and A. Cretzianu (1956). Captive Rumania: A Decade of Soviet Rule. New York: Praeger.
4. Buda, N., and Maica [Nun] Anastasia (2012). Mitropolitul Antonie al Ardealului: Rugul Aprins Al Constiintei Neamului [Metropolitan Antonie of Ardeal: The Burning Bush of Our National Conscious]. Cluj Napoca: Casa Cartii de Stiinta.
5. Clark, R. (2012). “Nationalism and Orthodoxy: Nichifor Crainic and the Political Culture of the Extreme Right in 1930s Romania” in The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, 40, (1): 107-126.