Repression
The Romanian security forces succeeded in defeating rebel forces due to coordination between the Securitate and militia forces, as well the penetration of the bands with the use of informers, intelligence gathering, and persuasion.
Adriana Georgescu Cosmovici was one of the first people to be arrested for belonging to the resistance movement. In July 1945, the 28-year old woman was arrested in Bucharest, and severely beaten by the secret police investigators. In a statement made in Paris in 1949, she named three investigators as having threatened her with guns, one of them being Alexandru Nicolschi. According to a 1992 article for Cuvântul, Nicolschi ordered the murder of seven prisoners (allegedly the leaders of an anti-communist resistance movement) in transit from Gherla prison in July 1949.
Elisabeta Rizea and her husband, two peasants opposed to the government's policy of forced collectivization, joined the guerrilla group "Haiducii Muscelului" led by Colonel Gheorghe Arsenescu, providing food and supplies. Caught in 1952, she served 12 years in prison, during which time she was subjected to torture.
On 18 July 1958, Vasile Motrescu was executed. In 1959, 80 people led by Vasile Blǎnaru were judged for "armed insurrection" in the area of Câmpulung Muscel.
The implacable chase of the authorities on the resisters as well as the gag order on the existence of the resistance show how concerned the regime was, that the symbol of political insubordination might become contagious. Iron Guard sympathizer Gavrilă-Ogoranu reports the words allegedly addressed to mountain wanderers by a resister in the 1950s: “Tell everyone that there is still a place in the Kingdom of Romania which has not bowed to Communism. As long as our heads are on our shoulders, this corner of the country will be free. Tell the people not to lose faith, for the day will come when the whole of Romania will be free. Pray God for it, so help us God.”
Read more about this topic: Romanian Anti-communist Resistance Movement
Famous quotes containing the word repression:
“Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought. Repression in history leads to conciseness in the historian, and the rocklike hardness of much celebrated prose is due to the tempering of the tyrant.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“People with a culture of poverty suffer much less from repression than we of the middle class suffer and indeed, if I may make the suggestion with due qualification, they often have a hell of a lot more fun than we have.”
—Brian Friel (b. 1929)