The management of secret Police files in Eastern Europe
| Published date | 01 March 1991 |
| Pages | 70-77 |
| Date | 01 March 1991 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb027061 |
| Author | Martyn Rady |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
The management of secret Police files in
Eastern Europe
by Martyn Rady
The communist political system in Eastern Europe rested not upon consent but
upon coercion. As an 'important centre of administrative repression', the secret
police proved vital in ensuring the survival of the regimes which they served.1
In the earliest phase of communist rule, during the late 1940s and 50s, the
secret police were primarily employed as instruments of political and social
change. Their task was to intimidate the population as a whole into accepting
the fact of communist party rule. Once the communists had consolidated their
power, the task of the police altered and became one of 'political maintenance'.
In this second phase, which lasted right up until 1989, the secret police no
longer acted as agents of change but, instead, as guardians of the status quo.2
Despite its changing role, the secret police apparatus in Eastern Europe
remained substantial, although in terms of manpower it always fell con-
siderably below western estimates. The Romanian securitate employed about
25,000 full-time officers and its strength was complemented by military units on
secondment, which amounted to about a further 15,000 personnel.3 The
Czechoslovak Department of State Security (StB) had in the late 1980s about
20,000 employees, and the East German Stasi, Staatssicherheitsdienst, had
85,000. The size of the Stasi may be explained by the extent of its information-
gathering activity in the West German Federal Republic and by the frequency
with which it acted abroad as a surrogate for the KGB. The Bulgarian State
Security organisation, Darzhavna Sigurnost, had between six and nine
thousand employees.4 On account of the use it made of the regular police even
in extraordinary operations, the Hungarian State Security Organisation
(ABSz) managed with less than two thousand permanent officers.5
Throughout Eastern Europe, the secret police apparatus was augmented by a
large number of part-time agents and informers. The East German security
service is thus believed to have relied on information supplied by over 100,000
informers, while each full-time Bulgarian officer is thought to have had on
average between ten and thirty agents working for him.6 Some estimates put the
size of the Romanian securitate's informer network at more than a million
persons, and between one in ten or even one in four of the active adult
population.7
In the period of communist take-over and consolidation, the secret police
relied upon methods of arbitrary arrest and of indiscriminate violence as a way
of terrorising the population into submission. From the 1960s onwards, the
preferred methods of political control changed since intimidation on a large
scale was considered both to be no longer necessary and to be potentially
destabilising. Instead, the secret police assumed the role of 'watch-dogs',
monitoring society, identifying possible trouble-makers, and only as a last
resort taking active measures against dissidents. As a part of this development,
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