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Cristina Plamadeala, "Dossierveillance, Collaboration, and Fear in Society: The Saga of a Journey Through the Securitate Archives and Beyond" (Routledge, 2025)
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- [00:00]
A
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- [01:07]
B
Hello and welcome to the New Books Network. My name is Roland Clark and I'm here today on the New Books Network talking to Christina Plimediala about her latest book, Dossa Valence, Collaboration and Fear in Society. Christina holds a joint PhD from Concordia University in Canada and the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in France. She's an expert on victim and perpetrator studies, transitional justice, surveillance studies, and moral philosophy. Welcome to the program, Cristina.
- [01:33]
C
Thank you very much, Roland, for inviting me.
- [01:35]
B
Cristina, this book's about what it was like to be a collaborator in communist Romania. What originally got you interested in this topic?
- [01:43]
C
Very good question, Roland. The interest in this topic came from my personal ties, family ties, to someone who was accused of collaboration. His name is Antonio Promodela, theologian and the former Metropolitan Orthodox Church. And so the accusations made me wonder about this topic in a very profound way. Would you like me to elaborate further?
- [02:09]
B
Yeah, tell us a bit more. So who was he collaborating with?
- [02:14]
C
And. Well, I. I've never. So I. I've never seen a document that show shows the collaboration. So, just to make it clear. But the accusations were convincing enough for me to want to know more about the process of collaboration. What made people collaborate, what motivations were behind it, what people may have felt in the process of being convinced to collaborate. How did this process evolve over time? But the most important, I wanted to know more about what may have made to me a dollar if it's. The accusations are true. What made him collaborate? Because I read his earlier novel of works, especially a novel, HSV three Hours of Hell, which were. Which was written during the time when he was in prison and afterwards. And so. And that's around. Around the same time perhaps that he got contacted by this. I don't know exactly. These are just my thoughts. And so I strongly believe that the novel shows a side of him that actually gives insight into the turmoil I have experienced. PROCESS OF BEING CONTACTED I'll probably will speak about this in a later part of the interview about the book. But the book is so powerful, it left such an impression on me. I felt the hell. I mean, the hell that this person, the main character, which I think it's autobiographical, I think it was Antonian was hiding behind that character that held that internal turmoil that he has felt. And so I wanted to know more about how this turmoil helps understand how maybe some people became collaborators. What was it like? What did. What it feel like to be contacted, to be under the investigation and the process of. So that's that I was on a mission to find out. I didn't know what I was called to look for the answers, but I really was dedicated to the process.
- [04:18]
B
Yeah, it's a really interesting human question as to. No one knows how they're going to respond when put in impossible situations. The book's based on analyses of secret police files from the communist period, which first became available to researchers in the early 2000s. What's in these files and how are they organized?
- [04:38]
C
Well, I can only speak about how this sort of. The Chinese sas, the Council for the Study of Psychiatry Archives has reorganized these files. So basically, maybe some of the files that I've read were organized different while they were produced by the Civic, so, you know, I can only speak of Kali. They are organized nowadays, organized by farms. They are basically clusters, big clusters of files put together on specific topic. So there's documentary funds which I've consulted a great deal. They are created on specific issues like religion, that those who left the Romanian exile and so forth, penal funds, those who are on trial, network funds. Those are the. These are files on people who have officially collaborated with the secret that. And I say officially because officially ended. They were signed an equipment action paper, but some may have provided some information without the official document. And they're informative funds. Those people were under surveillance that they Collaborated necessarily, but they were under the watch of the sentence, usually suspicions.
- [05:54]
B
In order to understand collaboration, you've coined a few new words in this book. First, can you tell us what you mean by dosservalence? And why is it such an important concept for. For helping you understand what was going on?
- [06:08]
C
So first of all, coining these terms didn't come lightly. I just wanted to make that clear. It wasn't something I wasn't on a mission to find, making words or so to speak, but I wanted. I was. I really wanted to give a voice to those who were under the surveillance and became osteopritate and became collaborators. I wanted to give demo voice. And so those events is really the term to describe the phenomenon when you are constantly under this miasmic presence of anything that can lead to a real or imagine. So for example, anything that could get the years. Anything or anyone. So I call it dossier because I'm not only talking just about a paper dossier, I'm talking about recording devices that may have led to the possibility of having information by your recording someone you know, spyman or the possibility of spying. So that's an atmosphere, a reality those times. Atmosphere where a lot of people felt sort of the suspicion that I may watch and maybe I'm saying maybe because not necessarily true, but even the possibility of having guilty guard reporting your colleague report, that's those things because it affects how you behave, what you do, what you do not do, what you say, how do you. How you relate to people. And that's. That's a. That's a. Some reality of everyone, those who were working for the sacred that felt the degree of that those who were under surveillance and those who were not under surveillance and were suspicious, perhaps they have suspicion that maybe they were to see that's a reality that affected perhaps. I mean, I'm not saying it was a permanent, but it must have impacted the way they lived their lives and maybe even failed to resist at some point. So that's the phenomenon that I. And that's why I decided to give it a name because it was so powerful. And I think that you had to be given a term to really pinpoint this rally. They may have influenced a lot of people tibatic lands that without its presence they would have acted.
- [08:16]
B
Another important concept in the book's data valence, which you adapt from Roger Clark. How is data valence different from dossavalence?
- [08:26]
C
So let's look at morphological data. What's the difference? Data versus dossier data? It basically means facts I mean I'm just facts, concept ideas like information. But that information doesn't have power unless it's constructed and used with a specific purpose. And that usually is to harm. So database is basically information that is out there but you relate to it in a sort of a not fearful way. So you know, that's why a lot of people, they know their Facebook is watching them, you know there it's. But they're not super afraid of, you know, they don't have that hesitance to post oh I've been to this beach last no. So that's data veins. It's usually connected to digital, you know, Internet kind of world. Those events is usually. It's, it's, it's. It has a suspicion, you know, it affects how you, how you relate to the, to the data. So it affects how you disclose information. It has, you know, people usually self. You know, they. They watch what they say, they watch what they write. So it's kind of data vedant gone wrong rogue sort of. It can turn. Database can turn into those events. When you start being afraid of leaving a record behind and you start shaping your behavior towards a bureaucratic record imagined or real in some way or other. So they are connected but those events is sort of the, I would say the. When things go wrong with databases it's more.
- [09:59]
B
More what we see in state socialist Romania.
- [10:02]
C
Yes, and. Exactly. And it's what we see nowadays as well. I mean every time you are. A person is afraid to speak out of the possibility of retaliation, is afraid to write an email to someone, let's say a supervisor because one is afraid to rock the boat and lose one's job. That's also two savings in a less harmful way than I described that in my book. I knew once it. But you know, leaving a record where anytime a patient in a psychiatric setting is afraid to disclose mental health issues because of possibility of, I don't know, social services coming or having their children being taken away, for example. I'm giving an example that's drastic, that's also dossy beings see anytime you're afraid the possibility of having a record decline that may be used against you. That's dositians as well. So it's. This concept is not just applicable for totalitarian machines. It can be also seen in today's world as well.
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B
Yeah, in slightly terrifying ways. Finally, you also talk a lot about psychography. What's that? And how does it help us understand the concept of why people collaborate?
- [11:13]
C
So as I said, I was when I started to do My research, I wanted to give a voice to those who may have been coerced into joining, becoming collaborator. Suki is sort of the soul in philosophical, theological understanding. So it's soul writing, basically. And what I noticed in the files is that a lot of the people who are in charge of recruiting were looking to find people's vulnerabilities and hit where it hurts the most. And that way those people would succumb to corporation. And I'm not saying that I've read every single time, so I usually, you know, I'm very cautious about it, about saying that everyone, no, not everyone, was subject to this kind of biographical writing with the. With the hope of finding someone's vulnerabilities and exploiting the vulnerabilities. But that's what KGRAPH is about. It's, you know, in cases where it was used, it was used with the active intent to make someone's abilities be evident. For example, I've read in the files someone's legendary past, and that was very threatening. Or someone's extramarital affairs being made public, or what else I've seen, oh, pretending that your child will go to university. I've seen that as well. You know, all these are vulnerabilities in the sense that these are the things you care the most about. These are. These are the essence of your life. And that's why I've allowed myself to Suki as part of this concept. Because what is the essence of your life? It's who you really are. Who you are is what you care about and what you work for and what you know, what motivates you in the morning to get up and to do something. And so I. It boils down in my. What Aristotle said. The essence of. The essence of politics. So that's the story behind this concept.
- [13:12]
B
Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense in relation to that. One of the key texts, you mentioned it before, is a book that Antonio Plamadialo wrote, possibly at the time when he may have been approached by the Securitate, called Three Hours in Hell. What's that novel about?
- [13:27]
C
So, as I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, the novel is. Is quite. I really think it's a confession, but it's, you know, you know, Death of the Author by Bart. So. So we. I don't. I don't speak on. On the author's behalf, but I'm. I'm. I'm giving my interpretation of the book. So I think it's an autobiographical book where Antonia writes about a character, Peter Gast, he's, he's left at a train station and he's confused. He's told he had underwent a brain surgery or something like he, you know, he's. He's. He's unrecognized, you know, he has, he has two identities. He's so changed physically, like no one recognizes him. He tries to convince everybody, this is who I am. He's right, Lucy can't say his mother. No one recognizes him because he's so different. Yet inside of him he has an identity in the memory of someone else. So these two identities in him create such turmoil. He's trying to convince everybody, you know, this is who I am, this is who I am. No one believes it. So it's, it's a really traumatic experience for this man who eventually runs away because he's so lost. And the irony is that only a crazy man, the so called. But his name in the book is the only one who believes the story. So yeah, the, you know, great books don't really have the biggest plots. So it's very psychological, very analysis of the inner life of a human being. But it's, it leaves you. So it left me with such a. Almost the book was pleading, at least for me maybe perhaps because I have a connection, a genealogical connection to this. The author, it asked me to tell the story. What was the story behind this book? And so how I interpreted this book is that the process of collaboration or being recruited or being subject to psychography leaves you almost. And agreeing to collaborate, it's such a crisis, internal crisis, because you act in a way that is not reflective of who your inner being is. You're forced in situations you are. You're forced to adapt to sort of simulate a new identity. And that can be very traumatizing. And if my interpretation is correct, as I say if, because I'm very cautious, I don't. Only the author knows what he really to say. But if I am right, which I believe I have some. There's some grain of truth in what I'm saying. The process of collation and becoming one was extremely dramatic and heart wrenching for the person who wrote the book, at least from the novel.
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B
How did the securitata actually recruit informers?
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C
So psychography, sort of looking at vulnerabilities was one, but they were. There are various ways of, you know, they wanted people to tell things that they couldn't have access to. So that's basically how can I get to know information about X about this person. So they were looking at the entourage, they're looking at people around them, mostly the ones who are the closest, because they were. They're the ones who had most access. We're looking at the age where there was no iPhones, where you could just look at the Facebook profile and find out if they have kids or not, if they have a, you know, a lover or some, you know, something. And so the secretate entered into a person's life by first looking at the closest people to them and, you know, trying to get one of those people to become collaborators and to report information on that target. And so the way they would have done so is by looking at those people's vulnerabilities, what would make them fall into the trap? I call it a trap because, yes, there are cases where people perhaps volunteered, so to speak, and they were happily willing to report. I'm not denying that existence, but I do believe that many of them felt into a trap, and I'm comfortable to use that word. And I think this book is about this trap. I'm quite convinced about it. So a lot of people feel trapped by the process of what I described, where they were secret agents around what made them turn and be willing to say, okay, I will give some on this person.
- [17:58]
B
Apart from informers, you mentioned the security didn't have access to Facebook. How else did they get their information? Like, what sorts of technology did they have available?
- [18:07]
C
So most of it, they were bugging. So they're bugging telephones in the later years. I mean, we're talking two different periods. The Stalinist was a bit less technologically advanced, but starting with the 70s, 80s, they were becoming very good at sort of bugging telephones using microphones into rooms and sort of hearing conversations and so forth of people. And so they needed less informers. And I mean, yes, they still needed informers, but less because they could have actually direct access to the, you know, someone's home or someone's office and so forth. So if you go to the Genesis, there's actually a display, some of those tools, technology that they used to spy on people. And so. But in my research, most of the information that was reported in the files came from either direct contact with an informer. So they were, you know, the informer would show up and either provide a written statement or a oral statement, and the secret would write it down and put it in the file, or they would have information transcripted from a telephone listening or telephone conversation. That's sort of my experience with how they go.
- [19:23]
B
So you mentioned before that most informers saw themselves as victims of The Securitate, not as colleagues or collaborators. Why is that distinction important?
- [19:33]
C
Well, first I want to make clear the fact that when I wrote this book, I didn't interview any informers. So when I say they saw themselves victims also. So that also is very important in the sense, because I. I don't think that they, you know, some, I. I cannot really speak on their behalf fully. But, you know, there was a process of victimization in the. For some of them, in the process of becoming collaborators. They weren't just purely perpetrators. I do believe that, you know, if the process of psychography that I described, you know, they were targeted and some of them felt coerced. And that's an element of de. Victimization that should not be kind of put aside or sort of ignored. And that probably, in my opinion, explains why some have a hard time to acknowledge that there's such denial. Because I don't think it was easy to be recruited for some of them. I don't think it's, you know, I don't think it was just that simple. I call one part of the book Reluctant Betrayal. I don't think that for some, I'm saying some very careful because I cannot speak on all of them. And I don't deny that perhaps some were willing to spy and provide information without being forced. But for some of those people, I think that they did feel victims of a system and of those events as well, which is something. The phenomenon that perhaps needs to be taken into account. This, this atmosphere of fear and suspicion and mistrust that dominated the society made it even harder, as I say in the book, to say no when you wanted to say yes, for example. And that should not be underestimated.
- [21:22]
B
But that doesn't mean that they weren't. You couldn't benefit from working for the Securitate.
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C
Absolutely.
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B
What were the benefits of being an informer?
- [21:31]
C
Well, in time. So I watch, I describe the process in time. So, you know, even if you have started as a victim, you know, this. The process may have turned differently in time. Like they were becoming. In time, they. Perhaps they were getting benefits, access to a passport, for example, or being relocated to a better job or better, you know, location to live. I don't know, getting paid. Some of them received, you know, whiskey or something. I've seen some of that. Or gifts or so that they came with benefits. And that's where the, you know, you have to look at the process over time. Not just, you know, one became, you know, you cannot, you cannot think of a collaborator. Just, oh, he signed or she signed an agreement to collaborate and that's it. That relationship changed over time and it was quite volatile, perhaps for some between the informer and the agent. And so, you know, you know, even if you may have started as a victim, over time you were perhaps getting a bit more accustomed and even perhaps became, you know, to justify, you know, your actions. And that's what I call sort of the banalization people. I take the term from banality, from Hannah Arendt, because, you know, gradually in time, you saw the benefits of this, this relationship that may have started on, you know, on awful terms. You see being victimized. So when I say collaborators were victims, you know, we, we have to be very careful. They may have started as such, but in time the process may have changed and the dynamic of power may have changed. And so I hope that that nuance is very clear in this dialogue. And that makes the, that's why the phenomena is so complex and it's so contested and it's, so it creates a great deal of, you know, questions to be asked and. Because it's, it's not the black and white subject, you know.
- [23:36]
B
Yeah, because a lot of the time when we as historians or people in Romania, when they think about collaboration, it is very black and white. Collaborators are bad. People that didn't collaborate are good. So how do you think this, this more nuanced approach of collaboration that you lay out in the book changes the way we should treat exposes about people who are featured in Securitate archives?
- [23:58]
C
Well, at the end of my, you know, I've spent almost 10 years from the process of writing to the process of publishing this book and doing research and so forth. And at the end of everything, the question I'm left with is, who am I to judge? And that's sort of a. Every, every case is different and we cannot generalize, but we should not rush to, to make a verdict that is, you know, sort of kind of a black and white verdict. And usually it's what I'm saying, you know, perpetrator verdict, without taking into consideration the various stages of collaboration, initial recruitment and then post collaboration, post the recruitment and how it happened, you know, be careful. I'm just saying me be careful not to judge and to rush them to a conclusion. If you see that someone signed a document to collaborate and maybe even, you know, there are documents that, you know, one has taken payments and so forth, there's usually more to the story. And that's what I wanted to leave the reader. Let's also give room to that More to the story. And I'm not trying to say that collaborators did not engage into activities that were, they were not zoneable or something like that, but let's leave room for that possibility that there's more to the story. What made them go, yeah, that's really important?
- [25:36]
B
I think so. Finally, I don't live in communist Romania. I live in 2025. Should, should I still be worried about dossevalence?
- [25:45]
C
Well, as I mentioned earlier in our conversation, I do. Surveillance is something that is, you can find it. Well, it's, it's an internal process. Right. So it's, you know, it's, it's a feeling, it's a sensation, it's a, it's a reality in your, in your, in your mind. Right. It can happen nowadays in a milder forms, sort of institutional. For example, I describe institutional non deliberate dose of sense that non deliberate that no one is up to really get you. And yet you're still watching what you say in a meeting. You're watching how you write your high address your supervisor in an email because there is a paper trail. That's an element of institutional non deliberate dose events that a lot of people may have experienced in their daily lives. I, I'm not. Should you worry? Well, it's not about worry, you know, it's about being mindful of that. And sort of, you know, we think of totalitarian authoritarian regimes that's so different from, for example, the democratic current society we live in. You and me. I live in Canada. Okay. But you know, there are some things that are found in all these regime types. And so when I say worry, maybe not worry, but be mindful of that continuity. And I think that awareness is important.
- [27:14]
B
Yeah, brilliant. That's about all we have time for today, but thank you so much for talking us through some of the complexity of this issue. It's been really interesting, been a pleasure.