I look at this photo and wonder why what the director of the Research Institute calls “securism” could be defeated in Czechoslovakia (later the Czech Republic and Slovakia), while in Romania it did what it wanted for decades. The current debate about the Securitate and its post-December avatars is directly related to this topic.

I have known Virgil Maguriana since 1973, he led a seminar of the Political Doctrines course taught by Professor Ovidiu Trasnia. I met Gheorghe Timofte. Eduard Helwig was my student in the 90s at an international summer school organized in Timisoara. The problem lies not only with the heads of the DSI, but with the heads of the heads. Same with SIE. What was security colonel Meleshkanu looking for at the head of this institution? Everything revolves around one critical point: the refusal of the elites to finally, openly and categorically break with the past. The cosmeticization of this traumatic past, the “normalization” is harmful to both the “normalizers” and the “normalized”. Here I see a significant difference between the path of Havel and Dubcek and the path of Iliescu, Roman and Maguryan.

Years have passed since I wrote the bilingual book “Franz Kafka’s Neighbors” together with Mircea Mijes. It was not an optimistic book. It could not be the knowledge of what Mircea and Vasyl Popovych, one of the authors of the “Timişoara Proclamation” in March 1990, knew for sure. Let’s not forget that SRI was officially created under the leadership of “Captain Mykhailo”, aka Virgil Magurianu, precisely in March 1990. He persistently supported the construction of “primitive democracy”, the political formula of dictatorship, the prototype of “illiberal democracy” of the type of Milosevic, Orban and Putin. We are always the first, always ahead of others.

I remember one Fessenist ideologue who, a few days after the June 13-15 raid, explained to me that not all democracies need to be liberal, that history is not over yet, and that, in any case, historical parties are an anachronism. The independence of justice ? Philistine fashion. Protochronism, indeed…

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