From: Kacso Judith Andrea
Subject: IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ AND SIGN: FREE RESEARCH IN ROMANIAN
ARCHIVES!
Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 09:40:09 +0100 (CET)
From: stefano bottoni <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL
PROTECTED]
Paris-Bologna-London, 25 November 2005
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
First of all, let us introduce ourselves. We are two young scholars
interested in twentieth century Romanian history: Francois Bocholier, an ancien
élève of the Ecole normale supérieure (Ulm), who is to defend a PhD thesis on
the political strategies of the Transylvanian Romanian élites in the '20s
(Sorbonne University, Paris), and Stefano Bottoni who has recently got his PhD
in Contemporary European History (University of Bologna) with a thesis on the
Stalinist nationality policy in Romania focused on the short-lived Hungarian
Autonomous Region (1952-1960).
We are calling on you to protest against the difficult conditions of research
that we have been experiencing for years, along with many other scholars (both
foreigners and Romanians). We are in no doubt that many of you have shared our
situation when doing research in Romania, even after the end of the Communist
régime. Based on personal experience and background information collected by
Romanian officials, we have been able to put together a broad documentation on
the present research conditions both in the National Archives (Arhivele
Nationale Istorice Centrale), based in Bucharest, and in the county branches
(Directie judetene), especially those in Transylvania, the area our study has
been focusing on. Work on this documentation was completed in summer of 2005,
and will be made accessible to those who may be interested in it. Let us give
you just two examples which illustrate how bad the conditions of research in
Romania have become:
- Since 2003 the internal rules for access and consultation of
documents in the National Archives have been getting worse: the use of laptops
has been expressly forbidden; the scholars are not allowed to consult freely
all the inventories; the internal management document makes official
discrimination between Romanian scholars and non-Romanians.
- Since 2001 the number of former police officers who are employed
by National Archives has increased considerably. The current assistant director
himself is general of the Romanian Gendarmerie. The Faculty of Archival Studies
of the Romanian Police Academy is a military body, that is to say a branch of
the Ministry of the Interior, and not a civil institution. All its graduates
enjoy the status of police officers.
Let us add now only a brief remark concerning another archive whose study is
crucial for recostructing the recent history of Romania and, broadly speaken,
of Communist East-Europe as a whole: the so-called Securitate archives (Arhiva
Consiliului National pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securitatii - ACNSAS). Although
already possessing a research pass for the National Archives, Stefano Bottoni
had to pay (as a foreign scholar) a sum of 16 million lei (more than 500$) to
the National Treasury in order to get access to this institution in late 2003.
We must mention that Romanian scholars have been also requested to pay a 1
million lei fee for getting this permission. François Bocholier applied for the
permission, which was granted him in July 2004, but when he finally got into
the archive, he discovered that there was no list of fonds (inventar) relating
to the personalities he was searching for. Then Bocholier was told to wait some
time to allow CNSAS to carry on the necessary investigations. Unfortunately,
the positive answer came too late for him, after nearly one and a half year of
complete silence.
We are informed that for undefined "administrative reasons" not a single new
pass for access to the ACNSAS has been issued since April 2005. As Stefano
Bottoni personally experienced, during 2005 research conditions severely
worsened even in this institution, which was formerly considered more
transparent and user-friendly than the National Archives. As a consequence,
research has been virtually blocked.
All this is happening on the eve of the Romanian accession to the
European Union, an event of utmost importance for Romania. As young scholars
and European citizens deeply involved in and fascinated by Romanian past, we
strongly believe that such a situation should not be tolerated any more. In our
opinion, EU enlargement should represent not only a sequence of political
decisions, but first of all an occasion to restabilish in Central-Eastern
Europe some basic values like consistency, transparency, the rule of law, and
last but not least, free access to information.
We are asking you to join our civil action by signing this document, which
will be addressed to the Romanian Government, to the European Union and the
Council of Europe and also to a professional body such as the International
Council on Archives. We will also publicize this protest in the Romanian and
international media, in order to urge the Romanian authorities to address this
situation and guarantee for the future fair conditions of access to the public
archives to all scholars, without discrimination on the basis of nationality,
institutional affiliation, or research topic.
Thank you in advance for your attention and for your help.
Sincerely yours
Francois Bocholier (Sorbonne University, Paris)
Stefano Bottoni (University of Bologna)
Dennis Deletant (SSEES, London)
PS: If you know of others who might be interested in joining this action,
please send an e-mail to us at the following addresses: [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Thank you!
-------------------------------------------------------------------
ARIN
810271 Braila, Al. Cinematografului 2, bl. H3, sc. 2, ap. 27
tel. 0740.026091
www.nuclearinfo.ro
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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